site banner
PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   36910 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The irony is that we're getting the worst of both worlds with Trump's brand of isolationism. On one hand, we have Bush lackey Pete Hegseth who thinks Iraq was a great idea. And then we're defunding basic, uncontroversial medical aid and possibly leaving Ukraine defenseless against the mongrels. There's no coherent policy other than doing the opposite of whatever Biden supported.

  • -15

How is international free PREP uncontroversial? Mandates that insurance cover it for free domestically are controversial.

For someone with my position on these programs, at best they are a self-licking ice cream cone that spends money on an eternal treadmill, constantly preserving the lives of people who will almost instantly die if aid is ever cut off without any path towards independence from said aid. And, likely, keeping those populations way above stable levels, wherein they will constantly be a threat to migrate to better lands and become wards of the state there.

At worst they are direct subsidies for immoral behavior like sodomy.

There is absolutely nothing "immoral" about sodomy.

Many prominent moral systems disagree with you, as does biology, considering it spreads STDs at extremely high rates.

"Biology" doesn't care what we do, we all die of something in the end. Technology prevents the spread of STDs a lot more effectively than purity culture. I'm not going to spend my limited time living under christian slave morality.

Not having anal sex is better than technology at preventing the spread of STDs, as indicated by the AIDS epidemic, the recent monkeypox epidemic, and whatever one comes next.

That sodomy is bad is not an idea limited to Christians. All the big 3 Abrahamic religions are against it. Buddhism holds it violates the 3rd precept. Hinduism holds it is offense against Dharma possibly requiring being cast out into a lower caste. Confucianism states that it goes against the family, which is held as one of the highest places of honor.

I mean if you like buttsex a lot, thats your thing. But I don't think society should be compelled to subsidize that life choice as if it is as prosocial as married couples having babies (in fact the annualized cost of PREP seems to be a tad higher even than a woman getting pregnant every 2 years!).

the annualized cost of PREP seems to be a tad higher even than a woman getting pregnant every 2 years

But a lot lower than the cost of not preventing the spread of HIV even among men who refuse to stop having promiscuous sex with other mutually consenting men, given that twice as many patients with uncontrolled AIDS equals twice as many chances for HIV to mutate into a form that can easily infect people who are monogamous or celibate and who do not use intravenous drugs.

Certainly a bold and speculative claim considering we don't know the risks of mutation and, just as importantly, the true effect of PREP and what "undetectable" means long term. Its entirely possible that huge swathes of those in that status ARE spreading it in a lower key fashion and by continually maintaining the virus in that state they are contributing to the problem of potential mutation, particularly in a way that would have it eventually adapt against such treatments.

I would be very confident in saying your assertion is unfounded, particularly compared to a more targeted campaign that was combined with a more traditional method of dealing with disease like quarantine. HIV is one of the most quarantine-friendly viruses of all time.

Hinduism holds it is offense against Dharma possibly requiring being cast out into a lower caste

Examples of barbaric cultures that I would never want to live in aren't really going to convince me. All countries that are remotely civilized protect LGBT rights.

I mean if you like buttsex a lot, thats your thing.

I certainly don't, but I'm not going to have christians and jews telling me what I can and can't do. Secularism is what made America great, and religion is what keeps the middle east a dump.

constantly preserving the lives of people who will almost instantly die if aid is ever cut off without any path towards independence from said aid

That proves too much, as it could also be applied to many other life-saving medications, such as, inter alia, anti-rejection drugs for people with organ transplants.

That proves too much, as it could also be applied to many other life-saving medications, such as, inter alia, anti-rejection drugs for people with organ transplants.

The domestic healthcare and health insurance industries do need to be allowed to do much more cost-benefit analysis and let people die more often as well, yes. Society gives into the pressure of tears/potential tears far too often nowadays is one of my consistent positions.

There is nothing uncontroversial about that medical aid. Quite simply, it is not theirs to give.

when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people

Congress has enormous taxation and spending powers. Federal courts recognize this obvious fact.

Federal Courts are more dangerous the more honest they are. That doesn't mean they correctly interpret the Constitution.

It probably doesn't apply in this case, but would Congress have the ability to make treaties with foreign nations and give them medical aid under those enumerated powers? Or could Congress make use of enumerated powers related to raising armies, and provision the military with extra medical personnel and supplies, and then (with permission of affected countries) send military doctors in to provide substantially similar medical aid to that currently being given?

Like, I'm all for the idea of doing things "the right way" within the legal framework we have, but surely Congress just giving medical aid to foreign nations isn't far off from things they could do with enumerated powers under the Constitution?

the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.

It's either enumerated or it isn't. "Not far off" means "not enumerated" means "unconstitutional."

It's either enumerated or it isn't. "Not far off" means "not enumerated" means "unconstitutional."

