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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   35415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Has anyone been checking out the reddit and hacker news reaction to TW's FAA scandal follow-up?

He's downvoted to -44 on /r/atc, which applauded his essay last year. Highlights from the comments:

Trace, the truth of the matter is you think you deserve a ton of credit for bringing this story to light. But this story has already been brought to light, been analyzed, and it’s nowhere close to the actual scandal of FAA hiring.

The choice you’ve made, is to cast your lot with the fascists currently ransacking our government. To pretend as though the Trump EO on DEI is in any way a reasonable response to a genuine policy concern, rather than the pure expression of bigotry that it actually is, is inexcusable.

There are only two sides right now. There are the neoconfederate fascists intent on dragging us back to the antebellum era, of which Trump, Vance, and Sailer are definitely a part. And there’s the rest of us.

You don’t have to be on their side if you don’t want to be. But if you choose to be, at least be honest with yourself about what you’re doing.

The top-voted comment on hackernews is accusing it of being a rehashed non-scandal laundered by authoritarian fascists. But the actual comments are mostly in favor, or pointing out that there's suddenly a lot of brand new accounts defending the FAA & claiming "this wasn't real DEI."

Grendel-khan describes the reaction:

The left outside the institution at fault swears up and down that something like this would never happen, and it's just right-wing disinformation, and you're probably a closet right-winger if you believe it.

The left inside the institution at fault swears up and down that this is a good thing and it's obvious that it's happening and why are you making such a big deal of it?

Taking it for granted for a moment that a lot of this stuff is totally astroturfed by blueanon orgs with AI-assisted spamming, it looks like doubling-down and tripling-down on full spectrum information manipulation is still the only strategy on the menu, even as it's increasingly failing and backfiring outside of totally controlled environments like reddit and bluesky.

So, what are the next four years going to look like? Is there going to be any evolution in strategy? Are they correct that just repeating a party line hard enough will bring people back into the fold?

I think that right now it's easy to point at this sort of frantic concern-trolling and laugh, but in a few years the average voter won't remember anything about some FAA hiring scandal except that "Trump used a tragedy for a culture war attack on minorities." Because while they'll only read a hackernews thread about TW's article once, they'll have heard the counter-narrative a million times, and will be sick of mustering the mental resources to reply critically with half-remembered anecdotes in the face of emotional blackmail. Eventually they'll forget they ever questioned the need for DEI programs, because only maga Nazis think that. The majority of people will never even see it once because reddit moderators deleted every mention of the article from the default subs, and banned the people who linked it.

So don't count on the familiar manipulation tactics failing forever just because it doesn't seem to be working right now. There is still an enormous propaganda engine manufacturing public opinion, and if I was in charge I'd make fighting it a high priority. But the current counter-elite supporting Trump dismiss that arm of the cathedral as opportunistic mercenaries, and fail to recognize the threat.
Moldbug and especially Thiel may absolutely despise the press, but they see the manipulation of public opinion as a quirk of "demotic" regimes, and have no time for it themselves. Moldbug in particular dismisses color revolutions with the over-simplistic "why does the dictator not simply shoot the revolutionaries with crypto-controlled weapons?" Thiel is quieter but clearly sees controlling the murder drones and spying rings as more important than propaganda. Musk is the only one of Trump's big backers who thinks control of social media is important, and I'm convinced that's because of his showman's instincts and desire for attention rather than some strategic policy.

People here have been talking as if the left will shift to violence and hard power in response to their usual methods failing last year (more assassinations of Musk & Trump, etc.). I'm a lot more worried about them doing the same thing they always do and getting away with it, because people don't have lasting immunity to propaganda.

It's helpful to try thinking about it from the air-traffic controlers' perspective. Last year, the ATC scandal was a purely academic dispute. There was still pending litigation, but nothing that would affect the typical already-hired air-traffic controller either way.

Right now by contrast, federal employees are on a wartime footing. Subreddits like /r/fednews are almost certainly unrepresentative of the median federal worker's opinion, but there is good reason to be on edge if one is on Uncle Sam's payroll. Everyone hired before January 20, 2025, including able-bodied white males, is a presumed DEI hire until proven otherwise. Trace's ATC scandal going viral is a direct threat to their jobs. It puts a bullseye on the FAA. Is anyone surprised that the reaction is different?

“Enormous propaganda machine”… or alternatively, a few people you disagree with in a comment section.

Partisan commenters always refuse to admit there could have been some good things done by people they disagree with. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

I don't think you believe that

You don't think I believe that there are people in a comment section who refuse to admit that the other side might have done something they'd otherwise agree with?

Why not?

From over here on the "nothing ever happens" team, it looks like the simplest explanation.

The New York Times has a recent story, where it summarizes the matter as:

For Mr. Trump’s claims about an Obama-era directive criticizing the F.A.A. for being “too white,” the White House also cited a lawsuit filed by a conservative legal organization on behalf of applicants for air traffic controller positions. The lawsuit accused the agency under the Obama administration of discriminating against them because its hiring practices were “engineered to favor racial minorities.” That lawsuit is pending in court.

And the next day:

In a misleading claim, Mr. Trump insinuated that the administration of President Barack Obama — the first Black president — had stocked the Federal Aviation Administration with people who could not do their jobs.

“They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white,’” Mr. Trump said. His administration will be different, he went on. “We want the people that are competent.”

(Asked for details on the “too white” claim, the White House cited a lawsuit filed in 2015 by a conservative legal organization accusing the Obama administration of hiring practices that were “engineered to favor racial minorities.” That lawsuit is pending in court.)

If you want to argue that the Times isn't an enormous propaganda machine... I think you're going to need a lot of evidence. I don't think you can credibly argue that they're just some comments section.

Reddit’s gonna Reddit whether or not the NYT posts that kind of article. I think this is because they have the same incentives pushing them into a particular line on any given CW topic. Maybe this is the prospiracy vs conspiracy model?

The point is that my model makes similar predictions, so I assume they were being genuine. If Steve doesn’t, why?

Reddit's going to Reddit whether or not NYT posts that kind of article. Reddit would not Reddit in this way if the NYT posted a front page news article specifically highlighting how this particular claim was not just true, but clearly documented and well-established basic fact. Don't get me wrong, they might do something different, but barring a pretty specific sort of Darwianian troll, most of this type of personality doesn't like to actively invite people to correct them, and despite Reddit-the-org's best efforts the sort of personality who get aroused at the opportunity to post a one-line link debunking someone, regardless of political alignment, is not zero.

The 'prospiracy vs conspiracy' model falls apart when we're talking an organization the size of the Times. These articles have two different bylines, from two different parts of the organization. The people with the bylines weren't the only people involved in writing them, they have layers of editors and fact-checkers, there may have been some level of legal review, supposedly they have a bunch of varied expertise specific to various domains.

The Times is -- at five thousand employees -- on its own an enormous propaganda machine. Not every employee, not even a sizable portion of those employees, is involved in this particular propaganda; there is no explicit 'you must lie this many times per article' metric; many would do the same for free if they had the opportunity. But neither are people unaware of whether they work at the Times, or unaware that the Times misleads and demands that they mislead. Its personnel talk at length about these goals, publicly and privately and in every option in between, both internally to the Times and to many other often sizable organizations that have similar priorities. Whether this falls into some other category of coordination in besides the point.

Sorry. I think there’s two parts: “an enormous propaganda machine” and “manufacturing public opinion.”

I concede that the NYT has agency, sells a narrative, and thus counts as a propaganda machine. At the same time, I don’t believe it qualifies as the propaganda machine, because I don’t think it actually manufactures much at all.

I think both the NYT and Reddit comments are explained by convergent evolution. They share enough assumptions that, when asked for an opinion on anything, they come up with something pretty similar. Same for the other left-leaning outlets. Same for the largely separate cluster of assumptions on the other side of the Culture War.

Steve used Reddit comments as evidence for the propaganda machine. Under this model, that doesn’t really hold, because I’d expect similar comments even in a vacuum. That’s why I assumed Jesweez was acting in good faith.

I don't think we know, or can know, what people would do in a vacuum. Your question was how people would react without the Times writing those two articles, not about a world where the Times didn't and hadn't existed as the paper of record for literal lifetimes and spent much of that time both papering over this sort of behavior, and stigmatizing any organization that would report on it.

The Times isn't the only part of that, or even the biggest part, fair. But that just kicks the problem up one level. Whether you call the ecosystem that the Times swims in and creates a conspiracy or prospiracy or The Free Market Modulo All The Law And Gov Funding Involved, it's still a giant machine of giant machines, often heavily coordinated, of which many or most of its components have explicit or not-exactly-vino-veritas recognition of what they're doing and how they're coordinating with other components. The degree to which that might be coordinated or naturally evolved is an interesting question, though one that I think has far more evidence against your position than you'd expect, but it's still besides the point. A machine that evolved fully organically is still a machine that would be fully compatible with :

Because while they'll only read a hackernews thread about TW's article once, they'll have heard the counter-narrative a million times, and will be sick of mustering the mental resources to reply critically with half-remembered anecdotes in the face of emotional blackmail. Eventually they'll forget they ever questioned the need for DEI programs, because only maga Nazis think that. The majority of people will never even see it once because reddit moderators deleted every mention of the article from the default subs, and banned the people who linked it.

So don't count on the familiar manipulation tactics failing forever just because it doesn't seem to be working right now. There is still an enormous propaganda engine manufacturing public opinion, and if I was in charge I'd make fighting it a high priority. But the current counter-elite supporting Trump dismiss that arm of the cathedral as opportunistic mercenaries, and fail to recognize the threat.

A fully headless organization could still produce a million articles about the counter-narrative that had the exact same notes, they could still aim massive amounts of emotional blackmail through every available institution, they could call everyone that disagreed with them maga nazis, they could still ban a ton of people who try to link things.

And that makes it pretty clear that whether or not Jesweez was acting in good faith -- perhaps they haven't seen any mainstream media coverage on this topic, or haven't read any of the actual coverage, or prosaically don't realize the ramifications of the words they're using -- they either don't or shouldn't actually believe their claim that this literally just "a few people you disagree with in a comment section."

I’m sure there’s a lot of astroturfing and whatnot but it could also be that it’s simply negative polarization and mood affiliation, the left is working itself into a frenzy about Trumps EOs and DOGE in particular. It’s 2016 again, except it’s a lot more boring this time because we’ve all seen it before, but the hysteria is still just as potent and enough that few will be willing to listen to reason.

it's sad that tracingwoodgrains made all the right noises in his article and they still accuse of him siding with the fascists.

also, its hilarious to create a 'test' where the 'correct' multiple choice answer is almost always the same. surely there is some web app or application where you can feed in your questions/answers and it will randomize the responses. or you can just do this in excel or roll a fucking a dice (rerolling on 5/6) or flip a coin twice for each question. or was this done deliberately because cheating would be too difficult because no-one would be able to memorize the answer key?

also, its hilarious to create a 'test' where the 'correct' multiple choice answer is almost always the same

It's hilarious you think this isn't on purpose, you Yanks really need to get with the program on low-trust societies. It's a lot easier to tell your desired DEI hires "mark A on all questions except 17, there the answer is C" than to try to give them a cheat sheet.

I think this is key why Trump is trying to fire people at USAID contrary to the claims made below that he needs to do this through statute. I think one of the people At USAId also happened to have a role at Reddit. They are clearly interconnected. You kill the funding and you might kill the astroturf.

Also podcasts are key—Vance should be on a major podcast once every week or two breaking it down for everyone. He is a superb communicator and generally thoughtful. You can bypass the Reddit blob or the news blob and go straight to the people. Those people can then turnkey that to other people.

The podcast idea is great. It makes perfect sense for a Vice President given that their official responsibilities are quite light but they have a lot of authority. Take two hours per week to go on Rogan or NPR or wherever and give a general update on what the administration is planning to do. Vance would be perfect for that.

Thirding this. I've been hungry for podcasts covering the DOGE story (preferrably not slop. There's lots of slop out there).

Unfortunately, the Doge side is probably too small to take time to join podcasts and the other side is going to produce 90% slop. Hopefully we get more engagement after the first rush of the project wraps up.

Yep — I wonder if there is a way to get this idea to the admin.

Have any one of a half-dozen DR accounts tweet it and there's at least a 12% chance Elon Musk signal-boosts it within the week.

The choice you’ve made, is to cast your lot with the fascists currently ransacking our government. To pretend as though the Trump EO on DEI is in any way a reasonable response to a genuine policy concern, rather than the pure expression of bigotry that it actually is, is inexcusable.

Ironic, given that just a few days ago we had people accusing TracingWoodgrains of being too leftist.

As someone whose positions are also sufficiently idiosyncratic that I don't fit in perfectly with either "side", I'm not unsympathetic to him. But this is simply the fate of all "centrists" - that's the reality of it. It would be like someone during WW2 saying "I don't support the British, or the Germans - I'm just neutral!" He wouldn't be looked upon with kindness in either country.

Ultimately if you want to avoid getting crushed by the tidal forces of politics, you have to decide which issues are most important to you, join the side that is most aligned with you on those key issues, and table your disagreements for a later date.

"I don't support the British, or the Germans - I'm just neutral!"

Switzerland and Spain sat out WW2. Not that Franco was a principled centrist.

and Ireland

Sweden as well, although it's a bit more complicated.

I really wish our resident loyal rightists at least used this opportunity to take a step back and examine their own reactions to him critically. It's human nature to hate tribal enemies, but in his particular case the apparent sense of betrayal that some felt over his attack on LibsOfTikTok seems to sit so deep that they are still having difficulties to even think straight enough to assemble a compelling argument against him, which can't be in their interest either in a forum full of autists whose response to social pressure is defiance. The degree of fuck-logic-and-charity indignation is something I otherwise don't see much here outside of some edge cases of sexual purity politics, such as abortion outrage or that one time when a card-carrying pedophile dropped by and ran a sort of AMA. (I'm still resentful of the mods for not cracking down harder on the hostile reactions at that time, since it was such a rare perspective to get. Probably the clearest sign that their problem is not so much a shared hatred of the left as it is an excess of sympathy for resident posters who lean right.)

Is this how loyal leftists in academia felt after the Boghossian affair, too?

in his particular case the apparent sense of betrayal that some felt over his attack on LibsOfTikTok

I dont think thats it, I dont even remember that one. There where many incidents, one outlined in other responses to prima, all painting very similar pictures. I think what gets people mad is the self presentation as a "temporarily" embarrassed rightist. If you remember slightlylesshairyape (who I in fact talk with to this day on traces forum), he has very similar object-level politics, and he used to get anrgy responses to particular comments, but not this personal antipathy.

that one time when a card-carrying pedophile dropped by and ran a sort of AMA

Link?

I dont even remember that one

I thought the the hoax with the furry school assignment was pretty memorable. It affected my opinion of Trace, and the degree of outraged response that he'd stoop that low was a big component in him leaving the motte. I also think that's part of the reason he's sympathetic to hanania, despite him being an atrocious ghoul- he's one of not many conservatives that didn't snap at Trace for that stunt.

Good point about the difference in self-presentation (I'm still professorgerm back on reddit). I think another component is, to borrow Trace's phrase, that he's a "live player." Interacting before he became a media personality, he's just some guy in a forum and we're on level playing ground- like with SLHA. Now, it's different.

Ok, I its vaguely familiar now, but Im still not sure I get it. Reading the blockedandreported post on it, Im not outraged. It seems kind of pointless, and I can see how you might turn it into a bad and outragous argument, but it wasnt done there.

Now, it's different.

Well, it isnt for me. Anyway, nice to see you here. Though I have to admit I wouldnt have recognised you. I just went through your profile and theres a few typical comments, but propably too few to notice. Now I wonder, am I different here too?

Well, it isnt for me.

That's good! A healthier way to approach it. I just can't shake it from the back of my head.

Yeah, it's been a while since I've made the longer comments I tend to make back at the schism, and in a pique I deleted a lot of my first comments here when I went away for a while. I still read here some but don't feel like I fit or have as much to say as I used to.

From what I've read, I think you're much the same here as elsewhere.

Driving away effort posters is bad. Especially when it's via 'grudge mobbing' where the effort posters are saddled with the baggage of previous effort posts and have to face criticism for those posts every time they make a new one. Getting mobbed from multiple directions on multiple topics. Tracing got some of that last time I saw him here and it was not fair.

But effort posters driving away criticism is also bad. If you want to interact with an online space where everyone adores you as the minor e-celeb you are then you might need a different venue than an open forum. Walking on eggshells because the residential online royalty decides his balls need fanning today is in one word pathetic. It's one of the hallmarks of a toxic forum.

Tracing got support here along with the negativity. His ultimate response was to threaten to pack up his toys and leave. What he wanted done by the mods or the users of this site is still not clear to me, though it is very clear this space is poorer for him not being here.

I would however want to ask him and those who lament the lack of him: Why are they here? Is it not the discussion generated, negative and positive, that is a big part of the reason why? Surely the fear of losing the effort posters has to be weighed against the ability of the fringes to comment on them. And that instead of leveraging their own importance as an effort posters to ward off criticism, they might need to take the high road every once in a while and trust that their effort is appreciated despite the grudge mob.

On that note I'm not sure where people like Tracing will go or what they seek there. Last time I saw him he was having his world philosophy rejected by trad caths on X. Where the implicit proclamations of his own importance ring a lot more hollow than they ever did here.

