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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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That's because of information warfare.

Look, you think the Biden White House wasn't an absolute fucking shit show? They kept a lid on his dementia the entire time, and only after the debate did three years of stories all deluge the news all at once. Imagine a hostile media and a hostile deep state, instead of keeping a tight lid on all these stories, leaking about the naked incompetence of the president for 3 years straight. If instead of attacking people pointing out the moments when Biden was obviously demented in public, accusing them of hateful rhetoric and making fun of the poor president's stutter, they uncritically amplified them?

I don't want to say it's all fake. It's not. But your perception is being heavily abused.

They kept a lid on his dementia the entire time

What, I thought we all knew about it already, even most Democrats knew but didn't want to admit it. Just the media apparatus always stays on message so they would never dare to publish anything dirty until permission is granted.

I'm sorry, no, Trump's just being retarded. This isn't, like, an innate property of being right wing or anything. If Curtis Yarvin got to choose the top 50 people in the Trump admin, it'd be different. (Or so I'd like to think...) But, no, Biden didn't send innocent people to a prison in El Salvador, and then pretend it's a state secret so he doesn't have to tell a judge who they are. He doesn't randomly Truth out new completely pointless tariffs twice a week. (I'm not huge on tariffs, but I am a fan of targeted and competent state intervention in the economy, and you could use tariffs in such a way. That's not what Trump's doing). When Biden did something truly insane (announcing the Equal Rights Amendment was in force), everyone basically ignored it, instead of agreeing and amplifying.

I think people are overstating the total impact of Trump's direct actions a bit. Most of them don't matter that much, other than USAID closure (which will, if it lasts, really counterfactually kill millions of people over a decade), tariffs (trump take bitcoin :(( ). But that's mostly just because Trump's only one branch of a three-branch government designed to restrict the whims of politicians and the power of a single election, Republicans have tiny majorities in the second branch that can't get anything done in normal circumstances, and he's not even pretending to follow precedent, which makes things tough for the third branch. The actions Trump is taking, judged relative to their potential impact, are mostly just stupid. Biden would not have launched Biden Coin.

I'm sorry, no, Trump's just being retarded. This isn't, like, an innate property of being right wing or anything. If Curtis Yarvin got to choose the top 50 people in the Trump admin, it'd be different. (Or so I'd like to think...) But, no, Biden didn't send innocent people to a prison in El Salvador, and then pretend it's a state secret so he doesn't have to tell a judge who they are. He doesn't randomly Truth out new completely pointless tariffs twice a week. (I'm not huge on tariffs, but I am a fan of targeted and competent state intervention in the economy, and you could use tariffs in such a way. That's not what Trump's doing). When Biden did something truly insane (announcing the Equal Rights Amendment was in force), everyone basically ignored it, instead of agreeing and amplifying.

Your bias is showing. Biden's DOJ went after J6'ers so hard they got thrown in solitary confinement and had exculpating evidence hid from trial because apparently the security footage proving their innocence was a "state secret". Biden's regulatory apparatus would randomly exterminate American businesses left and right. Happened to Juul, crypto, energy sectors, etc. To say nothing of the countless red lines Biden put on the Ukraine/Russia conflict or the Israel/Palestine conflict that just got blown right past to no consequence what so ever.

Talking about classified intel, does nobody else remember the leaks of classified info on Discord during the Biden admin? Or the various other high profile leaks?

I'm saying your perceptions are being abused because yes, the Biden administration was just as retarded. Pete Buttigieg was just as retarded when Boeing planes were falling out of the sky, trains were derailing causing permanent ecological damage and bridges were collapsing. Their fucking AWOL secretary of defense was just as retarded when he vanished for months while WWIII was breaking out, telling nobody. The emergency response to Western North Carolina was pants on head retarded.

And these are just the stories we know about that broke through! Largely isolated to an online news ghetto full of people going "Can you believe this fucking shit?!" But now you have the MSM, as well as the online news ghetto going "Can you believe this fucking shit?!" and that tricks your perception into thinking it's somehow more retarded. It's not. What you had before was professional liars and people trying to fairly call balls and strikes. During the Biden admin the profession liars constantly tried to bring the temperature down. Now they are trying to raise it. The independent media trying to fairly call balls and strikes generally think the last 8 years have been completely retarded. But all you see is that 50% of the news thought Biden was retarded, and now 100% thinks Trump is retarded, therefore Trump is worse than Biden. You are still letting the professional liars influence your perception.

