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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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I have pretty much had it with people who ranted about "trump disrespecting the troops!" now waving the flag of Hezbollah who actually killed a lot of those troops.
The next time a Democrat starts regurgitating NPR at me I'm going to end up saying something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more. It's almost worse than 2020 because the deranged hysteria isn't happening in unique circumstances.

How do you all deal with this every day?

The people who criticised Trump for disrespecting the troops are very much not the same people as those waving Hezbollah flags.

I don't see how the example here represents some sort of unique turning point or even a particularly good example of the set of, 'Progressives seem to hold totally contradictory values'.

They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.

Trump disrespected the troops by saying stuff that a 'properly cultured' blue-triber would never say, like calling POWs losers for getting caught.

The people at protests waving flags, still don't like Trump for being uncouth in those ways. Also, I would guess less than half of them even know what Beirut is. Still, even if they did know, they mostly wouldn't care. They are perfectly happy to hold both the idea that Trump says rude things to the troops and that is bad, and also the idea that the American military-industrial-complex is a global oppressor and any and all resistance to it is justified. This isn't even a particularly contradictory pair of ideas to hold compared to their beliefs around gender.

More generally, you are making a liberal complaint to a progressive. Liberals care about being principled and consistent, creating generalizable rules, and all that other great civilization building philosophy junk that got totally abandoned as the internet and government student loans expanded the marketplace of ideas to include midwits.

They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.

Very few if any leftists have expressed support for Hamas' political, religious, and social program while also being pro LGBT+ which would actually be contradictory. A portion of them will express support for Hamas insofar as they fight the IDF without supporting their social program, which is a consistent position. A greater part of them will refuse to say either way, because they view calls to condemn Hamas as bad-faith attempts at distraction (the standard line being "I'll condemn Hamas when my government sends them billions of dollars").

Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza."

I don't think that only 'technical' contradiction, in which it is logically impossible for two ideas to comport, get to be called contradictions. I think it is very common and normal for people to use the word contradiction to describe an apparent disconnect or incongruity between two things, that need not be completly irreconcilable.

I am not sure if you thought that my argument was, the OP's example is not contradictory, but my example is, but I was not trying to make that argument. I used words like particularly, and compared to. Also, this "'Progressives seem to hold totally contradictory values'." bit was in quotes because it was intended to describe a vibe, that I felt was central to the OP. I just felt like the example the OP happened to be upset by was a kind of weak sauce example of this kind of contradiction.

Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza." "I support Hamas".

So, in a very narrow technical sense, I support [Blank] and I support [Group that hates Blank and actively practices violence against Blank] are not logically impossible to hold within the same mind.

Still I am confident saying that not only would most people recognize the incongruity in those statements, if I could ask progressives about a different topic where they were not primed to view it as an attack or a gotcha, most of them would recognize the contradiction in such a statement as well. In fact, just go look at the never ending stream of "if you were really pro-life' memes/posts/articles for a live (and much worse) example.

I don’t think you can really compartmentalize to that degree with any integrity. In most governments and political parties they have openly stated platforms and they at least intend to make good on those promises. You can’t support only the good without accepting the bad. You can’t have support for a faction that kills gays and support gay rights. You can’t support the political goal without supporting the social goals because if they get their goals of defeating IDF they’ll go right back to running Gaza the way they want to.

Somebody could easily hold that a homophobic, misogynist, Islamist party ruling Gaza is a preferable to Gaza being wiped off the face of the earth.

Someone could also hold that a Gaza run by racially tolerant pacifists is better than the Islamists. Forcing a binary proposition is working backwards, justifying the current cause celebre by any tenuous means necessary.

I know, it's just that I'm finally hitting my breaking point. Mostly it's that a few people who were generic libs but mocked "the weird ones" have suddenly gone all-in on quoting reddit posts, with seemingly no sense that their perspective has changed.

I've always put up with this kind of thing before, but I'm this close to cutting back my circle of friends to a handful of shared hobby autists and redneck coworkers.

It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.

I find the bigger problem is that our friends tend to be more fickle than we calculated. True friendships are a tribe unto themselved, sufficiently bonded to ignore external cultural variations. Either your friends aren't so close that they are willing to censure you over inconsequential opinions, or they're weaklings who can't stand up against Current Thing. Both lead to the same conclusion of 'get better friends'. Difficult, but just like a good romantic relationship, worth it

It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.

That was my 2020 experience with lockdowns, but add all of society to it. And even worse because at least the Hezbollah fans generally fall short of demanding everyone wave the Hezbollah flag, whereas lockdown fans made their political symbols into legal obligations. Because of this, afterwards, I tend to be rather unfazed whenever the latest lobotomy balance patch is released. My expectations are rock bottom so if anything other than everyone around me being as stupid and awful as possible happens, I get to be pleasantly surprised instead. And sure, maybe it's egotistical to think everyone around me is a lobotomite, but so what? If they're not, it's on them to demonstrate otherwise.

That's my secret, I have no friends.

First time?

Everyone in the Culture War has this experience sooner or later. It sucks, but eventually the realization settles that this is how it is and it's not going to change, so you make your peace with it and move on with life.

For me, it helped to realize that most people who talk about politics and culture aren't actually engaging in analysis, but rather an informal group-bonding game built around call-and-response meme-trading. This doesn't make them stupid or irrational, any more than posting dogespeak memes means they don't understand proper grammar. They aren't trading John-Oliver-tier (or steven crowder tier) talking points because they're interested in pursuing objective truth, they're doing it because it generates a feeling of togetherness. Sure, it's alienating to you, because the pings they're generating are pings your brain rejects, but that's not really their fault. People are different, is all.

They're not engaging in analysis, right. I guess if your idea of analysis is pseudo-scientific half-readings of social science papers (which isn't a real field unless the paper supports your conclusion btw), inability to separate personal bias from the external world, and a strong superiority complex then it should be painfully obvious why no one wants to engage with you IRL.

They're not engaging in analysis, right.

They aren't, though. That's an observable fact to me, and I'm okay if you disagree with that, but I'd be interested in seeing what arguments you'd present to support that disagreement.

Neither John Oliver nor Jon Stewart nor Steven Crowder nor Sean Hannity are optimizing for truth. All four of these people are entertainers, and their schtick is to offer a just-so story where their tribe is obviously correct and the other tribe is some combination of stupid or evil. All of them build their argumentation around isolated demands for rigor, cherry picking, motte-and-bailey, and the rest of the dark arts. The talking points they generate are frequently absurd, and require complete ignorance of the facts of the matter to maintain any significant persuasive value. They sell low-information politics to (politically) low-information people for whom politics is essentially a spectator sport, similar to football or baseball. The version of "politics" they present has only the most minimal connection to the realities of how our system apportions and exercises power.

It is not pretension to point out that every four years, both major presidential candidates give a speech on how they're going to fix the education system, and every four years both speeches are remarkably identical both between the candidates, and between all previous candidates in living memory. Meanwhile, the educational system has been obviously broken and getting worse throughout living memory, has been repeatedly "reformed" every few years, and not only have those reforms failed, some of them have failed two or even three times, the failures being recorded, forgotten, and then recapitulated in a system without memory, accountability, or even direction. That is not a result that serious, thoughtful, dedicated people will produce. And many, perhaps even most political matters observably operate in this fashion. If the economy improves, the incumbent's supporters will say he did it, and his detractors will say it was the last guy. If the economy declines, his supporters will say it was the last guy and his detractors will say he did it, and they will do this regardless of what they previously said and regardless of the evidence. Ditto for most other areas of domestic and foreign policy. We were "winning" the war in Afghanistan for twenty years across three separate administrations, until we abruptly lost it upon the arrival of the fourth, in an event that was absolutely predictable fifteen years in advance. Pick your favorite issue of policy, and I'd wager a similar situation is what you'll see when you dig in. The captain's wheel of Democracy does not appear to be linked to the rudder of concrete policy; spin it left, spin it right, take your hands completely off, it doesn't actually matter much.

I guess if your idea of analysis is pseudo-scientific half-readings of social science papers (which isn't a real field unless the paper supports your conclusion btw)

My personal standard is admission against interest, actually. If the findings make the researchers extremely unhappy and unpopular with their peers and co-tribals, but they can't find a way around the data, the data's probably worth considering.

... inability to separate personal bias from the external world, and a strong superiority complex then it should be painfully obvious why no one wants to engage with you IRL.

I had a lot more trouble engaging with people back when I took them all seriously. Now when I get hit with a low-information call-and-response, I just give them a milktoast-moderate version of their preferred ping and it's all good. If they actually are trying to engage in analysis but lack the background, I give them a step past wherever they are, and then shrug and say "but who knows, really" to offer a non-threatening exit, that tends to work pretty well. If they're a serious person with a serious interest, it's not hard to tell and then we can have a serious conversation, but that's relatively rare.

I do not concede that everyone who considers themselves "serious about politics" is actually serious about politics. I do not require that people agree with me about politics to consider them serious. I do require that they have a decent grasp on political history, and a grasp on the relevant facts over the last several decades for the issues they claim to care about. If they "care" enough about a subject to want to talk about it, but don't care enough to actually read up on the relevant information beyond the talking points their preferred partisan pre-packaged for them, and if they are more interested in those talking points than in making actual predictions based on the available evidence, it seems to me that their actions speak for themselves. If they "care" about politics the way an NFL fan "cares" about their team, I see no reason why "caring" more than them would lead to better outcomes. And indeed, my experience is that it does not.

I do not see what sort of comfort this is meant to bring. This is no more helpful than the realisation that technically it isn't the fault of the wolf or shark if it has a hankering for your delicious flesh. Wolves and sharks still possess sharp teeth and will attempt to use them on you, while powerful moral spooks will compel other human beings to make your life a misery over things that have no material impact on either them or you.

The term "sheep" is inescapably condescending, because it implies that a "sheep" is all someone is, and that generally is not true. A more accurate way to put it would be that with regard to some things, especially very complex things that generate a lot of epistemic learned helplessness, people can get pretty sheep-like. In any case, the people in question almost certainly are not accurately described as sharks, or any other form of predator.

The people quoting John Stewart to each other generally are not ideologues, and they certainly aren't pod people looking to point and shriek at the first identified heretic. They're doing a pedestrian social thing, and if you're at the point where it's grating, it's easy to play along more or less seamlessly, or duck out. The problem isn't that they're witch-hunting, the problem is that if you're in this situation, you probably are an ideologue of some description, and your instinct is to start an argument. They aren't looking for an argument, they're doing a pedestrian-normie-carebear thing. Just dial down the autism for two whole minutes, and everything will be fine.

(It should be obvious, but the above is self-description of past-me, so please don't think I'm saying anything about anyone in this thread that I wouldn't say about myself. I know full-well how hard it is to turn off the autism, but learning to do it is a critical social skill. Also note that the above is very explicitly about Stewart and Oliver and similar CNN-Chyron-tier normie-feed. If they're quoting Kendi or bell hooks or the SCUM manifesto, or Trotsky, etc, etc, dive dive dive. Those are the actual sharks, and they are actively dangerous to interact with.)

Once you realize that most people lack intellectual standards or believe in the principles they claim each week, you can go looking for the people who actually do.

Once you realize that most people lack intellectual standards or believe in the principles they claim each week, you can go looking for the people who actually do.

I don't recall that working out well for Diogenes.

I do sympathise with you. I experienced what you are experiencing now during the lockdowns. Almost everyone in my life was in support of them and spoke very highly of them, blind to the effects they were having on me. I am still dealing with the issues now.

During that time, whenever the topic of conversation came up I came up with situation appropriate lines to shut down or move the conversation on. When I couldn't do that, I drowned them out with loud rock music. Ultimately, you aren't going to convince them and the only real solution is to wait for this nonsense to exit the news cycle.

(Has it really been 7 months?)

Your anger reminds me of the Liberation Pledge that vegans did, where they aggressively pushed their principles to their non-vegan friends in the form of ultimatums, "either stop eating meat or we can't be friends". When their non-vegan friends didn't comply with their craziness, the vegans got extremely mad and essentially said "well I guess they weren't ever my friends anyways!!!"

Losing friends and making enemies for pointless battles is just dumb. Politics has always been overwhelmingly about vibes and direct personal interest. Leftists of the e.g. feminist+pro-Muslim variety irk me as much as anyone, but it's utter silliness to think you'd accomplish anything but your own harm by raging at those types of people. And if you think your outgroup is the only side with a large amount of contradictions, then you're hopelessly naive. The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries. Individual rulers or religious leaders just cherry-picked whichever parts happened to suit them. For another example, it wasn't too long ago that a large chunk of the alt-right cheered when Trump sank the most conservative immigration bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. When pressed, most of the alt-right just mumbled out explanations that showed they had no idea what was actually in the bill, or the state of current immigration laws. In practice it didn't actually matter, since the fact that they like Trump's vibes easily overrode their ideological pre-commitments.