This particular effort poster tried to break the forum in two and carry off half for himself.

So, uh, fuck that guy, I don't want him here.

still resentful of the mods for not cracking down harder on the hostile reactions at that time, since it was such a rare perspective to get.

He's literally still a user here btw, pedophiles just have tougher skin (to their chagrin, sadly)

or that one time when a card-carrying pedophile dropped by and ran a sort of AMA. (I'm still resentful of the mods for not cracking down harder on the hostile reactions at that time, since it was such a rare perspective to get. Probably the clearest sign that their problem is not so much a shared hatred of the left as it is an excess of sympathy for resident posters who lean right.)

IIRC, we did mod a couple of people who said things like "You should go kill yourself" or made woodchipper references, but we don't mod people for having "hostile reactions" as long as they aren't directly attacking people.

Ironic, given that just a few days ago we had people accusing TracingWoodgrains of being too leftist.

Leftists will accuse many people of being fascist, including people in inter-left struggles. And of course they aren't. This is just standard inter-left infighting, it doesn't mean they are not leftist.

Historical leftists smeared social democrats as "social fascists".

And every sub-set of leftist in Revolutionary Spain denouncing each other as reactionary counter-revolutionaries.

Ultimately if you want to avoid getting crushed by the tidal forces of politics, you have to decide which issues are most important to you, join the side that is most aligned with you on those key issues

Near as I can tell he did join a side. He consistently repudiates the GOP and rejects it as a vehicle for his vision of reform. He votes for Dems and advocates for others to do the same. He's not especially partisan, but this doesn't make him neutral.

He's not a centrist. He's very leftist. He's a gay furry who couldn't stand to share a forum with people who advocated for lethal self-defense. That he's being called a fascist for this is just an indication of how far the leftist purity spiral has done.

This comment is just the inverse of all the redditors calling him a nazi. Shame on you.

If redditors are accusing someone of being an awful RIGHT WING NAZI, and motteposters (let's face it, this place is very, very red tribe-bent) are accusing him of being an awful GAY HOMOSEXUAL LEFTIST (btw, what happened to not fighting the culture war, eh?), he probably is indeed somewhere central to those positions.

(let's face it, this place is very, very red tribe-bent)

Is it? It's very, very right-wing, but that's not the same thing. From "I Can Tolerate Anything except the Outgroup" by Scott Alexander:

The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting “USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!”, and listening to country music.

The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.

(There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football “sportsball”, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk – but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time)

From what I can tell, most of us are Grey Tribers who refused to go along with the blatant falsehoods of wokeness and got thrown into the pit with the rest for it. The surveys support this. From the same essay:

On last year’s survey, I found that of American LWers who identify with one of the two major political parties, 80% are Democrat and 20% Republican, which actually sounds pretty balanced compared to some of these other examples.

But it doesn’t last. Pretty much all of those “Republicans” are libertarians who consider the GOP the lesser of two evils. When allowed to choose “libertarian” as an alternative, only 4% of visitors continued to identify as conservative. But that’s still…some. Right?

When I broke the numbers down further, 3 percentage points of those are neoreactionaries, a bizarre local sect that wants to be ruled by a king. Only one percent of LWers were normal everyday God-‘n-guns-but-not-George-III conservatives of the type that seem to make up about half of the United States.

How many "God-'n-guns-but-not-George-III" conservatives do we actually have here? I think the most prominent were @HlynkaCG, who got himself permabanned, and @FarNearEverywhere, who left after a temporary ban. We got a couple of other military vets and Christians who fit the bill, but the bulk of us would be as completely out of place in a USMC boot camp as we would be at Sunday church service or a Super Bowl watch party.

Uh, speak for yourself, dude.

Not everyone who's a military vet or into guns makes a big deal out of it.

We definitely also have a fair number of Super Bowl appreciators and Sunday church service attendees.

You're right that Scott's original classification of Red and Blue tribe now tends to get inaccurately rounded to "conservatives and liberals." But I'm not sure how many Red Tribe liberals or Blue Tribe conservatives we have here. (Certainly more of the latter than the former.)

Really? Superbowl watch party is too normie for us now?

I may have never fired a gun in my life (yet!), but I've been to several super bowl watch parties, especially when your team is in it.

Eagles looking great right about now, by the way.

From what I can tell, most of us are Grey Tribers who refused to go along with the blatant falsehoods of wokeness and got thrown into the pit with the rest for it. The surveys support this. From the same essay:

Right, things changed and it is no longer reasonable to consider "Gray Tribe" part of Blue Tribe. However, "Gray Tribe" remains inchoate; there is not really a "Gray Tribe", just an agglomeration of people who are mostly Blue Tribe but don't fit in because Blue has tightened its membership criteria. Some, like Scott, are desperately trying to hang on to being part of Blue. Some -- like TW -- adhere to it (without actually being part of it) because of their antipathy for the other side, or for Donald Trump. Others instead cleave to Red, though we are not part of that tribe either.

Don't we have everything but the creationism, soda, and divorce? We even have a football and country music thread now.

I'm out if we ever start drinking pop

The motte is very blue tribe conservative. This is not the same thing as red tribe.

I'm calling him a gay furry because

  1. It's evidence of his leftism, and

  2. He's a gay furry.

people who advocated for lethal self-defense

In a personal sense like keeping a gun handy?

@The_Nybbler is not being accurate; the proximate cause of Trace creating the Schism was people literally suggesting they wanted to kill him and everyone on his side. It wasn't about "advocating for lethal self-defense." Trace undoubtedly disagrees with most rightists about exactly when lethal self defense is justified (such as in the Rittenhouse case), but he didn't leave the forum because of people advocating for lethal self-defense. He initially created the Schism (while still remaining on the Motte) because of accelerationist fedposting, and he left the Motte for good because of rightists still holding a grudge against him years later and being extremely petty about it.

See my edited reply with references. The post in which he announced The Schism points to a Rittenhouse thread (NOT a boogaloo thread, though he has on other occasions referenced those) as why he feels "a large chunk of the prevailing culture here is overtly hostile towards my strongly-felt values".

The post in which he announced The Schism points to a Rittenhouse thread (NOT a boogaloo thread, though he has on other occasions referenced those)

Really. Let's take a look.

  1. Why are you building this?
    While /r/TheMotte is and will always be intended as a neutral meeting ground for divergent perspectives, it's developed a strong consensus on a wide range of issues. I—like, I suspect, many of you—identify strongly with this comment on political affiliation from /u/cincilator. /u/RulerFrank expanded on a similar point the other day. I'm not here to raise the tired debate of whether or how right-wing /r/themotte is. Instead, I'll simply say that a large chunk of the prevailing culture here is overtly hostile towards my strongly-felt values, as illustrated most eloquently by this comment.

"This comment" being (sorry FC):

I wrote a long reply to this, and given my heart rate and breathing by the end of it, it's probably for the best that I accidentally deleted it before I could post. I was literally seething.

I think I understand where you're coming from pretty well, but I likewise find your views profoundly repugnant, to a degree that charity becomes difficult. Specifically, the appeal to statistics is a complete non-starter for me. The attacker is the one choosing to roll the dice, and the defender is the one being forced to live with the consequences. Even if the chances of death are fairly low, the person who gets a bad roll is still absolutely fucked, and even the people who get a good roll are still significantly worse off than they should be... and for what? So that people who deliberately chose to force the roll can rest assured that they will never have to deal with the consequences? And don't appeal to the police and the legal process. I've been watching the police stand down for these rioters for half a decade. I've been watching the few who do get arrested plea-bargain for probation, or be simply released with no charges. I've been watching their victims suck it up with no recourse, or attempt to defend themselves and then get hit with the full force of the criminal justice system.

You appear to want a system where the overall danger is as low as possible. I want a system where the danger is apportioned to the people who volunteer to experience it. I have axiomatic faith that my system will result in lower overall danger as well, given the incentives, and seeing people arguing for the welfare of violent criminals over that of their victims- and I see no other way to interpret your argument- prompts instant volcanic rage. Especially since this violence is so culturally and politically partisan in nature.

...I'm not sure where to go with the conversation at this point. I do not think I share a common understanding of peace and justice with you. I don't want to live in the same country as people like you. I don't want people like you to rule people like me anywhere, ever. Preventing such an outcome seems like a moral imperative.

...And this is the result given that I know in my bones that you are a deeply, uncommonly decent and good person, at least in the abstract. This is mistake theory breaking down in the best possible scenario.

I'll leave it there. Stay safe and be well.

That was in response to a Rittenhouse thread, but it was the "I don't want to live in the same country as people like you" post.

TW, referring to that post immediately after linking to it, said:

More alarming for me is the feeling that there's a sharp uptick in what I'd describe as radicalization here: people proposing, and cheering, violent conflict against their enemies in a number of ways, including groups that viewed widely include my loved ones. It's hard to look at people the same way after that sort of line has been crossed, you know?

I'd rather not get into another back-and-forth like I had with Steve and Arjin below, in which we're both dissecting what other people actually meant when they posted something four years ago, but it is plainly obvious to me that TW created the Schism because in his own words, he felt that too many people (including FC) were expressing a desire for violent conflict, including against his ingroup.

This is not me saying Trace was right, or that FC meant to do violence to him, or that I agree with him about Rittenhouse, or any of the other things I have already rebutted. It is me saying you are wrong that Trace's problem was "people advocating for lethal self-defense." That's an extremely disingenuous way to frame a post about a specific case, and how he responded to others' reaction to it, as Trace creating the Schism and leaving the Motte because he had an ideological opposition to any use of lethal force in self-defense.

Also: your "gay furry" crack is in fact a cheap shot. Yes, everyone knows he is a gay furry. He says he's a gay furry. He's not ashamed of it. But calling him a gay furry every time you to refer to why you don't respect him is not just a "by the way, he's a gay furry." Come on. If you want to keep highlighting how contemptible he is because you consider him a sexual deviant, do that, but don't keep calling him a gay furry and then deny why you're doing it. Why don't you ever refer to him as an "ex-Mormon" or "military veteran," which he also is? Not the same valence.

the proximate cause of Trace creating the Schism was people literally suggesting they wanted to kill him and everyone on his side.

I'm hoping that I've missed something--maybe you were referring to some other comment? You can't possibly be characterizing the comment you quoted as "suggesting they wanted to kill him and everyone on his side," right?

I don't see how any reasonable person could read that meaning into the comment you quoted. If you're going to nitpick about how ACKTUALLY we were talking about Trace's stated justification and therefore he didn't ACKTUALLY leave because of people advocating for lethal self-defense, you can't also turn around and spin whoppers like this which are easily a thousand times less accurate.

For the record I am not talking about Trace's words but your own. Don't nitpick me on this. Trace may have said the reason was the violent conflict, but you baldly asserted not that that was Trace's reason but rather that it actually happened and prompted Trace's next steps. This is comparable to Nybbler ascribing a different reason to the creation of the Schism.

You say "This is not me saying Trace was right, or that FC meant to do violence to him" but here you do precisely that, directly suggesting that FC meant to do violence to him! This is a far more dishonest, biased summary of what FC said than Nybbler's summary of what Trace said!

I also find it quite dishonest to frame Nybbler's words as inaccurate because they are not Trace's words. Nybbler did not claim that that was Trace's stated reasoning, he just claimed that that was the actual reason. These are not the same thing, people are often dishonest or wrong about their own reasons for doing things, and it's fair game to ascribe different reasoning to someone than what they themselves have stated. Honestly it looks like a pretty accurate summary to me.

He said the culture was overtly hostile towards his strongly-held values. He presented, as his prime example, FCs post which was indeed overtly hostile. The strongly-held value FC was being hostile to was in fact the morality of Rittenhouse's actions that night. TW was very upset that people were killed, and thought that Rittenhouse only had a 1-2% chance of dying if he didn't defend himself using deadly force, and therefore was not morally justified in using it. Reducing this to "couldn't stand to share a forum with people who advocated for lethal self-defense" may be imprecise, but I don't think it's inaccurate.

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was people literally suggesting they wanted to kill him and everyone on his side

Please link to the post in question.

The one that comes to mind is the one we have already discussed several times (and I hate feeling like I am repeatedly calling him out), but FCfromSSC's post about not wanting to share a country with him. You may consider Trace to have been inaccurate (or even disingenuous) in claiming FC was saying he wanted to kill him (there was extensive discussion about this later, and someone even directly asked FC if he really wanted to murder people in their homes, to which FC firmly said no), but that was the discourse at the time. (FC was the most notable, but there was a regular drumbeat of other rightist posters edging up to and occasionally crossing the line into fedposting - we still see it occasionally here.) This was certainly the sort of thing Trace said was the reason he created the Schism - that he no longer wanted to share a forum with accelerationists who implied they wanted him dead.

If I have to I will find the link, but I don't bookmark things and it seems like a demand I waste my time for your entertainment, as I told @SteveAgain, when I have a hard time believing anyone who's been around for a while doesn't remember it.

EDIT: oops, went off a bit to fast, so amending:

This was certainly the sort of thing Trace said was the reason he created the Schism - that he no longer wanted to share a forum with accelerationists who implied they wanted him dead.

It was not clear you were expressing Trace's opinion of what FC wrote, and in fact heavily suggested the opinion was yours.

I know what you're talking about, and I'm asking you to link it, so others can make up their mind if it actually says anything about killing Trace

I'll give you and @SteveAgain the benefit of the doubt and assume I communicated poorly: I do not think FC at any point said he wanted to personally kill Trace or anyone else.

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Link it

Link what, exactly? @FCfromSSC's now-infamous "I don't want to live with you people" post, or Trace's post announcing he was creating the Schism, or rightists being petty, or what?

If you really want me to do that, and can explain why, I will consider digging for them, but frankly I don't believe you actually doubt any of these things happened. You remember them as well as I do. Your peremptory "Link it" demand appears be an attempt at a "gotcha" because I have called you out in the past for making things up. So before you convince me to jump through your hoops and look for years-old posts, please be specific and tell me exactly what it is that you think I am being untruthful about, and what exactly you think I am misrepresenting.

The bit where FC wanted to kill TW

See my reply to @ArjinFerman. I didn't say FC literally said he wanted to kill Trace, and you know that isn't what I was saying. FC posted about not wanting to share a country with him (or me, or anyone else on the left), and Trace took that (and similar sentiments other people were posting at the time) as a message that FC and other accelerationists were advocating violence against him, or at least moving in that direction.

Link what, exactly? @FCfromSSC's now-infamous "I don't want to live with you people" post, or Trace's post announcing he was creating the Schism, or rightists being petty, or what?

Yes. How much you want to bet that there is no implication there of killing either Trace specifically let alone everybody on his side? If you're going to correct Nybbler it would be nice if you didn't introduce an even greater inaccuracy,

Someone's probably got a link. But it was about the Rittenhouse case; he also objected to other calls for violence which were not self defense.

ETA: This is the post announcing The Schism:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/j9kxab/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_october_12/g8ow12q/?context=3

This is the FCfromSSC post he objected to so much:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ifiyso/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_august_24_2020/g35l46y/

This is TWs first post in that thread

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ifiyso/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_august_24_2020/g34yf26/

Yes, it was about Rittenhouse.

Taken in isolation, I think it’s likely the shootings themselves were self-defense, but I don’t believe his life was in danger and personally can’t get over people having that low of a threshold for deadly force.

ETA2:

Here's the reference to the spicier FCfromSSC post. It is not from TracingWoodgrains, it is from 895158:

https://old.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/xvcesv/is_this_another_breakoff_of_themotte_itself_a/ir5n3x0/

Thanks for the links. That's an odd topic to be broken by.

and table your disagreements for a later date

Then you just end up getting steamrolled by “no enemies to the left/right”.

Right, there can be limits obviously. If all available options are so morally repugnant to you that you can’t stand any of them, then you can just not support any of them and you’re entitled to make that choice. But you need to accept the consequences of that choice as well, and you should understand that your calls for enlightened centrism will likely fall on deaf ears.

It would be like someone during WW2 saying "I don't support the British, or the Germans - I'm just neutral!" He wouldn't be looked upon with kindness in either country.

Yeah, everybody hates the fucking Swiss.

Mother Fucking Swiss.

If Adrian Monk were a country....

Everything in it is true and it really is the central reason why Switzerland is probably the most civilized Western country. The Danes are smarter, but lack that certain alpine joie de vivre; the Swiss are anal about everything, but they like each other and enjoy life.

The Danes are smarter,

What's your basis for this? I can't imagine they're that distinct genetically.

Identical to the Dutch and very different from Southern Germans(closest to the Swiss) IIRC.

I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say here beyond, "TracingWoodgrains is just right."

He's just right! There's no way to justify a norm like "never criticise bad things if my side is responsible". That's unironically the sort of logic that gets you the Great Leap Forward, where lower-ranking officials are afraid to report anything that goes against the narrative preferred by the higher-ups, and the result is always disastrous.

Set aside what you think about him as a person. On the specific issue here, he is just unambiguously correct.

The fact that people whose brains have been eaten by partisanship and culture war are unable to see that, whether that be lefties who have to deny and distract and minimise the scandal because it's going to be a win for the right, or whether it be righties who cannot possibly grant that a hated outsider did a better job of identifying and advocating for an issue that should have been an easy win for them, is really their own problem.

TracingWoodgrains is right.

Everything else is distraction.

Exactly. I wouldn't hire him to babysit but he's literally correct about his expose. He doesn't have to be an exemplary person(and as far as I know he's not). He has to be right about this specific issue.

