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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24831 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Lol now TheMotte is getting into trump assassination territory....Should I stop coming here and start watching fox news?

  • -37

If you don't like the commentary, yes, go do something else. And I did not read the OP as suggesting or advocating for assassination, which makes your pot-shot seem disingenuous and contrived.

Your constant low-effort sneers and pointless posts (and self-admitted drunkposting) are becoming very annoying, and if you don't stop, you're going to get banned.

'Wow, a viewpoint or topic I don't agree with? This place is getting a bit too low brow for the likes of me'

You are equal to a Fox News viewer, believe it or not. You just come at it from a different direction.

It has been quite the journey over the last decade seeing this general space, in its various homes, drift from being a place for a variety of dissenters, idle imaginers, original thinkers, and malcontents to being just another space for Trumpers to get together and gripe about everyone but themselves.

  • -25

Be the change you want to see: post relevant non-Trump content. Those griping Trumpers can't stop you.

Unfortunate, because while this place rarely bans people and to my knowledge has never does it on the basis of their ideology, most online leftist spaces will ban you for having dissenting opinion (or even centrist opinion, hence that meme about how the centrists of the past are now considered far rightists). That leaves very little space on the internet for debate and discourse between the left and the right.

Imagine what the forum would look like if every progressive who flamed out and tearfully quit after losing an argument didn't do that.

Well that is a pretty uncharitable way to put things. I'm to the right of most of my social circle but I'm to the left of whatever this place is turning into. People just get sick of getting downvoted and unable to post in real time, eventually they say something rude and get banned or they say "fuck it" and leave.

When the conversation turns to being worried about trump picking his VP based on possible assassination, putting guns in holes as a generational family gun stash in your back yard, "powers that be" conspiring to eliminate people like you, heavily downvoting someone pointing out having sex with blackout drunk people is probably wrong, being afraid to leave your red state for fear of being locked up for defending yourself, practicing religion harder being the only answer to societal ills, women only being truly happy barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen....I mean the parody starts to write itself at some point.

The votes don't matter at all. They should let you toggle being able to see votes in order to prevent the emotional distress some apparently get.

But they do matter. Negative "karma" slaps a cooldown on your ability to post.

On reddit yes. And auto-collapses your comment. And puts it at the bottom of the thread.

But I thought we didn't have all that around here.

@Amadan am I correct to think the worst features of reddit karma are missing here? It is just a number at the Motte.

afaik, the only effect of getting consistently downvoted here is that the poster will keep winding up in the new user filter, which means we mods have to manually approve their posts. This happened to @guesswho, despite his having been a regular poster for months, and now it's happening to @AhhhTheFrench.

Could you not just manipulate vote totals so they go +20 when they fall too far below 0.

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Can you defend how praciticing religion harder isn’t a solution to most societal ills?

Well it is make believe to start. How would you react to being asked why the 3 little pigs were a not solution to societal ills?

Also the countries that have tried that are all total shitholes. Been to a theocracy lately? Not great.

And the Deep South sucks ass. Alcoholism, teen pregnancy…

Correlation isn’t causation.

I'd prefer teen pregnancy to single and childless at 40 if those are the only two choices.

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Deleted post, what happened here?

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Well that is a pretty uncharitable way to put things.

Anyone who's been around long enough could name names. "I lost an argument about HBD and the mods won't ban anyone for it, time to make a dramatic post about how everyone is Nazis and I quit" was a meme for quite a while in the Reddit days.

I've never mentioned anything about HBD. I tend push back against religious zealotry and related magical thinking, it is funny that so many religious posters can look at scientific evidence regarding race and draw logical conclusions, but can't do the same in their personal lives regarding "spirituality".

You are nowhere near a good enough poster to adopt this tone and be taken seriously.

Case in point, last week you made statements referring to stay-at-home mothers as breeding machines and house servants. It was the kind of thing that would get updoots on most of Reddit, but you were clearly and utterly unprepared for any sort of pushback.

When asked what it was about an average menial job outside the home that elevates a woman from the status of machine or servant you completely imploded. I personally love the upvotes and downvotes here. They tell me interesting things, like how your claim that I was putting words in your mouth persuaded absolutely no one.

