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MadMonzer

Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The reality is that men are fairly expendable. Society can afford for 30% of young men to die in the trenches and recover fairly quickly; their widows receive help from the community to raise children, and later they marry older widowers.




Empirically, this isn't true for cisHajnal societies. In both the UK and France, most of the women whose prospective husbands died in WW1 ended up as childless spinsters. I have seen, and take seriously, the theory that the 1950's sex relations were the way they were because WW2 casulaties (not just deaths - also physical or psychological wounds which tank a man's marriage market value) created a female-heavy marriage market.




The only reason, I think, our society doesn't see this is that we haven't had a war with existential stakes since women joined the military in any appreciable numbers.




If you look at countries which faced existential mechanised wars and actually tried to win them, it is a pretty short list. The UK in WW2, Israel multiple times, Ukraine now. Corner cases on the "mechanised" point include the USSR in WW2 and Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, as well as multiple belligerents in WW1. In most of these cases (though notably not Ukraine), there was heavy coercive mobilisation of women for war work, including war work that was profoundly not "women's work", with an understanding that lost fertility was part of the tradeoff. The reason why women were not on the front lines was that the low teeth-to-tail ratio of modern mechanised armies meant that they weren't needed - in WW2 and later wars there are more male conscripts than front-line roles to fill. So "Should we have women in the army?" boils down to "which REMFS should be in uniform and subject to military discipline?".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But yeah, a lot of young women just treat the workplace as another playground for being cute ("aww here's me being cuuttte") and doing cute, fun things ("Gen Z Boss and a Mini! Gen Z Boss and a Mini!"). Plus, a lot of young women have never heard "no" all their lives, so someone disagreeing with them—even gently—feels like a massive insult to their Wonderfulness.




Just to check, you know the women in the Gen Z Boss and a Mini video were running a profitable startup?


I think male startup founders sometimes goof off for a few minutes too - certainly everything Paul Graham says about the culture of successful startups implies that you want a culture where any goofing off happens with colleagues in the office and not with mates in the pub.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The same is true for common elective procedures in private hospitals in the UK. You can't get a completely fixed price for reasons that aren't clear to me, but the permitted escalation is limited and transparent. (In most cases it is just the basic room rate for an extended hospital stay).


Billing per highly granular code is a choice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(and no one even thought it could be used this way)




Apart from the trial judge and 4/5 appellate judges. The Higgitt/Rosado opinion agrees that executive law 63(12) applies - nothing in the text of the law says it only covers frauds against "little guys", that's just how it has historically been enforced. (It also agrees that if the facts found by Engoron are correct, the Trump Org defendants are guilty - the disagreement is about whether Engoron was allowed to make those factual findings at the summary judgement stage of proceedings).




Not only would the state of New York not "prosecute" (remember, this is an equity action) some rando for similar behavior using this law and its novel legal theory,




You are technically correct here - if you or I misstated the square footage of an appartment by a factor of three, or valued a property subject to deed restrictions on the basis that it wasn't, and got caught (which is admittedly unlikely), then we would be facing a normal prosecution for mortgage fraud. I don't know why James used executive law 63(12) - I always assumed that as a civil forfeiture statute it allows a lower standard of proof than a criminal statute.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  1. Given the wording of the rider, the question isn't "does it count as renting?". it is "did James intend to give her relative the rights of a long-term tenant, including the legal right to exclude James from her own home?" If the amount of money is as James said it was (<$5000 over a multi-year period) that is more consistent with "no - James intended to grant her relative a license" than "yes - James intended to grant a legally binding tenancy at a soft rent". The Fannie/Freddie guidance on occupancy types explicitly says that the receipt of rent is not sufficient to disqualify a property from second home status.
    2. 

  2. I don't consider James' statements to be uncorroborated. There are documents. I haven't seen them, but the career prosecutors and Trump-appointed US Attorney who have think the case is not prosecutable. That strongly suggests that the statements are corroborated, and we will get to see the corroborating evidence if there is a trial.
    3. 



The other point is that this was economically a second home transaction, not an investment - James's motives for buying the house and allowing her relative to live in it were personal and not commercial, and she was paying the mortgage out of her own resources, not the rent. The business reason for charging a higher interest rate on investment mortgages than second homes is that


    

  • investment borrowers are relying on rental income to pay the mortgage (and the way they are underwritten reflects this) and can therefore be forced into a foreclosure situation by a long void period or non-paying tenant.
    • 

  • investment borrowers have no non-financial stake in the property and are therefore more likely to walk away from an underwater mortgage even if they could pay.
    • 



The first of these is the key one - in the UK you get "second home" pricing on a mortgage if you can qualify based on non-rental income, regardless of who is occupying the property. This doesn't change the fact that James is guilty if she misrepresented her plans for occupancy, but it is relevant to the plausibility of her story that she was honest about what she was doing with the lender and they agreed to underwrite the loan as a second home anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A secondary question: Perhaps, much like the mainstream media, I am omitting important context from my summary. Are there additional facts I should consider which would (or should) change the way I see this lawfare business?