He's more correct than the /r/atc people, sure, but he spun the original FAA article to be quite kind towards the perpetrators.

Since then he's backed off, I like to think in part due to the points I made, and has even directly criticized the leadership involved in that scandal, so at this point I have no complaints with his treatment of the issue. But it still took too long to get there.

No.

The point is that he lies, and will make up information, and physical artefacts, to drive the story he wants to tell.

He has done this once. Has he done it again? I don't know. But I have to take everything he says through that lens, wether the story benefits 'my side' or not. There is no trust, no faith there - he can put on the Centrist or Conservative mask as much as he wants, but I know it's a mask, I know that he's lied before, and there is no way I can celebrate or advocate for the stories he writes because there is now a non-zero chance he's lying about something explicitly to look good for whatever side he's wearing as a skin suit.

Personally, I'd prefer that he'd give up the 'both sides' grift and just write whatever benefits his side and philosophy, whatever that may be.

Like I said, I'm not interested in making this a referendum on his character. You don't have to accept anything he says on any other subject. That's your own lookout. What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.

Hoaxes are fine, in my opinion, making up evidence to set them up can also be fine. To the extent he was dishonest, it was in the presentation, not the making things depertament. He said LOTT accepted a claim without due diligence, and then proceeded to describe how much work he had to put to get past the due diligence, but since this was about a hated outgroup figure, a decent chunk of his audience bought the framing.

I'd say the lesson is you can't trust his conclusions, not that he'll hide or make up evidence.

or whether it be righties who cannot possibly grant that a hated outsider did a better job of identifying and advocating for an issue that should have been an easy win for them, is really their own problem.

TracingWoodgrains is right.

I don't know who had their brain eaten by culture war if you think that people who don't want to sing praises of your friend must be distracting from the issue.

How did he do a better job identifying and advocating for the issue? He did a better job reporting on that particular story, but when it comes to the issue itself, how has he done a better job identifying it than anyone from James Lindsay through Lomez to the seven zillion witches posting here? How has he done a better job advocating for it, than Chris Rufo? Last I checked he was advocating that people vote for the candidate that would ensure more of this would keep happening.

He did a better job reporting on that particular story

It was Steve Sailer who brought it to the attention of the online right with his piece predating Trace's by a month, with basically the same information content.

Trace even confirmed that he was clued into it by Sailer.

Oh, that's hilarious.

Did we just confirm Sailer is actually a furry?

As I said, it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. Nor do I care whether or not you praise him. The merits of TW as an individual are beside the point. The point is the issue itself.

I submit that TW is right about the issue, and that he has done a better job of bringing this particular issue to the public attention than anybody on the Motte, much less James Lindsay or Chris Rufo. Rufo has probably been more effective as an anti-woke activist in general, but on the FAA hirings scandal specifically - movement there is because of TW. He notes this himself.

And yes, he voted for Harris. He voted for Harris while publicly and passionately expressing his dissatisfaction with her, and after the election, he went on to continue to explain his problems with her, and what he thinks the Democrats ought to do, which means that I think this portrayal of him as some kind of bootlicking Democrat partisan is absurd. He made a judgement that, as much as he disliked Harris, he found her on balance the less-bad candidate that Donald Trump. If you want to blame him for literally everying that Harris or her political faction ever advocated for, then by the same logic we must blame every Trump voter for literally everything that Trump or his political faction ever advocated for. That is a lunatic standard to hold any voter to.

And even so, it is irrelevant, because whatever you think of TW's choice in the 2024 election, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FAA hiring scandal or his activism thereabouts.

On the issue - he is right. You don't have to praise him. You don't have to like him. But he is right about the FAA.

he has done a better job of bringing this particular issue to the public attention than anybody on the Motte

This is like the argument that Microsoft is good because it brought computers to the people. Microsoft was the one who did that because Microsoft's own actions made there be no room for anyone else to do so.

It's very difficult for anyone not on the left to bring an issue to public attention, because of the actions of the left. So yes, it's true that he did, but this doesn't mean much.

Except he isn't "the left", he's one guy, and he's not responsible for it being "very difficult for anyone not on the left to bring an issue to public attention".

It's still his allies. And even if that doesn't count for anything, it's still that he did it because of external forces that made it easier for people like him.

And even if that doesn't count for anything, it's still that he did it because of external forces that made it easier for people like him.

I last heard this argument deployed to explain why white men didn't earn their accomplishments. I really didn't expect to see it deployed to explain why it doesn't count that TW spoke out against a bad thing.

If only Hlynka were here to see this.

It depends on how directly the second group is affected by the first group's actions, and how directly the members of the first group who accomplished things are associated with the members who did the oppression. If a group of whites suddenly oppressed all the nonwhites and their white friends all made great accomplishments within the next five year period, then yes, that may be a good point. But the lasting effect of oppression that happened a long time ago doesn't count.

I'd also question whether it's true anyway. The US and Europe are predominantly white, especially in historic time periods, so even if there was no oppression at all, most accomplishments would be by whites just by size of population. And when those countries oppressed outsiders, the outsiders generally were in primitive cultures that couldn't accomplish much regardless of whether they were oppressed.

Also, since Jews were oppressed for much of history, you can't use this to say that Jews didn't earn their accomplishments. Even over time periods where Jews weren't oppressed, you'd have to find out how many extra accomplishments the Jews had compared to non-Jews per capita, and exempt those too, since any such excess was unrelated to oppression.

I really didn't expect to see it deployed to explain why it doesn't count that TW spoke out against a bad thing.

This also raises the question of exactly what you mean by "doesn't count". It counts as TW doing a good thing. But it doesn't count if what you're praising him for explicitly depends on the size of his audience, such as "successfully promoted it when the right-wingers who first noticed it couldn't". (Which is another difference between this and the white people case.)

Rufo has probably been more effective as an anti-woke activist in general, but on the FAA hirings scandal specifically

Oh, ok. I thought when you said "the issue", you meant anti-wokeness (or anti-DEI-in-particular), not just the FAA thing. Yeah good for him, he noticed it when others didn't. Why is that supposed to be such a big deal?

EDIT: according to @ahobata, he wasn't even the first to report on this, and one the Internet's infamous noticers beat him to it by a month. So can you explain to me, why is this case supposed to be so embarrassing to the anti-woke?

And yes, he voted for Harris. He voted for Harris while publicly and passionately expressing his dissatisfaction with her, and after the election, he went on to continue to explain his problems with her, and what he thinks the Democrats ought to do,

That's nice, but tell, if more people listened to him during the elections, would there be anything being done against the DEI issue?

which means that I think this portrayal of him as some kind of bootlicking Democrat partisan is absurd.

I disagree, he very clearly is a partisan in the sense that he'll argue to vote for the Democrats over a Republican that's actually active on the culture war front, regardless of how much he will chastise the Democrats for not doing what he wants. I'm pretty sure I remember an old post of his where he was chastising Biden in much the same way he did with Harris, threatening that if things don't improve he just might defect to the Republicans. Would you say things improved over the course of the Biden administration? Would you say Harris was a better candidate than Biden? What exactly would have to happen for me to be able to conclude that he is, in fact, a Dem partisan?

because whatever you think of TW's choice in the 2024 election, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FAA hiring scandal or his activism thereabouts.

Again, I disagree. You can't beat me over the head with "TW was right" if he effectively wanted to convince people to have the issue continue.

On the issue - he is right. You don't have to praise him. You don't have to like him. But he is right about the FAA.

If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you? To me, the FAA is just one of infinity cases where an institution engages in blatant racism, it's the least surprising thing in the world, and Trace did indeed come out on the side of the issue that is correct. I don't recall anyone here doubting his claims on the FAA.

EDIT: according to @ahobata, he wasn't even the first to report on this, and one the Internet's infamous noticers beat him to it by a month. So can you explain to me, why is this case supposed to be so embarrassing to the anti-woke?

I don't believe I said anything about the anti-woke as a general category? Honestly, I think that if you're Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, the best response to TW's FAA story is to just applaud. Just say, "Yes, this is what we're talking about."

That's nice, but tell, if more people listened to him during the elections, would there be anything being done against the DEI issue?

I am sure that if Kamala Harris were president right now, there would still be lots of people doing anti-DEI advocacy, and TW would no doubt be among them. I do not believe that he would have changed his mind about or refused to engage in the FAA reporting if Harris were president.

I disagree, he very clearly is a partisan in the sense that he'll argue to vote for the Democrats over a Republican that's actually active on the culture war front, regardless of how much he will chastise the Democrats for not doing what he wants.