How would you feel if I did what you plan on doing to Christians or Trump supporters? How would you feel if I "say something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more"? You'd probably think I'm being silly and dumb, right?

Reading that post about the Liberation Pledge makes me sad, because here is a perfectly nice person with good intentions who only wants to do good and reduce harm, and they might as well be an alien from another planet when it comes to understanding ordinary people:

And, on a larger scale, we hoped that if we all joined together, we could create a world where eating meat is stigmatized: a world where someone would ask, “Does anyone mind if I get the steak?” before making an order at a restaurant (or maybe even one in which restaurants would think twice before putting someone’s body on the menu).

That right there from the start: it's not a body, it's a carcass. And it's not someone, it's something. An animal is not a person. Plus, I get the distinct impression that were this a report on an Oceanian tribe that practiced consumption of the remains of the deceased as a ritual of respect, we'd get the whole "we should not impose Western moral values on others" about something that really was "putting someone's body on the menu".

From where I stood, the biggest effect of the Pledge was for advocates to lose relationships with family members who didn’t comply. Upon taking the Pledge, a close friend at the time experienced a years-long estrangement from their family, including those who were already vegan while many others decided to skip birthdays, weddings, and holidays with family. It’s possible that all of this added stigma around eating animals. With these relationships broken down, we don’t know.

You know where the added stigma was? I'm going to take a wild guess and that it wasn't on the part of shame-faced carnivores around "eating animals", but rather "that stupid notion that made Jenny refuse to attend Granny's last Thanksgiving before she died, the last time the family all saw her, just because of a dumb turkey dinner. She was Granny's favourite grandkid! And we all knew Granny wasn't doing so good! And she just would not come because of that vegan rubbish, she cared more about some dead turkey than about Granny!"

The problem is, veganism is a moral judgement, and nobody likes moral judgements. The same people who would be horrified about some bigot telling a gay family member that they were sinful and in need of having their soul saved has no problem telling meat eater family and friends that they are damned souls going to carnist hell.

As the article points out, the Pledge backfired because it involved breaking off relationships with family and those close to the vegan; the moral purity being not "He eats with tax collectors and sinners" but "They eat with meat-eaters".

Plus, I get the distinct impression that were this a report on an Oceanian tribe that practiced consumption of the remains of the deceased as a ritual of respect, we'd get the whole "we should not impose Western moral values on others" about something that really was "putting someone's body on the menu".

What gives you that impression besides the fact that you dislike the author?

Edit: consumption of the remains of the deceased or the remains of the slaughtered?

People who tend to be "this is the body of a person" when talking about a turkey or joint of beef on the dinner table are also likely to be "we must not impose our morals on others" when it comes to unconventional and non-Western beliefs and practices.

I don't dislike the author, I appreciate that they are a sensitive person trying to do good as they see it. I dislike the neuroticism of the zealot veganism philosophy. The piece admits the failure mode of the Pledge was forcing the non-vegans into a choice of "me or them?" and then breaking off relationships over what the non-vegans are going to see as "it's just a meal".

Ritual cannibalism has indeed been practiced, though the debate over how widespread, how long, and for what reasons, continues; I doubt that the ethical vegans would stretch their ethics to condemnation of such cultures as being wrong, unnatural, etc. because that is Western colonialist thinking. They might condemn it on the grounds of all meat-eating being wrong, but not because humans are different or superior to animals.

People who tend to be "this is the body of a person" when talking about a turkey or joint of beef on the dinner table are also likely to be "we must not impose our morals on others" when it comes to unconventional and non-Western beliefs and practices.

How do you know this? The vegans I've met don't hold non western cultures above criticism. Especially if we are talking about people posting on the ea forum who are likely more autistic than your average vegan.

I certainly don't know any vegans who are in favor of murder and cannibalism, though they might draw a distinction between that and eating a human who died for other reasons (as some of them do for eating a non human animal that wasn't slaughtered for the purpose of eating).

I doubt that the ethical vegans would stretch their ethics to condemnation of such cultures as being wrong, unnatural, etc. because that is Western colonialist thinking. They might condemn it on the grounds of all meat-eating being wrong, but not because humans are different or superior to animals.

Wait, you doubt that they would do this, but acknowledge that they might?

It sounds more like they might not condemn it for the reasons you think they should condemn it, and that seems like a much weaker argument indeed.

The lack of theory of mind is truly something. The leading response to "I won't eat at a table where meat is served" is "so starve then" and the second leading response is "Then leave the table". In distant third is "So you want some of my brisket?" with "fine, it'll be vegetarian this time, but you're an asshole and I'm eating double steak tomorrow" trailing it by a good margin. "Well, I guess I'll reduce or eliminate my meat consumption" is lizardman's constant.

I do see their point and why they tried it, but I also wonder how otherwise intelligent people could not see why this would fail. If you don't want to associate with meat-eaters, you can certainly all gather into your own little bubble of vegans. But when it involves dealing with the wider public and especially your own family, it's going to have consequences. The idealistic among them seem to have assumed that other people would accept their views, be convinced of the moral horror of eating turkey or beef or pork, and change the entire traditional meal to fit around "no animal products at all" (some vegans are very evangelical on this and would not accept the use of butter, cream, cheese, etc. in a meal).

While people might be willing to go "Okay, we'll do a special vegan selection for you", they are less likely to go "and you can eat it at a separate little table of your own" (though they might stretch that far) and are not at all likely to go "okay we will junk the Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner/Fourth of July barbeque and all eat salad and fake meat products".

The authoress of the original piece has it in three parts, the third part being Vegan Tables: A Letter To The People I Love.

And this is the part that makes me wince:

Piled on top of that is the guilt I feel every time I don’t speak up. I see people fishing in the park, and I wonder if there’s something I could say to prevent someone from suffocating to death in the next few minutes.

What she means by "someone suffocating to death" is the fish. Not the people fishing, the fish. When you get to the level of "fish are people like humans are people", then there isn't much mutual ground remaining to be covered between that view and the view that "eating meat is acceptable". And the rest of the letter, though sincere, and I don't think meant to come off this way, does come off as emotional manipulation and arm-twisting with guilt: if you love me, agree not to eat meat:

I want to let you in on this part of my world because I care about our relationship. I don’t want to relate to you in a way that holds such a large part of myself back; I want you to know what it’s like to be me. I also share this to give you some information about what might make our relationship more comfortable for me. If you’re willing, when we eat together or attend an event where food is served, it would do so much to help me feel seen and welcome if you decided to go without animal products. I ask this of you, specifically, because you’re someone I feel close to and supported by. I know that not everyone will oblige to this request, and I don’t make it of everyone.