The critical point you are ignoring is that Trump was guilty, but James appears to be innocent. The behaviour she has been indicted for is applying for a mortgage on the basis that the house on Peronne Avenue would be a secondary residence when she was in fact intending to rent it out. James claims that she allowed a family member to live in the house in exchange for a small contribution to utilities and maintenance, and that she accurately described her plans to the bank. If James is telling the truth, then no crime. The evidence that would allow me to determine who is telling the truth here is not public, but we do know that the career AUSAs assigned to prosecute the case declined to do so, and that the Trump-appointed US Attorney resigned rather than overruling them.


AFAIK, no President of the United States has previously ordered the malicious prosecution of someone they should have known was innocent.




Normally in situations like this, the mortgage applicant is not prosecuted.




As an entirely separate point, this is a problem. Primary residence fraud is not victimless - among other things it defeats the homeownership-promotion mission of Fannie and Freddie. But because it is almost never prosecuted it appears to be common.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure if "unprovoked" is quite the right word, since (as far as I know) Trump et al had not engaged in that sort of lawfare previously.




From the anti-Trump perspective, the attempts to prosecute Trump were provoked by his committing crimes - they were not intended to be a tit-for-tat lawfare campaign. Letitia James' decision to prioritise bringing that particular civil fraud suit was motivated by animus, but the type of fraud Trump was charged with was something he was in fact guilty of (Trump's successful appeal was about the size of the fine, not guilt), and which you or I would be prosecuted for in the unlikely event that we (a) did it and (b) got caught.  The federal and Georgia election-related cases and the documents case were prosecutions for egregious wrongdoing of which Trump was unquestionably guilty - any functioning justice system would have prosecuted in the absence of a clearly established immunity bar. I'm happy to admit that the Stormy Daniels false accounting case was basically pure lawfare - I think Trump was technically guilty, but it wouldn't have been prosecuted against someone who wasn't a political opponent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


One thing that a lot of analyses leave out is that the inquisition and it’s excesses in both Europe and the New World were the result of Christendom being besieged by Islam for 500 years.




I don't think this is true. The periods of peak inquisition activity were around the time of the Albigensian Crusade (which happened during a period of temporary respite for the Holy Land Crusaders because the Muslim states of the Middle East were being ravaged by Genghis Khan) and the Spanish Inquisition (which happens after the Reconquista is complete, in the country that was about as far as you could get from the Ottoman Empire). It is almost like the absence of an external enemy causes the search for an internal enemy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the UK, fish in school (including explicitly C of E schools) and workplace canteens on Friday had been the default since well before I was born, and I am reasonably sure that it became the default back when anti-Catholicism was still part of the national identity. I grew up associating it with Christianity generally, not Catholicism.


Of course, the traditional English fish and chips is not exactly an abstemious meal - and indeed the English Catholic hierarchy has warned the faithful that eating a huge plateful of fish and chips defeats the purpose of the Friday fast. I remember playing bridge on Friday evening against a man who was some kind of Catholic lay minister, and as we stuffed ourselves with fish he explained that his parish was pushing the idea of "eat what you want on Friday, but only 2/3 as much as you normally would".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think the US culture war is Law vs Chaos - the "Red = Law, Blue = Chaos" and the "Red = Chaos, Blue = Law" narratives are roughly equally easy to write. "The real problem is that the Blues want total control of everything down to your kids' innermost thoughts while the Red just want to grill" seems to be the most common narrative on the Motte and is of the Red=Chaos variety.


The Blue tribe has room for the hippies and the HR ladies, with which of those groups is winning the intra-Blue conflict switching from decade to decade. Similarly the Reds have room for the Gadsden-flag waving hillbillies and the father-knows-best authoritarians. In both cases homo sapiens hypocritus leaves space for both in the same person depending on which is convenient.


In so far as there is a deep underlying conflict behind the US culture war (mostly, it is pure tribalism), it is elves vs dwarfs. Reds think that wealth comes out of the ground and that cities are parasitic on farmers and miners, Blues (and Greys, who are just dissident Blues) think that wealth comes from the application of human ingenuity and that rural areas are parasitic on productive cities.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a lot of female-coded service work that is either not being done, or being done in the middle of the night by resentful women who also work a full-time job in the productive economy, because the market-clearing price for it is too high for the middle class to afford (either directly or via a service-sector business). If you solve for the equilibrium where a lot of female-coded bullshit jobs disappear and middle-class married couple households are significantly richer, there would be a lot more nannies, housekeepers, personal assistants, waitresses, receptionists etc.  than there are now. They would also be better off (due to lower personal taxes) unless they were single mothers.