That just sounds to me like you think it's partisan to cast a vote at all. Yes, he voted for a candidate that he hated but considered on balance less bad than the other one. But that's what most people do. I would say that a 'partisan' for a particular party or candidate is someone who spends significant time or effort boosting that party or candidate - and since TW has spent much more criticising the Democrats or Harris than boosting them, I don't consider him a partisan for them. I think he just made the decision that, in a presidential election, which is ultimately a binary choice, he found them less bad than the alternative.

Again, I disagree. You can't beat me over the head with "TW was right" if he effectively wanted to convince people to have the issue continue.

I think the fact that he was actively and effectively working to expose and address the issue undermines your point here. You don't need to vote for Donald Trump to oppose DEI. It is possible to take the position, "DEI is bad, Harris' support for DEI is bad, but on balance Harris is less bad than Trump, so I will vote for Harris while continuing to advocate against DEI".

Trump voters can make the exact same move - such-and-such policy is bad, Trump supports the bad policy, but I think that on balance Trump is less bad than Harris, so I will vote for Trump and continue to advocate against the bad policy. You do not have to agree with a candidate on every single issue to judge that candidate preferable at the ballot box.

This was actually an example in Scott's 'Varieties of Argumentative Experience', under the 'Single Facts' heading.

If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you?

As here:

What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.

The top-level post that I was responding to was about liberals who try to minimise the story or attack TW for giving cover to the (ex hypothesi bad and fascist) Trump administration; and I was reading lots of comments here criticising TW for being a centrist Democrat who continues to believe that Trump is bad. I was saying that in the context of all these "who? whom?" arguments, it is worth allowing all of ourselves the sober reminder that what he said was both true and normatively right. That's the ball that we should keep our eyes on.

I don't believe I said anything about the anti-woke as a general category? Honestly, I think that if you're Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, the best response to TW's FAA story is to just applaud. Just say, "Yes, this is what we're talking about."

When he posted his original article, I don't anyone here said anything else.

I am sure that if Kamala Harris were president right now, there would still be lots of people doing anti-DEI advocacy, and TW would no doubt be among them. I do not believe that he would have changed his mind about or refused to engage in the FAA reporting if Harris were president.

That's nice, but what would that accomplish? Trace is barely one voice in a massive choir impotently complaining about DEI, and whether he stopped impotently complaining the moment Harris got elected, or complained twice as hard, the result would be the same. By contrast Trump, even if he ultimately falters, is at least making a dent. If you're going to tell me to vote for a politician that would double down on DEI and against one of the few that are likely to dampen it, I feel free to dismiss your claim to be one of the greatest DEI-fighters out there.

That just sounds to me like you think it's partisan to cast a vote at all.

No, this is completely unfair. I specifically said he's perfectly entitled to vote for Harris, it's his endorsement that's the issue.

Yes, he voted for a candidate that he hated but considered on balance less bad than the other one. But that's what most people do.

Yeah, but that's not what I'm accusing him of. I'm saying he would never endorse any Republican that would be likely to do anything to put a stop to DEI, or to any other issue he supposedly cares about. He would not endorse DeSantis, he would not endorse Vance, he might endorse someone completely ineffectual (/deliberately sabotaging the side he represents) like Romney, but not someone actually likely to do something to rollback the past 10 years.

I think the fact that he was actively and effectively working to expose and address the issue undermines your point here. You don't need to vote for Donald Trump to oppose DEI.

Citation needed. There are issues where you can contribute to meaningful change without electing a populist, or taking drastic steps. Take something like the trans issue, there's enough academic pushback to the idea, that I think it's possible to eventually put a stop to it by following all the procedures so beloved by liberals, and without electing politicians that will take drastic action. By contrast 10 years of "exposing and addressing" DEI accomplished absolutely nothing, what worked is banning it from the federal government, and cutting off the money-spigot.

What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.

(...) I was saying that in the context of all these "who? whom?" arguments, it is worth allowing all of ourselves the sober reminder that what he said was both true and normatively right. That's the ball that we should keep our eyes on.

I still don't understand what is the point of this reminder, no one here doubted it. People here are criticizing him, because just like he has his grievances with us, with have ours with him. To me it feels like you're trying to shut off that criticism for no other reason than you personally liking him.

If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you?

I can't speak for OliveTapanade, but for myself: it's important because it means that Trace remains a trusted source. I have read his stuff and interacted with him online for years now, and he remains a nuanced thinker and a careful reporter who holds himself to a higher standard of journalism than many professionals. I therefore continue to place high trust in Trace's reports, and I continue to value his analyses for their thoughtfulness even when I reach a different conclusion.

I can't speak for OliveTapanade, but for myself: it's important because it means that Trace remains a trusted source

Don't you think it's tad dramatic then to say that anything outside of "TracingWoodgrains was right" is a distraction from the issue? I thought the issue was the FAA.

I also don't understand why it's so important. Personally I do distrust TW, but it's not the kind of distrust that would imply he'd make shit up for a story, or not do due diligence on a source.

I find the whole tree of threads after OP's post somewhat disorienting, like being in a room full of people talking at once past each other. When a poster says "the issue", is it the FAA scandal? Or, per SteveAgain's original top-level post, the reception on Reddit and Hacker News of Trace's post of FAA scandal? Or, per OliveTapanade's first response, is "the issue" the arguments-as-soldiers tactic:

He's just right! There's no way to justify a norm like "never criticise bad things if my side is responsible".

Or is the issue the pervasive and corrosive effects of DEI and the philosophy that spawned it, which appears to be your point, since you differentiate the FAA story specifically from "the issue itself":

How did he do a better job identifying and advocating for the issue? He did a better job reporting on that particular story, but when it comes to the issue itself, how has he done a better job identifying it than anyone from James Lindsay through Lomez to the seven zillion witches posting here? How has he done a better job advocating for it, than Chris Rufo? Last I checked he was advocating that people vote for the candidate that would ensure more of this would keep happening.

And that's just the confusion in our branch of the conversation. OliveTapanade's reply happened in the context of the previous replies. Crushedoranges advocated for Trace to pick a side (and, presumably, do the arguments-as-soldiers):

The fact that TracingWoodgrains doesn't fully come over to the right because of this and doggedly is determined to stay in the principled center makes me completely unsympathetic.

TequilaMockingbird recalls that Trace was indeed more partisan before:

Back in the twenty-teens he was a vocal advocate of the sort of "full spectrum information manipulation" that has become the standard. Where he once bragged about fabricacating evidence to pwn LibsOfTikTok he now wonders why nobody trusts him.

In this context, OliveTapanade's main point therefore:

Set aside what you think about him as a person. On the specific issue here, he is just unambiguously correct.

Where "the issue" is, specifically, the hiring practices of the FAA that began in 2013.

Yep, that's what I was going for. It's possible I've expressed myself poorly, but the point I wanted to make was to separate out the FAA issue itself from one's judgement of its author.

Not unless it was to his outgroup, at least.

Man, you can't blame someone from noticing something after the noticer in chief did.

I general have mixed to negative feelings about trace, but this is actually a very fair point.

“This car isn’t as fast as a Bugatti super bike.” Yeah… basically nothing is.

The thing is people (and I think this included Trace himself originally) were acting like he somehow beat the right / anti-wokes to the punch.

I thought he credited hearing about it from the fight between sailer and mr stencil in the first essay, let me check

Edit, yes:

Finally, in 2024, twitter personality Will Stancil picked a fight with right-wing blogger Steve Sailer, who like many in right-wing media had released occasional articles touching on this case. Their scuffle stirrred up enough attention towards it to catch my eye

Funny how stencil gets to be a "twitter personality" while sailer is just a "right wing blogger"...

Ah, I missed that part. Never bet against sailer on that count.

Part of me sympathizes with TWG but only part.

Back in the twenty-teens he was a vocal advocate of the sort of "full spectrum information manipulation" that has become the standard. Where he once bragged about fabricacating evidence to pwn LibsOfTikTok he now wonders why nobody trusts him.

I think TWG's actions were nakedly partisan, but aren't they arguably in the same camp as things like the Sokal Affair or John Bohannon's fake chocolate diet and anti-cancer drug hoaxes? I think it is worth testing the standards of outfits that people are relying on for information, if only to make sure the pipeline isn't broken and flawed in some way.

Ideally, every side should be testing their own information pipelines, and creating robust fact checking operations. But one of the good things about agonistic pluralism is that you can be assured that even if a side isn't testing their pipeline, the other side will try to do so at some point. The end result is that all of us observers watching from the side can get accurate damning information on both sides, if we're willing to wade through the words of partisans of either side.

That is all assuming such stress tests are well conducted, of course, which is no guarantee from partisan hacks.

I think it is worth testing the standards of outfits that people are relying on for information, if only to make sure the pipeline isn't broken and flawed in some way.

Part of the difference in judgement and the reaction around these parts, or at the blocked and reported subreddit, is how the observer weighs the target.