You love me, don't you? I've just told you how much I care about you! Why won't you ease my suffering by this tiny little concession? And at that point, either you (the family member or friend) bluntly state "Sorry but you're crazy, fish are not people" or you try to accommodate them and set yourself up for continuing attempts to bludgeon you via emotional manipulation into becoming vegan yourself. And if you don't give in, then she will break off the relationship, and continue on with "why are people so cruel that they would prefer to indulged in misery and suffering and to destroy our friendship and bond rather than give up this savagery?" and feel vindicated in her martyrdom.

Oh dear.

I encourage her to try the ‘fish are friends, not food, you’re actually a murderer’ line on someone fishing in the park. Just to show her what the actual likely reaction would be.

The pro-life movement has figured out that shrieking ‘you’re a murderer’ is not a successful tactic and they will push new members not to engage in it. The hardcore vegans have apparently not learnt this lesson.

I think you can legitimately be concerned about fishing, particularly commercial fishing which is often destructive, but when you are basing it on "fish are people" then yeah. Fish are very much on the brainless end of the spectrum, and while they do feel pain as a living organism, it's hard to argue that they are aware in the same way you might argue a cow is aware.

There's a LOT of people who believe that vegetarianism is morally superior even if they're not vegetarian themselves, which disarms them of the first two responses.

Sure, but that's vegetarianism not veganism, and these people are hell-for-leather pure 100% vegans. If they were willing to compromise on a vegetarian option, I think there would be less friction (permitting eggs, cheese, dairy products for the meat-eaters and in food). It's the ones who don't want any such options who are going to run into trouble, the ones who are "you put butter into the mashed potatoes so I'm not eating those even though they're one of the few vegetable options for the meal, plus I'm going to sulk about the rest of you eating butter and cream".

To do the writer justice, the wider movement seems to have copped on that the original strict version was a failure:

The practical difference between the original Liberation Pledge and our update is that the original Pledge was delivered in a static state, “I don’t sit at tables where animals are being eaten” where the outcome of the updated Pledge is determined through conversation in collaboration with the other. “I’m thinking about Thanksgiving and feeling pretty worried about how I’ll feel with a turkey there. What’s coming up for you hearing that much? I think I understand, am I getting it? Are you open to hearing more about what’s coming up for me? How is that to hear? How would it be for you to… go without the turkey? Let me prepare a main dish instead? Have me visit after dinner? What ideas do you have for how we can work this out?”

Another difference in this proposal is to rethink our request as specific to a relationship, not a table or event. This can set us up for more realistic positive outcomes and help us invest our energy in productive ways. You might choose to attend a large family reunion where animals are being eaten and only make the request to those you most know and trust, letting their show of solidarity be a signal to others.

Regular lefties think the vegetarians are morally superior, the actual vegetarians think the vegans are morally superior. So the scolding works, and if you don't provide vegetarian or vegan options it is you who is in the wrong, and pushing that to providing meat when there are vegans present isn't that hard. Whereas if you don't provide meat, the meat eaters are in the wrong for complaining.

The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries.

Just a tangent here, but the Bible isn't designed to be a philosophical guiding light on its own. It even says not to do that, but to also hold to the traditions received extra-biblically, i.e. the Church, which is designed to be a philosophical guiding light.

Seems to me that when (much of) the Western world started trying to use the Bible in a way it specifically says not to use it, that's where we got into trouble.

IMO this is incredibly uncharitable on why they sank the immigration bill. You make it sound like we crashed it for shits and giggles. The bill had core issues.

  1. Too much discretion. If you don’t control the Presidency and key asylum courts it doesn’t do anything.

  2. Biden had levers to slow immigration now. He wasn’t doing it. Why make a deal where he can claim victory and enforce it during election season and then if he wins the election it’s back to open borders.

  3. Formalized a lot of bad things like the asylum system

  4. We all know that in American politics you usually only get to do things once when legislating. If the first bill is shit you’re probably not getting a second bite at the apple.

  5. Trump as POTUS is better for limiting immigration than Biden with the bill. This tells you how weak the bill was.

  6. House passed a bill. It was always better to use the up coming elections to press the Dems for a good bill than a bill with Swiss cheese loopholes.

I opposed the bill because it was a bad bill. Its better to do a good bill with real teeth after winning the elections.

It doesn’t matter. Unless Trump has a trifecta with an unrealistic senate majority (which isn’t going to happen) this was better than ANYTHING he can accomplish in office. It is truly an unbelievable blackpill that the bill didn’t pass, it represented a huge concession from the Dems in an election year and the GOP were unfathomably retarded to reject it.

If 2 million “asylum” immigrants is the best deal we can negotiate with Dems then I support a full fledged Trump coup and the end of the Republic.

One is a long term coup and the other is a short term coup. Same thing.

Here's the summary of the bill, and here's the full text. Can you point out what specifically you object to? I've been accused of being uncharitable on this topic before, but whenever I press for details I typically get little but handwavey "Biden bad" style arguments. Which, to be clear, he was bad early in his presidency on this topic, but then he did an about-face and has signaled that he would have used the law quite aggressively.

Too much discretion.

Most of the bill is funding increases or rules changes that have little discretion involved. The big point of discretion was the Border Emergency Authority, which could be used if there were an average of 4000-5000 immigrants per day, and must be used at 5000+.

Formalized a lot of bad things like the asylum system

What is this referring to? The US already has formalized laws on asylum, like its signature on the Convention Against Torture. Right now, a big loophole in immigration is that immigrants can stay in the country until their asylum application is heard by a court, but courts are clogged and they often just miss their appointment anyways. The law would have plugged that.

Trump as POTUS is better for limiting immigration than Biden with the bill. This tells you how weak the bill was.

What does this even mean? The bill was never passed, so comparisons to "Biden with the bill" as if it was law are nonsensical.

It was always better to use the up coming elections to press the Dems for a good bill than a bill with Swiss cheese loopholes.

What "Swiss cheese" loopholes are you referring to? Trump was effectively no better on immigration than Obama, and most of his changes were executive orders that cost little political capital, and were trivial to repeal or ignore. Trump himself often went back on his more aggressive immigration changes whenever he got negative coverage on Fox News.

Completely agree, this was the most progress on illegal immigration since the 1990s and the GOP squandered it to pander to Trump who might not even win in November and won’t be able to do something better even if he does.