You aren't some hero fighting the good fight, you're an /r/atheism midwit who's out of his league.

Much as I hate to affirm French's passive-aggressive non-report report, he's right that throwing ad hominems is not allowed, and you've been warned enough that you know this. The only reason you're not getting a ban for this namecalling, given your track record, is that I don't want to reward either of you for flinging shit.

Spicy stuff somedude! That Huxley line was gold, I just had a hearty chuckle re-reading it, -20 just proved my point. If I'm not wrong you've also just overstepped somewhat and there is a modpost incoming.

  • -14

I remember some of those specific comments you're referencing. But I don't see what the problem is?

Some of the views that get expressed here are views that I find deeply objectionable. Like, not just silly, but actually upsetting. But in spite of that (in some senses, because of that) I think this is a very valuable discussion space. Other people think differently than I do, that's life. I'm just glad we have a place that doesn't moderate on content where we can discuss controversial topics in a relatively civil manner.

That is what initially attracted to me to this space and why I was very excited about it. I'm just sad to slowly watch it turn from a rat adjacent discussion forum into more of a bog standard Tucker Carlson talking point partisan space. Maybe not in all the comments (yet), but the votes are there to turn it into an echo chamber once all the non-conformists are driven off. A right wing "Shit post" even one that catches a mod ban, will get 30 upvotes while a well thought out slightly to the left posing will usually be in the negative. The writing is on the wall and I'm unsure as to why I'm fighting against it.

You're not saying anything that hasn't been said for years - since before we left reddit.

The median poster here is not a MAGA Trump supporter, but a disaffected former liberal. Actual MAGAs, or even old-school Republicans/conservatives, are almost certainly a minority, albeit a vocal one. We have some (former) alt-righties and DRs and a few actual fascists, and a few lefties. But most are still somewhere in the center and only appear "right wing" simply because, as others have pointed out, we don't ban people for supporting Trump or preaching white supremacy or complaining about Jews or saying trans women are men, and thus we tend to attract people who really want to talk about those things.

Honestly, what would you like? More left-leaning opinions? Bring in some more (higher quality, non-trollish) left-leaning posters. Maybe you are right and we're doomed to eventually become a Nazi bar. But you aren't helping when most of your contributions read like shitposts too.

By the way, there is quite a dedicated core of left-wing posters who consistently downvote and report every right-wing post, and vice versa. Despite people claiming they don't want an echo chamber, empirically quite a few people do want an echo chamber. So we're always fighting against that too.

We really need a new poll. Maybe I'll ask Trace what his old questions were and see if I can put a form together.

I haven’t noticed any uptick in Nazi posts. I suppose we’re more racist on average than we were on Reddit, we definitely have a higher fraction of socially conservative tradcaths. But most people here seem to be, on average, fairly centrist, blue tribe but fed up with antics, the sort of people who would be persuadable Biden voters in a better economy.

I don't have a graph over time or anything, but we do have, what, four prominent Neo-Nazis? Three? That's a pretty high number by internet standards, and plenty of people around them who are sympathetic in a soft way to them. We don't seem to have many actual left-wingers, though.

I'm not tarring everyone here - I'm here, after all. But I feel like we have more capital-R Racists here than we do lefties.

It's true, I think, that the Motte is mostly blue tribe. Even the racists and Neo-Nazis here are in fact blue tribe. (Per the original formulation, there are Republican-voting right-wing blue-tribers, and Democrat-voting left-wing red-tribers. The tribes aren't just voting groups.) Indeed, I suspect that their position is actually more appealing for a young, clever, right-wing-attracted blue triber. Being a Neo-Nazi is special - being a (pseudo?) intellectual far-righter obsessed with genetics and population IQ and ethnostates makes you just as anathema to the left as being a MAGA barstool type, but it at least makes you different to the MAGA type. You can still position yourself separately from the poorly-educated populist blue-collar beer-and-guns-and-Jesus type of right-wing, because I really doubt anyone in the far-right wants to be confused with them.

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persuadable Biden voters in a better economy

Is the economy better because Biden is a really successful articulate president, with engaging ideas that get to the root causes of problems, imbalances and deficits in our country?