That society is one in which middle-class women who are still mostly getting married eventually and staying married may feel more pressure to marry rather than girlbossing as a spinster, but the working-class women who are currently driving the decline of marriage won't feel any more pressure to marry a schlub in preference to waiting tables.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Critically, 18 is the age at which normie parents - and particularly normie red tribe parents - stop thinking "What if this was my daughter?". Of course the reality is that Mirpuri rape gangs, Jeffrey Epstein, your local street corner pimp etc. all preferentially go after kids without high-functioning, involved parents, so it was vanishingly unlikely to be your daughter. But I don't think normies get this.


If it was your teenage daughter, the age of consent in your jurisdiction wouldn't be relevant to your desire to wreak terrible revenge against the sleazebag.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Plus, somebody is going to get his dying endorsement, and that will count for something. I don't think enough that it can win anyone the presidency, but probably enough that it can keep any other Republican from winning it.




Trump is sufficiently popular with the GOP base that anyone he endorses will sail to the nomination in 2028 (with the possible exception of family members). For there to be an effectively open primary, you need one of three things:


    

  • Trump loses his base by late 2027 - I think this is unlikely, even if he loses the rest of the country.
    • 

  • Trump is visibly too senile to govern but is retained in office Biden-style by his family and/or his core White House team - such that his endorsement is worthless but Vance can't run as an incumbent.
    • 

  • Trump can't make an endorsement because he is still acting like he is running for a third term (it doesn't matter whether he is serious or trolling).
    • 



In all three of these scenarios the 2028 election should be a walk for the Democrats, although the Democrats have got very good at blowing winnable elections lately.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Scott made a post in 2016 called You are still crying wolf.




You are Still Crying Wolf is specifically about claims that Trump is racist/white supremacist, and arguably about the even more specific claim that Trump is openly racist (which Scott correctly points out he isn't). The Rightful Caliph considered Trump utterly unsuitable for the position of Grand Vizier in almost every other respect on grounds of character.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting - I wondered where EON got the idea that he was an Oriental Studies major from.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We don't disagree on substance here - my spin would be that


    

  • There is no meaningful heterogeneity between film-Wakanda and film-rest of Africa because we don't see Africa outside Wakanda onscreen - it is represented memetically by scenes of Black America.
    • 

  • Wakanda is a collection of bad tropes of "darkest Africa" with a veneer of technological civilisation that the locals explicitly didn't build the hard way - the way the story is told implies that niggas who act like niggas could and did build technological civilisation if they had access to vibranium  (memetically, if YT hadn't stolen Africa's natural resources). So culturally it is intended to be part of blob-Africa.
    • 



Wakanda's decision to start their outreach in the US was so egregiously bad it broke my suspension of disbelief. Even if you accept the assumptions of the universe, it isn't plausible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They take over the number, but not the name. In No Time to Die Bond (now retired, but called back for one last mission) and 007 are different characters.


In so far as the filmmakers bother to maintain long-term continuity, Bond from Dr No to No Time to Die is a single character played by multiple actors, who never retires before being de-canonised. Casino Royale is a reboot, with Craig's Bond being a different character in a different continuity, who has a career of a realistic length before retiring and being replaced as 007. There is no suggestion that either Bond was a pseudonym, although it wouldn't be surprising given the nature of spycraft.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Tangential to Black Panther and the genre of Afro-futurism?




No more African than Kwanzaa - Marvel is a US company targetting an audience of Black Americans and their simps. The picture of "Africa" in Black Panther is of a culturally homogenous blob whose spiritual capital is South Central Los Angeles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not just chauvinistic, solipsistic.


The old joke is that the British overconfidence is thinking everyone secretly wants to be British, whereas American overconfidence is thinking everyone secretly already is American.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn't affect the substance of the argument you are making, but James Bond did speak Japanese.


James Bond read Oriental Studies at Cambridge, which requires you to study two Middle Eastern or Asian languages to fluency, and given his known interest in Asian culture and lack of interest in Middle Eastern culture, I suspect Japanese was one of them. On-screen translation convention means we can't be sure, but there are scenes in You Only Live Twice which only make sense if Bond is speaking Japanese. This isn't in Fleming, but it's been in the films consistently since long before Japan was a threat to take over the world in the 1980's.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Humanity Peaked When I Was In High School.




