site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Maybe the skill level of the D leadership has fallen off a cliff and they forgot how to do this shit.

Speaking of compelling theories...

There's been some chatter going around X about how the Democratic Party is a casualty of Hamas. I think the logic goes something like this:

  1. A large percent of Democratic Party operators are/were high human capital Jews

  2. After 10/7, the left wing of the Democratic Party became anti-Semitic

  3. "Jew" is now a slur in leftists spaces. Jews are denied leadership opportunities or simply leave.

  4. Within the party infrastructure, Jews are replaced with low human capital DEI hires

Result: complete incompetence, Kamala Harris, Karen Bass, etc, etc..

"Jew" is now a slur in leftists spaces. Jews are denied leadership opportunities or simply leave.

The slur is "Zionist" (to gives them the veneer of plausible deniability)

The second half of 3 as well as 4 presuppose that “leftists” control hiring, and promotion to leadership positions within the Democratic Party infrastructure. Is that in fact the case?

In a sense, it's trivially true in that Democrats are the leftist party.

But, yeah, I think there has been a bigger emphasis on DEI over competence within left-ideology. Hard to imagine that doesn't spill over into the party itself.

My point was, there are (as in any big-tent party) multiple wings/factions within the Democrats. The hardcore idpol progressive leftists—the sort who are alleged to be antisemites who care more about DEI bona fides than competence—are one such wing, but there are at least 2 others: the anti-idpol class-first leftists (roughly corresponding to Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren supporters) and, for lack of a better term, “The Blob”, aka the centrist PMC/technocrat wing who may pay lip service to DEI but remain staunchly pro-Israel (basically Clinton and Biden supporters).

It’s not obvious to me that the idpol-left faction has taken over the Democrats to such an extent that they can purge competent Jews as mentioned above.

The black political machine is another important wing for the democrats.

So you have a minor class-first wing, an establishment blob wing, a far left wing, and a black machine politics wing. I’m guessing the blob can’t carry the other three on it’s own.

Man, hearing you break out the various political machines made me wonder how much the other competing rackets in the DNC coalition treat the black political machine. Especially when time after time, under the slightest amount of public exposure, they turn out to be literally retarded.

But instead it got me thinking about how much of politics is just ritual. It doesn't matter that people like the Philadelphia mayor are nakedly retarded. At some point a consultant will give her the magic words that say "I'm electable". The press will go "She said the magic words that make her electable". And all the voters will think to themselves "Well, the priestnews said she said the words that mean I should vote for her". So she's mayor. Apparent illiteracy aside.

And I single the black political machine out for their politicians just nakedly being unable to speak properly, display a 5th grade level of education (see above), or provide believable explanations for their preposterous behavior. If machine politics weren't at play, it's hard to imagine how these people could have ever gotten anywhere close to the positions they hold.

I mean, here we are, this lady couldn't spell Eagles despite it likely being somewhere right in front of her, I doubt it will impact her electability one iota. Howard Dean's political aspirations were destroyed by one awkward scream. "What's Aleppo?" will haunt Gary Johnson in his nightmares until the day he dies he was beat over the head with it so many times. Overwhelmingly the priest decide what matters and what doesn't, and their congregation just receives that opinion.

Obviously, politics as ritual is responsible for people like Mike Pence too. All I ever heard about him was that he was "electable" despite not knowing anything about him, or anything he's ever said, or any accomplishment he could ever lay claim to. There is very clearly a ritual to rightwing politicians as well, with different magic words and a different priestly caste conferring "electability" unto them.

Which is clearly what drives many of these people completely fucking insane about Trump, and now many of the people who have rode his coattails in his new coalition. These are bipartisan heretics one and all. They don't ritualize the right words, the priestly caste has excommunicated them, and none of this was supposed to happen god damnit! It was the end of history!

In theory, there should be a DNC bench of outcast that could take over the DNC just as hard as Trump and 8 years of Trumpism took over the RNC. But instead, Trump stole many of their best outcast too (RFK Jr, Tulsi, Elon).

It's going to take a new DNC to have any hope of keeping up with the new RNC. If rumors of the Black Political Machine filling in the gaps left by a withering coalition are true, jeeze.

provide believable explanations for their preposterous behavior.

That is indeed a believable explanation. My wife's grandmother did not trust banks and kept almost all she owned as cash at home. You have to remember there is a certain level of distrust towards white or governmental institutions particularly (and understandably) in black Americans of a certain age or that they inherited from their family members.

Now it may not be true in this case, but if so the reason he reached for that as a lie is precisely because it is indeed believable, it is an actual thing if you have exposure to black communities. My wife to this day keeps more cash at hand than I ever would (though in turn I keep more emergency supplies of food and water than she considers "normal").

Also why disliking taking the "government needle" of Covid vaccinations resulted in lower vaccination rates in black communities. It's certainly less common than it was, but it is still a thing.

As another coincidence between black and Ulster-Scots borderer behaviors MY farmer grandfather also kept large sums of cash in his house rather than in banks because he didn't trust them or the government, which led to us randomly finding money in bags with things like "8 cows to Smith" written on it after he had passed.

Perhaps not quite to Ron Swanson burying gold in the woods levels though.

I will say one good thing about the black political machine- it’s very thoroughly non-ideological. When the DNC decides to settle on something that isn’t insane race communism, they will always have been at war with EastAsia. And it’s worth noting that the ridiculously unpopular insanity mostly comes from the far left wing which itself doesn’t get along great with the black wing.

You're forgetting intersectionality.

Ironically, the ideology that presumes to be about collectivist organization is, in practice, extremely individualist. There are no factions, not in the traditional sense: but thousands of extremely self-interested individuals who have been handed a superweapon to destroy the 'pale, male, and stales' in their way of sinecures and political power.

When you get cancelled, the factions cease to have all meaning.

All of their hands are stained with this blood. Internally, they are just as paranoid as Stalinists. They may internally not believe in idpol but they are forced to because there are hundreds of people after their jobs. They are all replacable, mediocre nobodies that can have everything taken away from them because all they have was given and that is by design.

I thought it was very convenient: "race and IQ poaster concludes problem is race and IQ". But it is interesting to see the left-wing version from Cenk Uygur posted above. Both sides seem to think Democrats lost or alienated important human capital.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats