site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31954 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

and it's important to note that almost no one disbelieves the allegations, but also that Ken Paxton won reelection by double digits while under indictment for bribery and fraud.

What's the dynamic here?

In a Banana Republic, voters tolerate this sort of thing because they know that corruption investigations only happen because of political will. So even if your man is corrupt, caring about it would be unilateral disarmement. In the US, this is more or less the situation already with Trump, but I'd imagine Texas politics is too one sided for that to be the issue.

One-party states can easily be corrupt -- after all there's no effective opposition. But what leads to voters shrugging it off like that? Why are they so desperate to elect this particular man?

A lot of the corruption here is bad, but it's not egregiously bad. The main allegations here are that:

  • Paxton promoted a (since-flopped and fraudy) server company called Servergy Inc., while getting paid by the company, without disclosing that payment or registering with the SEC. His payment was in 100,000 shares of stock, and at least the SEC complaints don't say he ever converted them to cash, so it's kinda hard to estimate a value (outside of it almost certainly being less than 200k USD and probably less than 25k USD).

  • Provided legal support and political favoritism for a real estate developer named Nate Paul, who had previously donated 25k USD to Paxton's campaign, allegedly provided kitchen renovations, (and possibly hired Paxton's alleged mistress?).

  • whisteblower retaliations related to the Nate Paul stuff.

This might be illegal, if true. But it's also just not that scandalous, by political standards. He's not selling congressional seats with cash stuffed into a freezer or drunk-driving a woman off a bridge to her death or making up his entire past or Dennis Hastert, for a more literal "live boy" scale problems. It's not that much cash, and even adding the stock in at its wildly inflated value it's not exactly eyeball boggling.

A lot of people do resign or stop running for reelection under this sort of problem (for Texas, see Jim Wright and Tom Delay), but note that Delay ended up having the conviction overturned on appeal. Or see Ted Stevens, though also see the denouement.

I think a lot of voters consider this as just Things Politicians Do. For all you or I might prefer our politicians as Gentlemen and Gentlewoman Philosophers, who hold a variety of political principles and solely act around those targets, in practice "lie to sell things" and "do favors for constituents" is a lot of their actual day-to-day job. Perhaps Paxton is particularly bad for not crossing the correct is and dotting the correct ts, for not playing the game Properly, or for being dumb or unlucky enough to help out sufficiently bad scumbags (eg, Servergy was hilariously fraudy, as in selling 32-bit 'servers' in 2012 and offering thermodynamically implausible energy-savings, Paul looks a little more bog-standard real estate fake but is at a larger scale and far less professional scale). But especially given some of the other problems enforcement actions around this class of corruption has had, and the suspicion that a lot of technically-legal-but-just-as-odious stuff exists, I don't think it's axiomatic that voters have to care.

Thanks for that. It sounds like Banana Replublic logic does in fact apply.

The scandals you list sound awfully Clintonesque, so I can see why a voter would not want to unilaterally disarm because of them. That said, as far as I can tell, the Clintons are unusually corrupt by the standards of prominent American politicians. I mean how is it that the many enemies of DONALD TRUMP can't come up with a good real-estate scandal to use against him, and have to settle for pissant stuff about paying off pornstars?

Provided legal support and political favoritism for a real estate developer named Nate Paul, who had previously donated 25k USD to Paxton's campaign, allegedly provided kitchen renovations, (and possibly hired Paxton's alleged mistress?).

Sounds like par for the course. There was a similar, albeit much smaller scale, scandal in my own home town a few years back.

Local councillor accused of getting favourable treatment for local developer to get planning permission when he shouldn't have, with allegations of cash changing hands. It came to light because the guy was dumb enough to dump his wife for a new, younger, squeeze and Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so she immediately started blowing whistles left, right and centre about hubby's alleged dodgy dealings.

It was an entire, steaming mess: he was put on trial for corruption charges and convicted and went to jail for a couple of years. The ironic thing was the developer was also tried on similar charges but found not guilty. I never quite understood how one guy could be convicted for a crime that a different trial said didn't happen, and presumably so did he, because he appealed for a retrial but didn't get it.

After he got out of jail, it had wrecked not only his life, but his parents' life, because their business went under due to the needs of paying for his defence, etc. Paxton sounds to be getting off lightly by comparison, is the wife not salty about the alleged mistress or is this a case of "let's all keep face and pretend we're a happy family"?

The server firm also sounds "dodgy but the usual kind of thing", and if he never cashed in the shares and the company later went bust, he can probably claim this was all legit investing on his part in a business he believed would do well. Taking payments and not declaring them is also usual politician behaviour, it'll be interesting to see if he can get away with that.

It's worth noting that the wife is, by all accounts, an active participant in at least the cover up efforts if not her husband's actual (small scale)corruption.

So he's smart enough to make it a family affair instead of dumping his missus for the young hottie.

NJ re-elects Bob Menendez to the Senate every six years, and he's constantly under investigation/indictment/trial for some scheme or another.

Ken Paxton is both personally popular because of his record at winning fights with the federal government(for Texas politicians this makes it very easy to cast yourself as the sort of champion of the people who of course has some skeletons in his closet, what do you expect?), and has been blessed with terrible opponents. In the primary he managed to come out ahead in a divided field and then win the runoff partly because his runoff opponent was literally named George bush(related, not the same). In the general, he faced off against a left wing activist who’d done pro bono work for cartel linked human traffickers- it probably would have at least been a closer contest if democrats had run a normal moderate.

But also he claims credit for bullying the Biden admin into reinstating title 42, increasing domestic oil production, and canceling the private sector vax mandate.

Texas is not really a one party state.

The media demand for corrupt Republican one party states exceeds the supply.

I'm sure corruption exists, but it's funny to talk about these mild cases when Baltimore and Detroit exist.

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