Given the existence of the Necessary and Proper clause, "not far off" means that you have to look into the purpose and see if the activity is necessary and proper to an enumerated power. The framers intended the delegated powers to be broad - particularly the spending power. There is no territorial limit on the spending power in the Constitution, and if controlling communicable diseases isn't the "general welfare" I don't know what is.

I don't know if the early US did contribute financially to the plague-control infrastructure in the Mediterranean (the British certainly did), but am pretty certain that the Framers thought that was the sort of thing that the government should be able to do.

you don't think it's odd the framers bothered with the other "enumerated powers" when your interpretation of Art. I, s 8, cl 1, along with the necessary and proper clause, makes almost all of them entirely superfluous?

it's a wonder why multiple framers wrote multiple letters to the press which repeatedly described how restricted the enumerated powers were, not to mention the Constitution was only ratified based on a promise to include the Bill of Rights which contains the 9th and 10th Amendments again clarifying these powers should be restrictive (as all others were reserved to the people and states, respectively)

the modern interpretation by the courts is, despite all ink to the contrary, pretty much what yours is, but that's because the Constitution has been long dead from prior violations, not because of the Framers' intentions

I think the framers intended the spending power to be broad (the limit on that pre-16th amendment is the limit on the taxes the federal government can raise to pay for spending) and the police power to be narrow. You can read the General Welfare clause to be limited by some requirement of generality (the federal government can't fund things which benefit a specific state or individual), although that isn't consistent with founding-era practice, but I don't think it can be read as being limited by some set of permitted purposes.

Part of the problem here is that it isn't 1789 any more - transport is easier, multi-state joint stock companies are a thing, and so the range of things that really are necessary and proper to the regulation of interstate commerce is large (but not infinite). The actual holding of inverse-Wickard is "The federal government lacks the power to regulate the intermediate processes of a vertically integrated business" (such as a farmer growing wheat which would be fed to animals whose meat would move in interstate commerce) which is a bit of a libertarian gotcha given the way large businesses work in the 20th century.

Okay, so why did they bother with 90% of the rest of section 8 if a broad reading of those two parts make them superfluous? Were their comments, arguments, communications with each other, etc., all just a ploy to pass the only sections which mattered?

It's true it isn't 1789 anymore and the world and its juridical walls are gone and we're left with a document which can be read to have essentially limitless power and that's essentially what it is in the modern day; however, that doesn't mean it was the founders intent. You can read the entirety of clause 1, the tax and spend clause, as being used for the other enumerated clauses and reading it this way doesn't make most of the section, the most important section in the entirety of the Constitution, superfluous. The history of formulation, ratification, and amendment weighs against your claims about the founders intent as well as the repeatedly stated primary purpose of the coup against the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution to begin with which was the power to levy taxes. Indeed this is a supported general characterization of what the founders argued and responded to others when this question and criticism was brought up at the time of the founding and ratification process.

Perhaps some of them did see and want this clause to be essentially limitless, but that's not what they told others nor what they argued for its approval nor would it be anywhere close to the consensus view at the time of the founding.

The actual holding of inverse-Wickard is "The federal government lacks the power to regulate the intermediate processes of a vertically integrated business"

the holding in Wickard v Filburn from the 1940s, over 150 years after the founding, was that if an individual's effort which is entirely intrastate with no showing whatsoever of any interstate movement of anything could be "aggregated" and therefore have a "substantial effect" on interstate commerce then the federal government has the power to regulate it under the interstate commerce clause

the inverse of that holding isn't your statement, the inverse would be the federal government doesn't have the power to regulate entirely intrastate commerce even if aggregated together there is some effect on interstate commerce

the holding itself erased any limit on the commerce clause because any individual act if aggregated enough will have a substantial effect on interstate commerce; do you think a single founder would have seen this case and not been horrified?

Besides, silly FDR, he should have just passed a large tax on all wheat grown and only offered a subsidy if you abide by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Who needs the commerce clause when your tax and spend power is only limited by the apportionment clause, which after the Obamacare cases, means pretty much nothing, another relic of a bygone era.

Do you think the Louisiana purchase was a legal act under the Constitution, given that there is no explicit enumerated power for Congress to acquire territory from other countries?

I get wanting to be something like an Originalist, but I think that a lot of people that hold the position do so as a kind of cop out. It is much easier to say, "We can't debate foreign aid, the Constitution doesn't explicitly allow it", than to say, "I am opposed to my tax dollars being spent on foreign aid for reasons X, Y, and Z." But the problem is, sometimes the Constitution does actually seem to allow the thing (and not in a nonsense "Living Constitution" way.)

I think if you're creative, most of the limitations are hardly limitations at all. The Federal government was able to end hotel segregation by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.

(EDIT: Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams. So, we can ask the object level question - should US tax dollars be spent on such foreign aid? I don't think the "but the Constitution" dodge is really possible here.)

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

by using the Interstate Commerce clause to regulate hotels that host people from other states. That seems like a much more justifiable use of the Interstate Commerce clause than that one outrageous case of regulating how much corn a man is allowed to grow on his own property, and which would never cross state lines.

Wickard v Filburn is a travesty, and every day the Supreme Court goes without reversing it is another day of ignominy and shame.

That still doesn't mean that there's any interstate commerce when someone rents a hotel room. The commerce happens when the man crosses the border with money. The renting of the hotel room only ever occurs within one state.

Looking it up, at least one kind of foreign medical aid is done "by the book" in exactly the way I describe. The US Department of Defense will send the military in to foreign disaster areas to set up field hospitals and military medical teams.

There should be no standing army in the first place, but rather state militias. This is not by the book in any way.

Do you think the Louisiana purchase was a legal act under the Constitution, given that there is no explicit enumerated power for Congress to acquire territory from other countries?

With the caveat that this is way in the past, so it's purely academic: this was very clearly illegal under the Constitution. I don't see any way you can argue that it was legal under a framework where the federal government only is allowed explicitly enumerated powers. The Constitution (well, the bill of rights but since they are amendments it amounts to the same thing) is quite clear that anything not allowed in the Constitution is reserved for the states/people.

I agree. The question was meant to highlight the problems with Originalism and similar positions. The Founding Fathers were wise, but in setting up a government of limited powers, they failed to account for a very obvious case like acquiring new territory. Thomas Jefferson was only the 3rd president of the United States - it didn't take long for the cracks to show.

The Founding Generation were all alive to see how inadequate the Constitution of limited powers they had crafted was. It didn't take long for people like Alexander Hamilton to try to craft a national bank, or for presidents to hide the fact that they were engaging in clandestine naval warfare without congressional approval or oversight, or for the Supreme Court to seize the right of judicial review, or for Jefferson to decide the treaty power includes the ability to acquire more territory. I'm sympathetic to Originalism, and I think in an ideal world it would be how the law was actually interpreted, but the ink had hardly dried on the Constitution when the first violations of its framework happened.

I could imagine a polite, careful argument which included calling people “mongrels,” but this ain’t it.

Mongrels?

A pejorative for the inhabitants of the Russian Federation

Weird thing to call them but thanks for letting me know.

Not really, no- perhaps foreign to the anglosphere(and definitely weird to hear from someone casting himself as a liberal) but 'Russians aren't really white/are mixed race, they're mongolian savages that invade europe again, tatar yoke, muslims in the russian army raping european women, etc' is a common anti-russian canard. It's not even strictly speaking wrong.

It is, strictly speaking, wrong. Russian Federation has Tatars and Siberians and Caucasians but it's ~70%+ Russian slavs, who are genetically really close to Poles and Ukrainians. The constitution also calls said Slavs the foundational ethnicity of the federation.

And 'Mongrel' is always a pejorative when applied to people or a nation. No reason to accept it as anything other than low-resolution name-calling.

In the current year, it's considered a perjorative even when applied to dogs. The politically correct term is "crossbreed".

A dog described as a "mongrel" may be a crossbreed, but the implication is also that they are the product of uncontrolled breeding. A breeder crossing a St. Bernard to a Chihuhaha to make a Mexican mountain rescue dog is making a crossbreed; the cur in the street that some gangbanger's (probably already mixed) pit bull sired on a stray Labrador is a mongrel.

Or 'Canine-American'.

I propose that term be reserved for participants in animal roleplay.

I was being serious.

eh, historically maybe. People on Moscow streets are looking whiter than people on Berlin or London streets to me these days.

This implies that ethnic Russians should be counted as ‘white’ and ethnic Turks shouldn’t.

Now obviously there’s historical reasons for that division but people who hate Russia don’t have to buy into them. It’s literally Ukrainian state ideology that Russians are either mixed race or asiatic rather than European.

This is in the context of a random forum poster on an American forum. Why in the world would anyone care what Ukrainian state ideology is? They aren't really white either by racial purist standards, no matter how many ww2 tattoos they get. I was just pointing out it's funny for someone to try and disparage one county based on racial purity when their own countries are what they are these days.

Yes, but that's not because of mongrelization, but rather population displacement.

Of course there's a coherent policy, and it's mercantilist style gunboat diplomacy.

Trump believes that the US's greatness in that era was the fruit of that policy rather than merely coinciding with it. But you can't accuse the man of having no vision when he's even willing to make fundamental changes to taxation and doing landgrabs to align with it.

He was literally selling that vision on Rogan during the campaign, it's not like it's a mystery. How realistic that is in the modern world is another question, but it's unfair to say it's incoherent.