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a higher fraction of socially conservative tradcaths.

I have been summoned.

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I don't want left leaning posts. I want rational posts!!!! I want hot takes on current events from a reasonable and objective body of smart people. Not this partisan shit. It just makes me upset and mad at what it could have been, and what it has been when in full form. I occasionally have been able to come on here and the former sub for some of the smartest and most informative information available anywhere on the planet.

Maybe the news is too slow now and it is impacting the quality of the posts, maybe it is ideological drift or capture, all I know is I'm not getting the discourse I would expect from a forum that perhaps I saw as a more august body than it was.

Are there any particular current events you'd like hot takes on, at the moment?

Looking at the AAQCs from August 2022, something like half of those people are still posting here regularly. It's largely the same people posting here now that were posting back then. So I'm not sure when you think the alleged golden age was, but apparently, it was more than two years ago. (Which means you're still posting on a forum that you think has been shit for 2+ years.)

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People just get sick of getting downvoted and unable to post in real time

You've been shitposting here from day one, dude.

One man's trash.

  • -13

Sorry, I kind of have to agree with ArjinFerman—at least, it would be disastrous for the forum if everyone started adopting your tone and habits of response. You're consistently above-average in antagonism and dismissiveness. And this definitely is one of the factors in you drawing more downvotes—it's often the reason if ever I downvote you. That of course doesn't address the overall problem of voting based on whether people like it driving dissenting views away, but it could make a meaningful difference in your particular case.

So I guess, two.

I know you don't like deficit spending, but I don't think I was particularly rude or dismissive in that recent exchange. I didn't accuse you of magical thinking as you accused me for disagreeing on monetary policy (I save that for the religious debates where I am summarily chastised). I feel that budget hawks continually underestimate the power of extend and pretend, and we may, in fact, be able to do it forever.

No, you're right, you were reasonable in that exchange, and I probably shouldn't have said that. I was the one less able to control my tongue keyboard. I guess I was thinking of other comments of yours. If all your comments were like the ones in that exchange, well, I'd prefer it if you'd get further into the weeds of what precisely was going on, but you were certainly civil enough.

If by extend and pretend, you mean the current policy, doesn't that end up requiring more of the world's resources each time, and is growing at a faster rate than the US's or world's economy?

I think infinite borrowing can be done at a sustainable rate; just not the one we're at. If it's below inflation, or below economic growth, there's not much of a problem. We're just in a much worse situation than that, and I think the way you tell that isn't by looking at who has e.g. the largest military, but at interest rates, amount of government spending spent on debt, rates of economic growth, etc.

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Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

I've never posted ironically. I stand behind every post I've made. Unlike those of you who hide their posting history.

I think you're implying that we've become too ideologically homogeneous and people's viewpoints aren't being challenged often enough here. Maybe that's true if you restrict yourself to only looking at "basic" culture war issues - Trump, trans issues, DEI, etc. But if you look at the total range of issues that get discussed here, we have lots of arguments over lots of things. We have plenty of substantial disagreements with each other.

It would be better if we had more "garden variety" leftists who were anti-Trump, pro-trans, etc. so we had more ideological diversity, but, the reasons for our lack of leftists have already been discussed ad nauseam.

I also see that you haven't made a top level post in the last 3 months. You are the forum. If you think the posts here are low quality, then write the kinds of posts that you would prefer to read.

Did anyone who complains about "trumpers" ever complain about the opposite, or it is just usual tactic of "identify the community population as problematic, suggest doing something about them"?

I'm more than happy to complain about Leftists and their 'liberal' fellow travelers and useful idiots, does that count?

I doubt many people here are Trumpers. They are probably better described as anti anti trumpers.

Or even "anti-a-fraction-of-anti-Trumpers"? I think Trump was a depressingly sub-par president, but I'm still able to appreciate that the right way to beat him is "nominate someone much better", not "insist that prostitute hush money is clearly a campaign expense and prosecute misreporting it".

I’m not even sure reporting an NDA as a legal expense is misreporting it…

I take and agree with your larger point

Also Hillary funded the Steele dossier and falsely reported it as legal expenses. I notice she wasn't prosecuted in criminal court for doing that.