Your bias is showing

I'm very right-wing! I might be biased against Trump (I don't think so), but I'm definitely not biased against right wing policies.

Biden's DOJ went after J6'ers so hard they got thrown in solitary confinement and had exculpating evidence hid from trial because apparently the security footage proving their innocence was a "state secret".

Link? I was unable to find anything like this from google searches like "january 6 evidence prosecution state secret".

Biden's regulatory apparatus would randomly exterminate American businesses left and right. Happened to Juul, crypto, energy sectors, etc

Crypto is basically a combination of regulatory arbitrage for moderately more efficient finance and an unregulated trillion dollar global casino. I don't think the Biden admin's regulation on crypto made sense, but it's difficult to argue against harsh regulation.

Biden did not exterminate the energy sector. As Matt Yglesias always says, US oil production hit all-time highs under Biden. And that's despite the dumb lockdowns.

The Juul ban was probably dumb, but that doesn't seem out of distribution for dumb things every administration does, either in terms of competence or overall impact.

To say nothing of the countless red lines Biden put on the Ukraine/Russia conflict or the Israel/Palestine conflict that just got blown right past to no consequence what so ever.

Again, this isn't ideal, but Trump's foreign policy (for example claims of annexing Gaza) is hardly consistent either. It's not out of distribution. Telling Canadian leaders in a private call that you want to renegotiate the treaty about our border ... is. That's the kind of thing that I said above - it's out-of-distribution retarded, even though the impact is minor.

Talking about classified intel, does nobody else remember the leaks of classified info on Discord during the Biden admin

Random people leak things sometimes. There are millions of people with access to classified info. That doesn't really implicate the Biden admin's decisionmaking, unlike this.

Their fucking AWOL secretary of defense was just as retarded when he vanished for months while WWIII was breaking out, telling nobody

... vanished for months? I only remember a 'disappearance' of few days for an operation, and a few more announced operations later. I googled for it and can't find anything about months. That wasn't great, but you may be overstating it.

(And having a DEI hire who is at least an experienced military commander who's gone for a few days, while suboptimal is better than someone whose possession of the job is entirely counterfactual to being a fox news host).

So your examples aren't persuasive. None of them are anywhere near 'sending innocent people to a jail in El Salvador without due process, while intentionally ambiguously violating a court order' and 'being so incompetent that you have lower standards than El Salvador, who sent back women (it's a men's only prison, somehow they didn't know that) and a Nicaraguan (because it'd be a disaster for them to randomly imprison a citizen of a neighboring country).' Which, as acknowledged above, doesn't matter at all in the greater scheme of things - but it's incredibly stupid.

I'm very right-wing!

Not unless your every post here is a devil's advocate exercise.

I mean sure, there’s always a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth when Trump is in office, but the stories mostly hasn’t been from leaks. It’s been the shit ton of executive orders being written en masse at a historically unprecedented rate, plus a lot of moves to fulfill election promises. The one big leak story happened because Waltz somehow added the CHIEF EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC to a cabinet group chat. You’re correct that Biden faced very little pushback in mainstream coverage, but Trumps term is coming out swinging hard. You can argue it’s a good thing, but you can’t argue there’s not a lot happening all at once.

I was going to say the same. I distinctly remember hearing from someone that Obama never had a scandal, and I realized it was because the press never made anything a scandal. Cash for Clunkers was an expensive boondoggle that only succeeded in destroying perfectly good durable goods and wasted money doing it. Eric Holder ran guns to Mexican cartels. He droned an American citizen, and the IRS targeted his political adversaries. Any of these could have been a true scandal, if the press treated it as such.

Look, you think the Biden White House wasn't an absolute fucking shit show?

I think that the shitshow-level of the current administration is appreciably larger than the last, both in frequency and spectacle. Trump administration fuck ups often do have some parallels to fuck ups from previous administrations, but more often than not, the comparisons obscure just how strange some of these people act.

It’s not just the fuck up, but the whole response: total refusal to accept any responsibility, blatant lying about what happened, the defensiveness, which comes off as childish rather than masculine. None of this is surprising, given that Trump filled his administration this time around with sycophants and media personalities. It makes for great TV though.