We all Many of us have extremely low opinions of LoTT's reliability, I'm pretty sure even some "locals" that are mostly sympathetic to her have a low opinion of her, so it's not that interesting to pull one over on her. She's a partisan hack and everyone knew it. Tricking a stooge isn't that fun and tends to backfire (like the infamous "it's okay to be white" and OK sign things from 4chan made the world worse rather than simply revealing how gullible and bigoted a certain kind of progressive is).

Pulling a hoax on the Ivory Tower, that's supposed to be our high-quality repository of knowledge, is different.

Edited in response to fair critique of consensus building language.

Consensus building. LoTT is the third of three female humans I have respect for.

Fair point, edited

The crux of Sokal's hoax was that it was inherently obvious to anyone who had a passing knowledge of the subject matter, and that Sokal made no attempt to hide it but that no one bothered to ask about it. Tracing made claims that were very much withing the spectrum of sillyness that has occurred, and that when the target bothered to asked about it, Tracing took actions to further hide it.

In short- the Sokal hoax rests on the point that no one bothered to try and check claims that were inconsistent with the subject matter because they were politically flattering. Tracing's hoax rested on the point that he fabricated evidence that was compatible with examples of the subject matter, and then blamed the person who tried to check.

Also, the circumstances of Trace's hoax made it easier for him to hoax compared to a right-winger sending in a hoax about his left-wing enemies. An actual hoax by a right-winger that smeared a left-winger would have to remain undetected over time; the right-winger would have to be able to send it in, get it posted, and not have people all over the Internet say "that's a hoax". If people did say that, the hoax would be counterproductive.

Trace was going to expose the hoax pretty soon, so he didn't have this limitation and could make cruder hoaxes than an actual right-wing hoaxter could get away with.

That still sounds similar to John Bohannon's hoaxes, where he fabricated fake studies with serious issues that got through peer review. But the problem with those studies was not as obvious as the Sokal hoaxes (where a cursory reading of them is enough to show they're nonsense), the problem is the peer reviewers were obviously doing a shoddy job and not actually engaging with the studies or numbers they were asked to review.

The problem with the idea of "within the spectrum of sillyness" thinking, is that there's always the possibility that a lot of the evidence is bad or misrepresented in the first place. You see a similar phenomenon in the way some online grifters present lawsuits against themselves to their audiences. To hear the grifters tell it, they're always persecuted martyrs, but often if you actually dig up trial transcripts they're being reasonably charged with a crime they actually committed. (I am not suggesting that no one is ever targeted politically, or unfairly charged with things that someone on the other side of the political aisle wouldn't be. I'm just saying that the pattern I observed occurs a lot as well.)

I'm not that committed to defending TWG here in any case. If the consensus is that he acted as a partisan hack, and that his stress test was badly conducted, I'm happy to accept that judgment. I just think that there are ways he could have done something similar to what he did that would have been defensible, and for the epistemic good of everyone involved.

Sure. He could have done better. He could also have admitted error, in the 'I acknowledge what I did was wrong' rather than the 'I wouldn't do it again because of the reaction I received' manner that he did. It certainly didn't help that he approached his hoax in a tenor of triumphalist jeering at his target for being gullible, rather than Sokal's matter-of-fact 'this is what I did, this is how I did it, and these are the stages where a reasonable reviewer should and could have asked questions.'

That TWG is a partisan is the least of the issues that led to the response. There are plenty of partisans in the Motte community, for various factions and interests. The issue was that he expected to be applauded for it, and then blamed anyone but himself for the response with poorly disguised contempt. There was a reason his depture-flounce was with a 'I've hated this entire community for so long now' spiel despite having re-entered to post a dunk-piece while claiming solidarity with the community, and that reason was that his claimed solidarity was insincere and had been for some time.

Where did he advocate for "full spectrum information manipulation"? He did, and advocated to, feed false information to a prominent social media sneering celebrity. Surely social media sneering celebrities do not represent the full spectrum of information; are you contending that they represent something like the pinnacle of purity and sacredness, so somebody who is willing to deceive a LibsOfTikTok should implicitly be willing to deceive anyone and everyone else?

The rdrama 'ops' campaigns did not only target the likes of LOTT, they went after a decent variety of news outlets and were just cagey and evasive enough when their sources were questioned that most of the targets figured out something was up. Those people are information terrorists, and much like other terrorists that came before them, they had to learn that the best use of their effort is go after soft and easy civilian targets.

The fact that TracingWoodgrains doesn't fully come over to the right because of this and doggedly is determined to stay in the principled center makes me completely unsympathetic. So as far as I'm concerned, they're stuck between the icky chuds like me who know it's a problem but have aesthetically unpleasant views and the other kind of people who stick their heads in the sand in the face of overwhelming evidence. People who will bald-facedly lie even when you bring the smoldering gun, the receipt, and a signed confession are bad people.

And despite all of this... they are more aligned with the latter kind of people then the former.

I will make a prediction now: TW will still be hacking at this ten years from now, doing their enlightened centrist gig, making no progress. Because the liberals they are trying to convince don't really exist: they are trying to persuade a species of extinct men who could be swayed by reason and good faith.

Did you forget he's literally a gay furry? He doesn't want to be on the team with people who discriminate against him(and I won't say that they're wrong, either). It's a perfectly understandable human impulse.

I have seen too many anthro german shepherds in suspicious outfits to say that he would not be in good company if he did make the change.

And what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament?

The guy has an obvious personal preference for the welcoming and affurming faction. It is to his credit that he brought up the FAA thing at all rather than accept it as part of the cost (or worse, benefit) of his faction being in power.

So the only people in existence are righties like you who can handle the truth and thus arrive at "aesthetically unpleasant views," and everyone else who can't, or else is an evil liar?

Do you think there is any possibility whatsoever that you could be wrong about anything?

No. Obviously not.

Yes.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it: I feel that I have an infinitely easier and gladder task of convincing partisans of my ideological bent to come around to reason then TW does for theirs. Not everyone on my side is an honest truthteller. We have our share of witches and evil liars. But there's the kind of lies that make you feel the ick, and the kind of lies that make planes fall out of the sky. One is a more egregious imposition on reality than the other.

"I have no sympathy for people who are not fully on board with my team" is about the coldest take you can have in the culture war. I, for my part, hope Trace will still be at it in 10 years, showing that there is a way to survive without submitting to either of the two tyrannies of unreason.

It's not that I wasn't sympathetic before. I too, was on the left. But that was fifteen years ago. I feel at this point that everyone persuadable has already decamped and we are in the last stages of Schmittian hyperwar. I can't imagine sharing common ground with those on the left who call TW a fascist. They live in their own partisan hyperreality and attempting to convert them is like being a Christian missionary to the Sentinelese.

I'm sorry. There is no way to survive. You have to pick your lane, or you end up like James Damore. If I have to make a choice between the twitter racists and the race communists, I'm siding with the former over the latter every time. It's not a great choice. But it's better than refusing to acknowledge that one has to make a choice at all.

If I have to make a choice between the twitter racists and the race communists

Reading it put in this stark way makes me glad that I find both equally disgusting. And no, I do not have to make a choice between them. Why would I? We're not in a civil war, so far at least. I'm not going to die if I continue to despise both of these tribal groups. I get that if we were in a hot civil war, I'd probably have to either leave the country or pick one of the tribal groups, just to survive. But even if, in that situation, I picked one, I wouldn't really be picking it, I would just be pretending to in order to survive, and I would happily go over to the other side if it offered me better opportunities. Internally, I am pretty sure that I will never actually choose to support either of these tribal groups. And that's in a hot civil war situation! In today's situation, I don't even have to pretend to pick one of those two groups. I can, and do, freely say that both utterly disgust me.

Well said. I might borrow 'the tyrannies of unreason' - that's an excellent phrase.

It's not a question of "being fully on board with my team;" it's the prioritization of what is fundamentally an aesthetic choice ("these chuds are low-status and have low-status views; I don't want to think of myself as being like them") over purported principal ("people shouldn't impose racial gatekeeping mechanisms on hiring for life-and-death public safety positions").

Surely you must understand that if there are non-aesthetic reasons for siding with the Republicans, the same things can also be non-aesthetic reasons for someone to side against the Republicans - you just have to disagree with the Republican stance on those propositions. Yes, Trace presumably happens to agree with the Republicans on the specific topic of DEI in the FAA, but last I checked they were not a single-issue "no DEI in the FAA" party.

Yes, of course. But if a topic engages someone enough that they spend non-trivial portions of their life discussing, investigating, and inveighing against certain approaches to it, one would expect to be surprised if the party openly and aggressively not on their side got their vote because of other ancillary issues which they seemed to not care as much about. It betrays a certain tension or inconsistency.

I'd be surprised if Trace was actually putting as much weight in his political value function on DEI at the FAA as you seem to make him out to be. Sometimes people just like making deep dives in some random direction, whether it is intrinsically interesting to them, they just enjoy the act of researching and arguing for its own sake, or they think they can make an impact or gain clout by spending effort on it. For starters, as people are quick to point out, he is a gay furry; it seems quite likely that those things take up a bigger share of his life than whatever research went into the FAA article, and along that dimension clearly Democrats are more of an ally of his than Republicans.

If you actually think that siding with Democrats on sexual tolerance and with Republicans on DEI is in itself a "tension or inconsistency", that's just being an agent of toxoplasma.

I...am not so certain that "siding with Democrats on sexual tolerance" is a full descriptor of Trace because I don't think he's all that into the sort of obligatory pride stuff and trans stuff that the Dems are doubling down on. But point taken.

they are trying to persuade a species of extinct men who could be swayed by reason and good faith.

They're not extinct, they just don't have loyalty to a particular party as their terminal value. Even in Europe, I'm nearly-literally watching women who were welcoming refugees 10 years ago, now dancing to the tune of "Ausländer Raus", and conspiracy-posting about woke NGO's sponsored by the EU (roughly analogous to the USAID scandal uncovered by Trump). Trace wants to arrest this process of defection by promising to reform the Democratic party from within, the problem he has is that:

  • People have eyes, and
  • With every defection he's losing an ally in the party, not only dropping the credibility of his promise, but lowering the actual chances of his success.

Its kind of the age-old dilemma. Speaking truth to power doesn't really work.

You have to acquire power, THEN speak truth.

But the process of acquiring power requires you to believe or promulgate so many falsehoods you will probably forget the truths you wanted to spread anyway.

If speaking truth, plainly, effected change we wouldn't even be in the mess needing saving.

If you have power, why would you need truth for any reason other than power?

Is there any information Trump is or has shaken the FAA up over this? At the minimum the ATCs who cheated should be identified and fired, the candidates who were denied because they failed should be awarded money damages with the option to apply again, and everyone at the FAA who was involved in this bullshit BA test should be fired and lose their pension. Surely whether or not it's actual DEI, everyone can agree it was misconduct and this is the appropriate remedy?

I've put fifty bucks against it, and another fifty bucks against Snow, specifically, being singled out in PBS, NBC, or NPR. I think it'll take longer than his bet to clear, but given the degree of swivel with 'throat-clearing', I wouldn't be surprised if tendentious pieces ends up being enough.

Which is kinda the failure mode for Trace and Amadanb's approach and philosophy. Forget impeachment: the federal House couldn't manage to condemn Lujan Grisham.

Directly? No. The anti DEI EO can be used by Duffy to correct the problem. The problem is that it will take years to affect change. It also seems clear that Duffy is going to work with DOGE to technological improve ATC. Curious to see how that affects the industry.

Moldbug is smart enough that he understands that a truly demotic regime, whether it is left-coded or right-coded, would likely put him up against the wall and shoot him for some reason. Hence his constant harping on the idea that we should treat the defeated regime's soldiers with decency and that we should let elves rather than hobbits take care of things. I agree with him about all this. Some people here on TheMotte don't understand what would actually likely happen to them in a true authoritarian/populist revolution. They think that this site would still exist and they would still be allowed to write politically incorrect essays. They wouldn't. We are far from that now, but I see the danger of it on the horizon. Just because leftist authoritarianism has been given a huge punch on the nose does not mean that we are not in danger of rightist authoritarianism.

I mean, under rightist authoritarianism my ingroup staffs the whole thing.

But will you remain in their ingroup once they obtain power?

Yes. No American right wing authoritarian regime, and perhaps no right of center American regime period, can staff itself without heavy use of conservative Catholics.

I don't mean "conservative Catholics" or any other group you are a part of, I mean you personally. Will the actual conservative Catholics in a position of personal power consider you a good ingrouper, or will they narrow their circles in order to have the opportunity to crush more people? (Of course if you expect to be one of the people in a position of personal power, that solves the problem for you)

I don't expect to be in personal power. I expect important figures to consider me a good ingrouper, however- it's possible that the circle narrows, but not by that much. The lifestyle restrictions do what they need to do; purity spiraling is simply unnecessary and I'm not a sufficiently bad actor/difficult to deal with to bother kicking out.

We were able to keep this site going under leftist authoritarianism; who is to say we wouldn't under rightist authoritarianism?

A lot of neoreactionary though is about how authoritarianism is the default state of mankind, and liberalism is an unstable equilibrium that can only ever exist as an ephemeral waystation on the road to the next tyranny. That being the case, all we can decide is whether we would rather live under leftist authoritarianism or rightist authoritarianism. I know what I pick.

Christianity may have silenced Galileo, expelled Percy Shelley, fought against evolution, condemned heavy metal, and ostracized Dungeons and Dragons, but it also created a thriving civilization that stood for almost two thousand years and conquered most of the planet. Communism gave us the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Wokeness gave us South Africa and the Great Replacement.

Catholicism demands that you believe nonsense about the Eucharist and the Trinity, while Mormonism demands that you believe nonsense about golden plates and a planet called Kolob i.e. things that have absolutely no relevance to the rest of your life. Conversely, Progressivism demands that you believe nonsense about gender and race, while Communism demands that you believe nonsense about economics and human nature i.e. things you have to deal with every day. Given those choices, you are much better off taking your chances with the Christians than with the nominal Atheists.

The Dreaded Jim famously said:

The fundamental realization of the Dark Enlightenment is that all men are not created equal, not individual men, nor the various groups and categories of men, nor are women equal to men, that these beliefs and others like them are religious beliefs, that society is just as religious as ever it was, with an official state religion of progressivism, but this is a new religion, an evil religion, and, if you are a Christian, a demonic religion.

The Dark Enlightenment does not propose that leftism went wrong four years ago, or ten years ago, but that it was fundamentally and terribly wrong a couple of centuries ago, and we have been heading to hell in a handbasket ever since at a rapidly increasing rate – that the enlightenment was dangerously optimistic about humans, human nature, and the state, that it is another good news religion, telling us what we wish to hear, but about this world instead of the next.

If authority required me to believe in Leprechauns, and to get along with people that it was important to get along with required me to believe in Leprechauns, I would probably believe in leprechauns, though not in the way that I believe in rabbits, but I can see people not being equal, whereas I cannot see leprechauns not existing.

And:

If we only count religions that officially admit to being supernatural, pretty obviously religion is declining. If, however, we define religion more broadly, then religion is increasing by leaps and bounds.

If authority assures you that leprechauns exist and that authority can see them, it does not take much faith to believe, since you cannot see leprechauns not existing. If, however, authority assures you that all humans are equal, or that all groups and categories of human are equal, it takes outstanding and extraordinary faith, since every day you see individuals, groups, and categories being strikingly and obviously unequal, for reasons cultural, genetic, and hormonal.

Further, belief in the flying spaghetti monster not only does no harm, but is apt to inculcate the accumulated wisdom of the ages, inculcating prudent and virtuous behavior, whereas belief in equality tends to inculcate bad behavior, as illustrated by the inability of “Occupy” to operate an urban campsite.

The United States has not experienced "leftist authoritarianism." Not if you're talking about real, government-boots-kicking-in-doors, authoritarianism. Woke HR and university struggle sessions and online cancellations are annoying, even career-damaging, but they are not even in the same category as actual Maoist struggle sessions or gulags.

Not that I think this is likely to happen under Trump either, but when @Goodguy says "a true authoritarian/populist revolution," he's not talking about Biden or Trump being elected, he's talking about Ceaușescu or Pinochet coming to power. He has a valid point; people on both sides (most especially including you, here) tend to get histrionic about the tyranny of their political opponents, with no perspective on what actual tyranny looks like.

The United States has not experienced "leftist authoritarianism." Not if you're talking about real, government-boots-kicking-in-doors, authoritarianism.

Targeting whites, no. But if one considers all races inhabiting the US, FDR's camps for Japanese-Americans fit the bill. He was a leftist, with his thugs did kick in to doirs to kidnap their victims.

This site did not keep going during leftist authoritarianism. It kept going during a political situation in which the left was more powerful than the right, but not by that much, and the left's powers were still significantly constrained. During a true authoritarian populist regime of either a left or a right flavor, that would not necessarily be the case. American-style free speech is very rare. As far as I know there is no other country in history that had/has such strong free speech norms. Any major deviation from the American liberal (in the old sense of the word "liberal") model would be more likely to do away with our free speech norms than to retain them.

Just because leftist authoritarianism has been given a huge punch on the nose does not mean that we are not in danger of rightist authoritarianism.

But we believe we can defeat rightist authoritarianism; we have a playbook, past victories, and technological solutions upon which we rest.

We might be right they'll work again, or we might be wrong; we might be right about the reasons they worked, or we might be wrong- but the fact the playbook exists, and that it worked once before, gives us that confidence. Right or wrong.

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."

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