  1. The 5k per day is way too much. Combined with the Presidency getting to suspend the act for I believe 60 or 90 days. Then courts would have to get involved. So you can run high to get to the trigger then ignore it for 45 days. Tell the immigrants you back to not come for a month. Run some to get to the trigger. Ignore it for 45 days. Just not enough teeth that they would ever close the border.

  2. It’s further formalizing that 5k a day asylum seekers are fine. We should honestly just ban asylum at the border which we can do. Make them file at an embassy and have true causes. We have virtually zero true asylum cases at the US border. They are safe in Mexico. They can email Senators/Lawyers etc for asylum cases outside the country.

  3. This entirely depends on the courts. Conservatives are not good at controlling those type of asylum claims. If you get liberal judges on those courts who accept not being American makes them a little poor and boom asylum claim accepted then the act does nothing. And again asylum should not be initially approved inside the country.

  4. Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans. This is obvious we did NOT have these issues under Trump and no laws have been changed in the interim. Like you say above Trump closed immigration doing things that were “trivial to repeal or ignore”. Electing Trump is what we need to close the border. He’s done it before. Biden could do the same thing.

  5. Which brings up the big problem with the bill. It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open. There were no teeth in the bill to force a Democrat to close the border.

If you disagree with the “teeth” then please quote in the bill the “teeth”. How would this bill limit President AOC to 10k “asylum” seekers per year?

The Border Emergency Authority is a "break in case of emergency" tool that's specific to the crisis happening now. It sunsets in 3 years, so it won't be relevant if AOC takes office in a decade unless it's renewed. If it's not used then it would be no different than the status quo, but the rest of the bill expanding funding for border security and plugging asylum loopholes would still be in place. It's in no way formalizing that 5k migrants a day is "fine", it's simply a trigger when opaque and extraordinary measures can be taken.

Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans.

Trump was really no better than Obama when it comes to border crossings. A lot of it is driven by the relative strength of the economy, but also by non-US factors like the state of Latin American countries especially in the Northern Triangle. Your answer of "Trump didn't need this" is exactly the handwavey "Biden Bad" thing I was talking about in my earlier post. The assumption you seem to be coming to is that the tougher laws are all just a ruse, that Biden must be doing something sneaky, but this is effectively unfalsifiable.

It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open.

This law doesn't open the border. If you think it does, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what the bill does.

Why can’t we just have a clean bill that closes the border?

You say the golden triangle. The south is richer than they have ever been. There is always going to be some excuse. America will always be richer than every where else so there will always be economic demand.

I find it interesting you did not try saying these are real asylum seekers.

I prefer Trump over the bill because I know the bill does nothing when the wrong party is in power. Biden could have stopped this but chose not to.

Why can’t we just have a clean bill that closes the border?

I presume you mean "close the border to illegal immigrants". I agree that would be the best, but it's like saying "why don't we make murder illegal". It already is illegal, it's just a question of enforcement. This bill would have beefed up enforcement.

You say the golden triangle. The south is richer than they have ever been. There is always going to be some excuse. America will always be richer than every where else so there will always be economic demand.

I presume you did an autocorrect error and meant to type "Northern Triangle", not golden triangle.

The causes I listed aren't excuses, they're explanations that lie on a continuum. It's like judging the performance of a CEO based solely on the stock price, when you really need to understand the whole underlying environment to make a proper judgement. If the company grew by 10% but the rest of the sector grew by 50%, the CEO probably screwed up. Similarly, extraneous factors affect enforcement at the border.

I prefer Trump over the bill because I know the bill does nothing when the wrong party is in power.

You keep saying this but that doesn't make it true. At the very least this bill would have given more money for enforcement and closed an obvious loophole that illegals were abusing to enter the country. If Biden actually used the bill to its full effect (which he said he would) then it would have done even more.

I mean a clean bill where we close the border. And not the I claim asylum bullshit.

More comments

It wouldn’t necessarily limit Dem presidents much, but it would allow a GOP President much more discretion against mass illegal immigration. Given the Dems will do what they want anyway, that would have been a win.

I think you just made the argument for why they killed it. If you think the bill does 0 to limit immigration during a Dem presidency then the best course of action was maximizing the probability that Trump wins the election. Giving Biden a legislative win hurts Trumps election chances.

I am confident enough that Trump can crush immigration just by being POTUS that it’s not that important to have a bill.

This gets to my origional point that I disagreed with that the right killed the bill for shits and giggles. They correctly identified that winning the POTUS limits illegal immigration and the bill would still allow a Democrat to have an open door policy. The GOP wasn’t offered anything in the deal.

You really have to jump through mental gymnastics to get to this conclusion.

"We must not enact tougher immigration laws so that the guy who says he wants to use the tougher laws loses, in order to get a guy who I say will enact even tougher laws but who failed to actually enact any lasting changes".

Or, you know, we could just enact tougher laws now, then continue fighting for them later?

It is profoundly heart breaking watching people you otherwise respect and have affection for repeat nonsensical NPC talking points, as though they were their own original thoughts. It just completely breaks your perception of them. It reminds me when I was reading the Prince of Nothing series, and the main character is some genius hypnotist manipulator, and every other character he encounters goes from being an interesting individual contending for power in a Game of Thrones-esque power struggle to merely his puppet. By the end of the trilogy there are like, 3 actual characters left, and everyone else has become an NPC in thrall to him. I kind of hated it.

It's frightening above all else. It lowers my estimation of humanity on an absolute basis, versus merely impacting how I view that person. It changes how I view myself. It's like if your best friend tumbled over one day, cracked his skull wide open, and instead of flesh and blood and brains, there was just a hamsters on a wheel that quickly ran off, leaving your friend inert. And while your first thought might be "Was he always just a hamster on a wheel?" your next thought might be "Is there a hamster on a wheel in my head too?!"

It's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if LLMs aren't actually that smart, but that people are dumber than we thought. I can't think of a better analog to "Pattern matches language tokens based on a data set without any comprehension of their actual meaning" in people than just uncritically repeating NPC talking points, angrily, without considering for even a millisecond any of their broader implications. I've called it unidirectional knowledge before. You are spoon fed a list of data points, along with the only permissible conclusions you are allowed to draw from them. Do not draw outside the lines! Most people are happy not to.

Frankly I can't understand how we, as a species, made it through anything anymore. I don't understand how we progressed past city states. Maybe an elite, which really is better than us, and which really is necessary to keep us from all choking on our food because we forgot to chew (metaphorically) is real and required.

More importantly, if such an elite class of human is real, it's probably safe to assume you aren't among them. You have to face the very real possibility that you, like everyone else, just has a hamster on a wheel in their head.