I’m not even sure reporting an NDA as a legal expense is misreporting it…

It's ambiguous enough that I feel certain that had Trump declared it as a campaign expense, we'd see the exact same case with the prosecution making the claim that no, paying someone to keep quiet should not be recorded as a campaign expense.

Ambiguity should also be the death of the charge. Rule of lenity.

The problem is the prosecutor will argue that it was blindingly obvious that (insert bunch of opaque regulations) said Trump had to record it as a campaign expense and not a business expense. The defense will argue that no, (insert different bunch of opaque regulations) said he should have recorded it as a business expense and not a campaign expense. The jury, not being experts on the ins and outs of New York business accounting, will not be able to come to a conclusion on the merits, so it'll just be a matter of who they believe. The prosecution certainly won't admit to any ambiguity.

Anyone can make a toplevel post, there've always been a few of these.

Putting a 77-year-old in prison unjustly (if that is indeed what is being attempted) is on par with assassinating him.

No, it’s not. And no, it isn’t.

Is it your belief the lawfare is just?

“Have you stopped beating your wife?”

I’d say the Stormy Daniels prosecution is probably unjust in that it wouldn’t be happening but for Trump’s political status. Low confidence.

The classified documents, on the other hand? Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing. While I was surprised that it escalated to a trial, I don’t think it’s unjust.

My understanding is that a low level government worker who did what Trump did with classified documents would go to jail, but an important politician (e.g. Hillary, Joe Biden, Sandy Berger) likely wouldn't.

a random citizen

Those people don't handle classified documents on the regular.

How about a random politician?

True. I was thinking of Thug Shaker Central guy: low level military.

A better natural comparison is Biden, who had 25-30 documents around his house and office. The report on him concluded with a Hillary-worthy lack of “why, how or whom.” Why didn’t Trump get that benefit of the doubt?

  1. They’re confident in the why, how, and whom.
  2. He’s being punished for non-cooperation with NARA.
  3. He’s being punished as a proxy for other unprovable crimes, like using RICO against mobsters.
  4. He’s being harassed for personal distaste.
  5. He’s being harassed to keep him out of office.

I’d say 2-5 could count as lawfare, but most people using that term mean something more like 4 or 5.

1 is almost certainly true. Look how much the warrant focuses on specific people. They were definitely more confident in who was actually handling the boxes and giving the orders.

Same for 2. I have to stress—NARA did have reason to believe Trump was holding out on them. Biden’s team bent over backwards to avoid that.

3 is implausible; it’s not like there’s a lack of other cases to use. Including actual RICO charges.

4 and 5 are more credible. I’d be very surprised if people on these teams didn’t dislike the man or even think he’s a danger to the country. Enough to fabricate their entire job (e.g. planting classified docs)? Probably not. Enough to push when they wouldn’t for anyone else? Much more likely.

In short, I think there are a lot of reasons. The ones which I find most likely are the least “lawfare” of the bunch.

I think that's a fairly good summary of why this is a scissor statement.

Ultimately, one's view of the situation is dependent on how much respect they have for the institutions in question. And the object level facts of whether this was or wasn't technically illegal don't matter except to us nerds.

They may not even really be what decides this case, ultimately.

Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing.

Probably not a random person, but every other President in history -- which does seem a bit unfair?

Every other President post Nixon, you mean. Since the Presidential Records Act was passed specifically to keep him from holding on to stuff.

The best comparison is probably Biden or Pence. In both cases, they got ahead of the search warrants and basically bent over for NARA. No valet testimonies or partial handovers. I think that has a lot to do with it.

Reagan is another possibility. Apparently he was allowed to keep diaries, but I can’t find the relevant part in the Hur report.

Biden’s violations include papers from when he was a senator. Those papers were ones he was only supposed to have viewed in a clean room. Biden absolutely broke the law. But because his DOJ was in charge he “cooperated” with himself.

Biden and Pence were not President -- every other President has been allowed to go through his papers at his leisure and select what to return and when. Obama probably still has stuff. It seems like a fairly civilized policy.