What's more interesting to me is that this has also been China's declared policy for a while. And whether it would be beneficial or not on the whole for the US to collapse their alliances to become another China. One needs to remember that the US proper and the Imperial infrastructure are two different political entities with nonoverlapping interests.

If he wanted to expand the American empire in an advantageous way, that would be one thing. But based on his appointments it seems like we'll be going on a crusade in the middle east rather than actually annexing any valuable territory or defending the West. The fact that he railed against the Iraq war in 2016 makes me think he has no coherent foreign policy or vision. I don't see how someone can flip-flop on that particular issue.

we'll be going on a crusade in the middle east

If we're bombing things to shit anyway I fully support doing so to return the holy lands to Christendom and the subjugation or expulsion of both saracen and jew.

Well, my holy lands are in Europe, not the middle east. I don't care what happens in the middle east as long as we're not too heavily involved. The Abrahamic religions will be fighting each other until they destroy themselves. America should be aspiring to greatness, not religious barbarism.

The fact that he railed against the Iraq war in 2016

Trump was against the Iraq War during the early Bush years. His foreign policy vision has remained "America First". The Trump Doctrine is extremely legible and coherent, I think trying to deny this is just equivalent to not liking it. Note that Hegseth did not get appointed to lead a new Iraq War (and Trump is not a doddering susceptible who does whatever his last conversation told him). Hegseth got hired to purge the military of political officers, because he will be the first SecDef in a generation who isn't from that class.

(and Trump is not a doddering susceptible who does whatever his last conversation told him)

Trump is 78, was showing visible signs of mild cognitive decline on the campaign trail, and was a notoriously low-detail President in his first term despite being younger. Personnel is policy to a greater extent than usual. (That said, Michael Waltz as NSA is more likely to be deciding who gets attacked than the SecDef - power under a low-detail President leaks to the EOP and not the cabinet).

I think this is an ignorant or helpless point of view: You can watch Trump live, you can see him in action. He'll sign executive orders for hours while answering questions from reporters, he'll be deeply knowledgable about each one. Then he'll go to North Carolina and have a press conference with victims of the hurricane, speaking totally spontaneous, he'll go to LA and meet with the mayor and argue with her and command the room. He's meeting with lawmakers and give speeches, he'll show up for a cameo at Vegas, he's constantly everywhere doing things in command of his faculties. He's in command everywhere he goes, nobody can keep up with him. The "evidence" of decline is a few edited clips taken out of thousands literally thousands of public appearances. Trump is not a pushover, he is not being lead around by his aides, and I think at this late date it's a little absurd to deny his vigor and obvious good health.

Crusade in the middle east? Last I checked neither Greenland nor Panama were in the middle east.

I was referring to Hegseth's book, "American Crusade", where he justifies the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

I do not think we are going to be invading the middle east under Trump. Would it be correct that you think we will, in fact, be "going on a crusade in the middle east"?

Well like I said, I really don't know what Trump's intentions are. Given how easily he seems to be swayed by people around him, I'm definitely worried about Hegseth's influence. I don't know why Trump would appoint him if not to take his opinions seriously. Other than starting a nuclear war, I think putting boots on the ground in the middle east is one of the most catastrophic decisions he could make.

I have not read Hegseth's book. Have you? Where are you drawing the idea that he is in favor of new wars in the Middle East?

Here he is discussing the war in Afghanistan. His critiques match my own well, and I detect no enthusiasm for further middle-east interventionism. This matches the interviews I've watched of him, and also matches the general attitude toward foreign wars that Trump has been hewing to since his run in 2015, which convinced me to back him. I am fairly confident that Trump will not be starting any new wars in the middle east, and I am extremely confident that he will start less wars in the middle east than Kamala would have.

I do not know where your confusion over Trump's intentions come from, but I do not share them. I've heard this sort of FUD during Trump's first term, re: John Bolton. Bolton got no new wars, and his political influence seem to me to have taken a precipitous nose-dive under Trump.

His critiques about Afghanistan were pretty unsubstantive. Obviously the Afghanistan war was unwinnable, but he didn't acknowledge whose fault it was that we were there in the first place. He didn't acknowledge the fundamental problem with Bush era foreign policy that got us stuck in those wars. And going further back, why were we ever so involved in the middle east that Bin Laden wanted to attack us? All of this could have been avoided by simply leaving the middle east to sort out its own problems. But Hegseth has an emotional bias at play here - he views the middle east as his holy land. His loyalties are not to the American people, or western civilization, but to his god and Jesus. The title of the book is all you have to read to understand his philosophy, and why he's dangerous.

He had Bolton during his first term and didn't start any major wars. Seems like he often just picks people that are recommended to him by other people he trusts without doing much vetting.

I don't know why Trump would appoint him if not to take his opinions seriously.

Trust, personal loyalty, and unlikeliness to go behind his back to the Chinese like Milley did.

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