Hampster wheels are fine. Or rather. As an LLM dev, I don't think there's a hard line between regurgitation and intelligence in the first place. The line comes from what you choose to regurgitate. How you choose to regurgitate. What you choose to absorb- in order to later regurgitate.

Choosing what to believe is ultimately a process. A complex process, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence can learn. Discernment is a process. A complex process that requires interacting with the real world, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence placed in the right environment can learn.

And once it's learned and cached, you can regurgitate. Iterate. Fill in your template with your context. Throw your new, more advanced tools at the wall and see what sticks. That's creativity. Then you proceduralize the things that stuck. Analyze the things that didn't using your various regurgitated analysis processes. Regurgitate those insights in your "previous work" section as you proceed to rinse and repeat.

I think most 'NPC's have brains that can support far more intelligence than their environment has made learnable. People got by in antiquity because midwits and geniuses alike scale- with limits of course, to the problems their environment requires them to solve and the tools (mental or otherwise) their environment gives them. Elites only need to tell people what to do insofar as people are incapable of testing what they're told.

I haven't read the Prince of Nothing series, but surely you've read Neal Stephensen? "We used to be p-zombies until (some of us) actually became sentient (maybe)" is the premise of a couple of his books.

While I sympathize with your take in general (I too know people who will just swallow The Latest Thing uncritically and there's no point talking to them about it), it's not stupidity and it's not new. People are largely group-thinkers and want to go along to get along and also lack the necessary time or energy to dig deeply into the particulars of whether a particular claim is true. Even here on the Motte we see people sometimes show up and plaster a laundry list of highly risible deepity-sounding assertions in a wall of text, and they rarely get much more than vibes-based pushback because who wants to hunt down each and every bullet point to dispute it? And on the rare occasions when someone does that, the deepity-poster disappears and returns after a while to do the same thing.

Jesse Singhal is slowly driving himself mad on Twitter because he keeps doing this with trans activists: "No, look at these fifteen studies I have carefully analyzed which show that what you are saying is not actually true!" he says for the fifteenth time, thinking that this time, Facts and Logic will make them stop calling him a transphobic Nazi.

There isn't some "elite" class of human capable of actually thinking. What we have are agreeable people who don't think most battles are worth fighting (especially at the cost of career and reputation and friendships) and a few highly disagreeable people (often on the autistic spectrum) who absolutely will fight over these things. I hesitate to say that the latter actually have much to do with building bridges and advancing civilization, even if we probably do need a few of them around.

your next thought might be "Is there a hamster on a wheel in my head too?!"

Yes, but I find the thought quite comforting. Looking at it this way keeps me from huffing my own farts, and in the end snaps me back from changing my perception of others. I know for a fact that I do actually think about all the crap going on around us, and I know for a fact that I'm also an NPC repeating other people's talking points most of the time, so, I assume, my thoughts about my interlocutor are just an expression of frustration, rather than saying anything deeper.

Maybe an elite, which really is better than us, and which really is necessary to keep us from all choking on our food because we forgot to chew (metaphorically) is real and required.

After a fashion. They're needed to coordinate society at such a wide scale, but going by the ideas they're implementing they're either not that bright, or comically evil, and in either case, I don't think we need them that much.

Have you read the scifi novel Blindsight? Gave me a similar feeling

I haven't, but I can probably ad it to my reading list. Making my way through Crime & Punishment lately, when I'm not working on a bunch of cabinet doors.

I'll +1 the recommendation of Blindsight.

It's arguments as soldiers and I have to constantly remind myself to keep in mind (1) don't do it myself, i.e. uphold now something I formerly said I opposed simply because it's someone on My Side saying it or it is an effective tactic in an argument I'm having and (2) be aware of when My Side and Our Guys do it as well.

I frequently get smacked on the wrist by the mods for breaches of "boo outgroup", but from my perspective, I'm being consistent: there are some things I don't accept, and I don't care if it's Susie Green or the Pope arguing for acceptance of those things, I'll oppose them both. And if the Pope says it, I'll say he's wrong (at the moment, despite it all, Francis is not saying that yet on some topics so, so far, so good) even though otherwise I do accept the authority of the Pope as the boss of me.

Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?

There's a fun saying I bring up from time to time when people try to use the statements of leaders of my church (I'm Mormon) against me/my faith/some position I hold: "The pope says he's infallible, but no one believes him. The Mormon prophet says he is fallible, but no one believes him."

Yes, you don’t have to believe non-official pronouncements of the pope, or official pronouncements not about faith or morals. But also the usual line about ‘papal infallibility has only been used 4 times in the history of the church, dogmatic beliefs are quite limited’ is also wrong.

The Catholic Church has the extraordinary magisterium, which is always infallible- infallible papal pronouncements and anathematizations by ecumenical councils fall here- and the ordinary magisterium, produced by the normal working of church governance, and which Carries varying levels of weight. A few arguable examples of infallible acts of the ordinary magisterium are Humanae Vitae, canonizations, the condemnation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rulings that women cannot be priests, etc. All of these are arguable as to their infallibility but Catholic theologians universally agree that disagreeing with them and remaining a Catholic is an extremely high bar(except for a minority of theologians who argue that disagreeing with post 1980 canonizations has a much lower bar due to changes in the process. Many of these theologians can point to specific examples of recent canonizations they disagree with, usually Oscar Romero or JoseMaria Escriva) in terms of effort put in and carefulness of the claim.

So in practice there’s some ambiguity as to what’s infallible or not, but general agreement as to what’s a weighty teaching and what can be disagreed with rather more freely(recent doctrines on the death penalty being an example in the latter category). There’s also an understanding that some teachings can be disagreed with, but the disagreement Carries a very high minimum in terms of effort, theological supports, caution with which it is expressed, etc.

Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?

Oh, yeah. The Pope can't say "The Brazil nut is the one and only official nut of the Catholic Church and anyone consuming any other nut is going straight to Hell". There's wiggle room. If he's going to change teaching, he better have a dang good reason and an entire team of theologians backing him up (this applies to any pope, I'm not picking on Francis in particular here).

This does bring up a good point though. Everyone in a political coalition does not hold all the views of everyone else in a political coalition. The hypocrisy standard does not apply especially since we essentially have two political parties and it’s going to be impossible for one party to have truly “pure” beliefs where everyone agrees on everything. Instead you end up with views in opposition to each other.