No random person could be in Trump's position vis-a-vis the classified documents, so "every other President in history" is really one of the few reasonable comparisons.

That is, no one who wasn't in high political office could actually receive classified documents in the way that Trump is alleged to.

What about the fraud case? Or the Rico case?

And have you read some of the unredacted statements coming up in the Florida case? It suggests some degree of set up (and typical Trump stupidity)

Which one is the fraud case? Hard to search.

Yes, I’ve been keeping up with the unredactions. Mostly to argue with people in the other subthread. I swear, when I started reading I didn’t look like such a partisan hack!

A few of the claims are very defensible. Then they’re used to argue something much more elaborate (and, of course, more favorable to Trump). Nothing about the document reordering changes the facts of the warrant or the charges. Translating “we acknowledge inconsistency with what we previously understood and represented to the Court” as “we are lying liars who got caught” is disingenuous.

That conclusion is propped up by thinner evidence. There’s a paragraph suggesting NARA gave Trump boxes at one point? That must mean they were the classified documents; it’s all a setup! News outlets ran with a misleading FBI photo? Psyop! Any time Politico or CNN says something uncharitable? Proof of the deep-seated conspiracy. Except when the judge postpones; clearly she’s the only rational, unbiased individual in this whole mess.

The biggest outlier is the claim about early DoJ/NARA collaboration, which is most likely to prove a political but-for. It’s also getting far less attention from Trump partisans. Is that because they aren’t sure about the timeline? Because they understand the difference between correlation and causation? Because they already assume the political motive is the only way? I don’t know. That’s the issue I’ll be following most closely.

Fraud is where he was hit with a 350m penalty for making allegedly fraudulent statements to the bank for a loan on which he paid every cent on the loan (which doesn’t mean there wasn’t fraud but disgorgement at best would be much smaller)

Oh, another NY case. Is this the one where he was inflating penthouse sizes?

I don’t know anything about fraud judgments, but I’m willing to believe the judge based that penalty on Trump’s politics.

For a standard prison, no it isn't. Prisoners can communicate with the outside world and file lawsuits, to give two pertinent differences.

I'm imaging life in prison for a rich 77-year-old is likely a worse-than-death outcome.

In the staggeringly unlikely event of trump being in gen pop, he’ll do fine by smearing some money around.

Prison is a place there's literally nothing to do but play social dominance games. Trump would probably do fine if he didn't get killed learning the ropes.

...why? This feels like a complete non-sequitur.

What they are openly trying to do to Trump is as bad as an assassination attempt, is my point.

From who's point of view? The voters? The average global citizen? Surely in Trump's own subjective experience getting assassinated is worse than going to prison.

Average global citizen - depends if you like him

Voters - I think more than not think it’s an abuse of process

Trump - he has a big ego. There would be a certain historic parallel if he was assassinated with Julius Caesar. Who probably is a good comp for his career so far. If little Ron or Vivek or someone not known emerged as Augustus finishing his goals and Trump was remembered as Caeser then he might not mind being assassinated

I think @JTarrou called it a year ago - Trump is Tiberius Gracchus. After he goes down, every future populist leader will know what's waiting for them.

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Trump is given a choice: Go to prison for the rest of your life or with probably P get assassinated. For what value of P is Trump indifferent? If it's for a P>.9 the two are very similar.

Really though, this is why we need a thread for more low-effort, dumb and fun stuff. I guess Friday Fun is kind of that, but Cernovich rambling about assassinations just isn't that fun.

But there are already lots of places on the internet for low effort dumb fun stuff. /pol/. rDrama. Whatever floats your boat. I don’t need TheMotte to become those sites. It’s fine for them to remain separate.

Trump is Tiberius Gracchus

On which of these other places would you see a comment like this implying that readers know who Tiberius Gracchus was?

Trump isn’t a Gracchus anyways, he’s Marius.

Is Tiberius Gracchus someone we are expected to know here as common knowledge? I’ve actually read Gibbons huge book and can’t place him a long time ago. I assume I am just expected to be smart enough to google and hit Wikipedia.

He’s a solid 300 years before anything discussed in detail by Gibbon.

Yes if you are a man and therefore think about Rome every day.

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