Most people think that. Regardless of when they were in high school. The exception is the people who were losers in high school, who think humanity peaked slightly later when they stopped being losers. Compare "50's" (actually early 1960's) nostalgia among high-functioning Boomers and "60's" (a period that started in 1968 and continued well into the 1970's) nostalgia among left-idiotarian Boomers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Musk is the real deal - obviously a very different paradigm, but Bond-tier apparently-superhuman talent. If James Bond shitposted for 20 hours a day when he wasn't saving the world from Spectre, I don't think he would have the reputation he does.


Trump played a superhumanly-effective CEO on TV, but he was a replacement level CEO in reality, both of his dad's company and of USG as a first-term President. Suggesting Trump as the answer to @Iconochasm's question makes as much sense as suggesting Lashana Lynch or Idris Elba as the next James Bond - they replace Craig, not Bond.


On the other hand, there is a possible mistake here. James Bond is employed on His Majesty's Secret Service. If he was real, we wouldn't know about him. The current C ("M" in the Bond movies) has previously been an elite athlete, a counter-terrorist field agent in the Middle East and served as Q immediately before taking over as C. We crossed paths at Cambridge and she also came across as someone who could hold her own in a poker game against Le Chiffre. She is exactly the sort of person who could win, perhaps even has won, the respect of a double-0 agent working for her. The culture that supposedly produced James Bond and the Ms he worked with still (just about) exists - it just produces talent which points in a direction other than tech entrepreneurship. (Bond, notably, was never a leader of men, a businessman, or an inventor).


Even when Fleming was alive, the idea of a Bond who also built his own gadgets was not plausible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even by the standards of 1950's Cambridge, Watson was obnoxiously sexist. When I was an undergraduate, this was still the sort of thing that was considered an unfortunate but excusable flaw in a great scientist - both at the time and in the 1990's it was considered less embarrassing than John Maynard Smith's communism, for example. And accordingly most people didn't feel embarrassed about it - anecdotes about Watson's sexism were part of the lore of Cambridge molecular biology.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very much India. The stereotypical nabob was upwardly-mobile from a middle-class background, but it was very much on the accepted career list for younger sons of the landed gentry (who I suspect are what you are referring to as "minor nobility" - the younger sons of the actual peerage had access to better options).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Applying the same logic Walsh and other MAGA voices apply to non-white, non-Christian minorities with left-skewed voting patterns and possible dual loyalties (and particularly to members of said minorities who hold positions of power and influence) to a particular white, non-Christian minority group whose members enjoy non-renouncable de facto foreign citizenship, are disproportionally involved in left-wing activism, and use their considerable access to positions of power and influence to cancel anyone who suggests that their commitment to lobbying on behalf of their foreign homeland might possibly constitute dual loyalties, even when individual members of said group (cough, Sheldon Adelson, cough) are entirely specific that their primary loyalty is to their foreign homeland, gets you to something like Nick Fuentes' views on Jews.


More locally, there are regular posts complaining about "rootless cosmopolitans" on the Motte by people who think they are talking about Blue tribe Yankee elites and don't know that the expression started out as an antisemitic slur. It is unsurprising that a political movement that sees "rootless cosmopolitans" as the enemy will come for the OG rootless cosmopolitans eventually.


If you hold the (entirely mainstream on the right) viewpoint that people who self-define as hyphenated-Americans should be excluded from positions of power and influence, deciding that this applies to people who act like Israeli-Americans is a matter of Noticing things. And frankly, things that are easier to Notice than the black-white achievement gap. "America is for everyone who plays by the rules and lets of fireworks on 4th July" is intellectually coherent. "America is for heritage-Americans" is intellectually coherent. "America is for heritage-Americans plus Jews" is not.


Judaeo-Christian is an obvious crock of shit to anyone who actually believes in either Judaism or Christianity. (Basically, letter vs spirit of the law). A substantial minority of American evangelicals believe that scripture requires Christians to be unrequitedly nice to Jews, but conservative Catholics (who have been the brains of the operation for decades now) don't read it that way.


You can do right-populism in way which is explicitly anti-Muslim and sees Hindus and Jews as part of a big-tent anti-Muslim coalition. In European countries where most of the unwanted immigrants are Muslim you see this happening - Hinjews were a big part of the British Conservative Party's right-populist turn under Johnson (which admittedly turned out to be fake) and are part of the coalition behind RN in France and PVV in the Netherlands. But in a country where the majority of unwanted immigrants are Hispanic, that isn't the way MAGA is doing right-populism. Given the natural alliance between Hindus and Jews as market-dominant minorities (in the West) whose principal enemies (in their home countries) are Muslims, I wouldn't be surprised if American Jews see MAGA anti-Indian racism as a warning sign.