Within this though you do see Dems or GOP at times needing to defend coalition party views to keep them in the coalition while at times having leadership voicing other views. And of course the other side tries to promote the views of the most wild parts of the other coalition. Parliamentary systems are probably better at having more pure views within their coalition with clearer distinctions with leadership.

That being said we are not actually at war with Hezbollah so I am not even sure the connection here. But I do see a lot of the blue tribes coalition supporting what does look like a terrorist organization to me.

Most of us will react with the standard 'smile and change the subject' if we are not on board, because terminating near friendships has social consequences. This is the exact reason why democrats and the pro-palestinians see no reason to ever compromise and consider the validity of the necessity of a military or of Israel or of conservatives: there are zero, literally zero, social consequences to denigrating the out-group.

Of course this calculus can be assessed to be wrong, but it merely reflects the short-sightedness of the activist. There is a presumption that the military and police are mere dogs leashed and muzzled by whoever controls the government, and even if one does not control the government these stupid retards won't know how to start objecting to the superior intellect of the democrat urbanite. The social consequences for disrespecting violent men with guns tends to be far more immediate for residents of countries with less geographic dispersion than the USA, and until the protestors discover how hard the boot can actually clamp down, they will never be learn.

I would expect those who are "waving the flag of Hezbollah" (I'm sure someone at the campus protests has done this but I'm not sure what the specific example is) to be the sort of radicals who make even other pro-Palestinians uncomfortable and those who ranted about "Trump disrespecting the troops!" to be normie libs who support the police clearing the campuses of protestors.

Lots of the pro-Palestine protestors are waving the flag of Hamas, which has killed some IDF soldiers but no U.S. personnel as far as I know. The Hezbollah flag I’ve never heard of, although some of the protestors seem to generate word salad about why Hezbollah aren’t a bunch of murdering terrorists.

The point isn't the specific flags or the number of protestors, the point is that, unless someone proves otherwise, the resist libs and the pro-Palestine protestors would most naturally seem to be two specific constituencies, with one of them being prone to thinking that Biden is the only chance against fascism in the USA and the other thinking that Biden is a fascist, for example.

now waving the flag of Hezbollah who actually killed a lot of those troops.

If you mean in Syria, not many US soldiers have died in the occupation of Syria. Why on Earth would we respect them? Hillary Clinton's campaign to destabilize Syria via hefty sanctions while the US flooded the country with weapons has been an absolute disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, 13 million refugees of which a great many are in Europe, and the destruction of ancient and Christian culture in the region is nothing to respect.

Hezbollah has had a neighbouring country flooded with jihadists who are down right genocidal toward Hezbollah and Syrians of the same religious and ethnic background as Hezbollah. Why wouldn't they fight? It is absurd to call Ukraine an American interest and then condemn Hezbollah for fighting ISIS next door.

Conservatives make a grave mistake simping for troops. They did absolutely nothing for you. The military industrial complex has wasted trillions, murdered millions and is if anything spying and influencing far more than China and Russia combined.

Conservatives make a grave mistake simping for troops. They did absolutely nothing for you. The military industrial complex has wasted trillions, murdered millions and is if anything spying and influencing far more than China and Russia combined.

Difference between the grunts on the ground and the people in offices sending them out there, though. My late father was in the Irish army so I do have a tendency to go "I'm not blaming the poor bloody infantry for this clusterfuck because it's not Private Jones or Sergeant Smith or Major Brown deciding to fly off to Syria, it's civilian never wore bull's wool in their life Secretary Tonclint doing it". A lot of conservatives/Red Tribe/as you wish will have family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers who are or were at that level of "the military-industrial complex", or know people in that range, and so when they are "respecting the troops" it's Cousin Benny or Aunt Julia's ex-boyfriend they're identifying as "the troops".

Of course there are the types who go "respect the troops!" simply on political partisan grounds or to 'we must appeal to the rubes and simps by wrapping ourselves in the flag' or who are at the higher levels of the military-industrial complex, but when I hear about "50 ordinary soldiers killed out foreign", in general I think "the poor bastards" and not "serves the colonialising invading pawns of the M-I complex right!"

If you mean in Syria, not many US soldiers have died in the occupation of Syria.

I think they’re referring to the 240 US military personnel who were killed by Hezbollah (or rather its immediate precursor) in Beirut in 1983, which is the single highest one-day death toll for the US marines since Iwo Jima and for the entire US military since Vietnam.

Hezbollah has had a neighbouring country flooded with jihadists who are down right genocidal toward Hezbollah and Syrians of the same religious and ethnic background as Hezbollah. Why wouldn't they fight?

Israel has a neighboring territory flooded with jihadists who are downright and openly genocidal towards Israelis of Jewish ethnic and religious background, so I’m glad you’ve come around on the war in Gaza. In any case, Syrian jihadists were never particularly set on conquering Lebanon, it wasn’t a primary target for them and it would be just about the only thing that could unite the Maronites and the Shiites.

The analogy only holds weight if you buy into the argument that Israel/people of Jewish ethnic and religious background have as much right to stay on the Middle Eastern clay as the Syrians do, which I doubt is the case for the protesters or most of those who sympathise with them. The communicative strategy of the pro-Israel powers regarding its legitimacy seems to continue being limited to "all polite people in the room will gasp and assert that you just did something beyond the pale if you deny Israel's right to existence", but this is clearly fragile and dependent on an unbroken chain of respect for the opinion for "polite people", which evidently broke at some point upstream from the pro-Palestine left.

The commitment to this strategy to the exclusion of all others boggles my mind - at least come up with some apologia involving how Palestinians are really also culpable for the Holocaust because Hitler admired Islam, or some body of Foucaldian jargon-laden papers churned out by a network of Jewish Studies departments which purport to present a critical theory of how occupying the Holy Land was just. Most successful movements in history that depend on a claim (such as an assertion of morality) that can't be strictly proven seemed to recognize that you need to maintain multiple lines of persuasion to cover different audiences - Christianity had the social censure for those who think judgement by the elites makes right, charitable organizations for those who thought displays of altruism do, tales of miracles for those who thought a God better have godlike powers, theological faculties for those who were most impressed by the trappings of scholarship, and smoke-filled community rituals for those who were most swayed by gut feeling and dissolving the self in a crowd.

I think they’re referring to the 240 US military personnel who were killed by Hezbollah (or rather its immediate precursor) in Beirut in 1983, which is the single highest one-day death toll for the US marines since Iwo Jima and for the entire US military since Vietnam.

That was before Hezbollah. Secondly, they had no business being in Lebanon. The endless warmongering in the middle east has not had a benefit and has had a huge cost. If there were hundreds of foreign soldiers in Lebanon the Lebanese have a full right to hit back. Giving weapons to Ukraine but not acknowledging that the Lebanese have the right to defend their country is hypocritical.

Israel has a neighboring territory flooded with jihadists who are downright and openly genocidal towards Israelis of Jewish ethnic and religious background,

Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory, and they have every right to armed resistance.

Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory

And what, in your opinion, constitutes 'their territory'?

They have (like the Native Americans) a right to resist, but they also must accept being utterly vanquished in response.

This one caught a couple reports for "Boo outgroup", but while I think there's slight consensus building and some of the former, I don't see anything worth warning you for.

I only write this mod hat on to point out that while your comment is hardly ideal, a polite reminder and not a formal warning will hopefully suffice.

Edit: I'm afraid I didn't see that this was a top level post in the main thread. We expect more effort and less heat in that context, so consider this a warning to avoid this in the future.

Be Kind

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Be charitable.

Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is.

Leave the rest of the internet at the door.

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

I don't understand how this is even borderline. Where is the light / analysis / value that's overriding the negatives?

To add to the irony, your comment caught a report for lack of effort. This job is going to age me, and I do it for free.

Clean it up, jannie

Please note the edit/update.

In general, the mods take more pains to police top-level comments more, and enforce the standards most strictly there. Something buried a mile deep gets more slack. Not infinitely more so, certainly, but this would have passed under my threshold if buried in a comment chain 5 replies deep.

I was under the impression that this wasn't a top level comment, and in context of wider discussion, and at that point, it would have deserved a tut-tut more than a formal warning.

Sadly, I've been disabused of that notion, and this doesn't fly as a top level comment. He doesn't have any previous mod record, hence a warning to knock it off suffices.

Yes, I read your edit before I made my comment. I'm asking what value you see in that comment -- why a warning would not have been merited if it had been made several levels deeper, despite the fact that it violates several rules and exists solely to complain bitterly about how terrible the author's outgroup is.

@self_made_human goes into more depth than I would, but his general point is sound: people say a bunch of eye-watering awful shit in the comments, and it’s not always worth policing. The further down in a conversation we go, the more likely that there’s context which we missed. Especially when sarcasm or hypotheticals are involved.

We’ve got at least one user who will report anything and everything shorter than two sentences as low-effort. Doesn’t matter if it’s five levels down in a conversation, or if the parent asked a yes/no question. That’s the rule which gets the most leniency based on depth, since there are lots of good reasons to have a short answer.

boo-outgroup or antagonism…well, it’s a lot harder to find an excuse for that. I’d have modded this particular one wherever it showed up. But I suspect I’ve already earned a reputation as a party pooper.

Us mods aren't monolithic, though we try to present a unified front. I'm sure there are some out there who would be harsher on OP, or more keen to monitor deeper threads. You can't expect perfect consistency. But I happen to be the one up when the more Westward mods are asleep.

If it had been deeper down, then I would assume that:

A) Far fewer would have their eyeballs contaiminated. I don't recall us mods ever being involved in the most degenerate case, namely DMs, at that point one person or the other should block and move on.

B) It might have been in the context of a heated debate, where being somewhat uncharitable can be occasionally excused, if not indefinitely or infinitely. Someone can be provoked into being exasperated, or less than maximally polite, and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

C) His mod record is otherwise clean.

Hence I initially wanted to politely tell him to shy away from that kinda thing without putting a dent in his invisible to you mod record, but when it's a top level post, absolutely not, it's warning worthy. He's got 83 comments, and no warnings till today, so as far as I can tell, he's mostly within acceptable bounds. Unfortunately, B isn't true, though that was an error on my part while trying to clear the mod queue. At any rate, a warning would probably be the default mod action, it's unlikely any of us would want to ban him for a first infraction, even one clearly in violation of norms. Repeated misbehavior and being incorrigible? Or just something awful? Banhammer swings.

Every time I've gone online since I was 10 years old I've seen some braindead take or fallacious reasoning or contradictory position being expressed. The world is full of people who are ignorant, immature, incoherent, insane, and intransigent and no amount of arguing on my part is going to make a dent in their number. If I tried anyway and blew up at every instance of what appeared to me to be deranged hysteria, I would in fact become one of those deranged hysterics myself (I believe we call them Twitter People). Since that still wouldn't accomplish anything and is, as the kids say, a bad look, I choose to channel my time and energy towards more productive tasks instead. That's all there is to it.

I'm not talking about people online. That doesn't bother me.

The point is that those are the same people. They say the same things in person that they do online because below a certain age there isn't a difference in their minds and you have to treat it as such.

If it makes you feel better, the protestors are getting rekt by the powers that be, certainly the number of arrests of students/faculty is now over a thousand across the nation. Some manifestations of deranged hysteria are patronized by the elite apparatus, and others are brutally suppressed. The Israel protests are falling under the latter category, whereas 2020 had the unanimous support of the political and cultural elite, because that was directed at white people and not Israel's war that the United States is responsible for.

I imagine this is going to get modded for being inflammatory / antagonistic, but I guess there's a core question here that's worth answering.

I just laugh. I accept history as absurd. I read some nonsense in the news, and it makes me laugh how stupid everything is, and I don't suppose things were really less stupid in the past. I don't suppose that I'm less stupid. It's funny. You have to accept that basically illiterate positions, even if they're strongly-felt, are not strongly-reasoned. And that's how people are, and nothing you do is going to change it. Being frustrated about it is about as useful as being mad at traffic. They can't hear you, it's just how the world works.

Are you trying to contain your anger? When I get angry (or broken-hearted or tired or what) I find it useful to let the feeling wash over me. Instead of trying to suppress whatever I'm feeling, or working myself up about it, I just feel it for what it is. It's like a kind of meditation. In many cases, the worst of the hysteria and ranting comes from people who aren't very attuned to their feelings, full of emotion because they never resolve any.

I just laugh. I accept history as absurd. I read some nonsense in the news, and it makes me laugh how stupid everything is, and I don't suppose things were really less stupid in the past. I don't suppose that I'm less stupid. It's funny. You have to accept that basically illiterate positions, even if they're strongly-felt, are not strongly-reasoned. And that's how people are, and nothing you do is going to change it.

To quote the great Carl Brutananadilewski

To paraphrase the red scare girls; “Don’t kill yourself, because then you won’t get to see the next retarded thing that happens.”

Sage advice.

I doubt there are very many people who were angry about Trump disrespecting the troops and are now actively pro-Hezbollah.

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!


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