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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also the ubiquity of business books claiming inspiration from Sun Tzu.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If anyone can demonstrate examples of militaries that somehow don't have harsh bootcamps but do well,




It doesn't refute the argument because the myth of Ghurkas is that they are forged by their harsh mountain enviroment before they reach bootcamp, and the reality is that they go through a tough selection process (particularly British Ghurkas given how few we now recruit and how much of a standard-of-living bump it is compared to rural Nepal), but Ghurka bootcamp notoriously involves no striking of recruits by instructors and minimal yelling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure about skinny nerds, but "Chubby nerds are the kind of weak men we don't want in the military, even if they can design weapons" isn't a strawman - the Secretary of Defense (d/b/a Secretary of War) publicly espouses it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remember when the EU donated the butter mountain to charity in the 1990s. (I don't know why we made the surplus milk into butter rather than cheese) There were a few perverse results, such as private school canteens getting free butter (because they were charities) when state school canteens couldn't. When you organised catered events at university, you had to sign a form saying that no for-profit business was involved - because there was free butter in the food.  At least one Cambridge College maintained dual kitchen supply chains so they could host events associated with Silicon Fen while still giving free butter to the students and academics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
25 year old women can also have dependent children. In fact most of the ones with EBT cards will do, given the design of SNAP. Poor kids are precisely the group US welfare programmes (including SNAP) were meant for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everyone who has thought about the policy design says that you should just give people money. Money is fungible, so if you restrict EBT to actual necessities (i.e. things someone paid cash would need to buy anyway) then you are not modifying their budget constraint. There is no policy design behind eligibility lists for this kind of benefit, and nobody has suggested one (as opposed to grandstanding particular examples of upmarket food being bought with an EBT card). In particular, products are eligible for WIC because the industries that make them bribe politicians and/or employ a lot of people in swing states.


Going back to @tomottoe's OP, the practical effect of making fancy mushrooms EBT-ineligible was that someone who had enough cash-plus-EBT income to afford them had to split one transaction into two, delaying @tomottoe and everyone else in the queue behind them. If you phase out SNAP rather than cliff-edging it (which as a matter of creating correct incentives, you should), then there will exist people with jobs and EBT cards who have cash-plus-EBT income sufficient to afford an occasional small luxury, which will sometimes be food. Making said small luxury EBT-ineligible achieves nothing.


The people who think it is worth modifying SNAP so you can't buy luxuries with EBT cards are mostly people who think the programme shouldn't exist at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You ultimately have to draw the line between "eligible for accommodations" and "ineligible" somewhere, and there will always be people just to the left and just to the right of that line, and there will be very little absolute difference separating them.




Part of the design of government benefits is to, where possible, avoid drawing that line and instead phase benefits out. It adds complexity, but avoids perverse incentives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Populist politics, very much including MAGA, is driven by the perception that the middle 19% (or 19.99% in your formulation) are gaining power at the expense of the bottom 80%. [The 19% is personified here by HR professionals, corporate middle managers, teachers, doctors etc.] The elite that modern right-populists are attacking pretty explicitly includes anyone with a degree from a selective university, and doesn't appear to include hereditary billionaire real estate magnates.


Attempts by the 19.99% to enlist the 80% in solidarity against the 0.01% are the least effective political appeals going. Although the 80% include a lot of idiots, I expect they are accurately recognising the boot on their necks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is part of why I object to Hegesthism - modern warfare requires a lot of competent people, only a few of which need to be high-testosterone "lethality"-focussed "warfighters". When Hegseth gave that speech, you could see the admirals and Air Force generals thinking "will I have to get into a ship/plane where critical maintenance has been done by a sailor/airman who skipped sleep to do the extra PT and range time this clown has just called for"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The linked article said that a history of ethnic conflict made more effectively warlike societies, not material poverty. So it doesn't advance the simplistic version of "hard times make strong men" that Devereaux claims to refute and which both sides of the Motte debate agreed was wrong.


The open question is to what extent "material poverty makes strong men" is a strawman, or whether it is a problematic false belief held by large numbers of dumber decadence theorists (including online Sparta bros like Roman Helmet Guy) even if Motteposting decadence theorists are too smart for it.


I don't think anyone disagrees with "extensive experience of battle makes strong men" - we can see it happening in real time in Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My read is that Pushtunwali was a warrior ethos and the OG Taliban were soldiers (they were recruited from seminaries, and 1990's-era Taliban propaganda claimed they were theology students first and fighters second) beating on warriors when they conquered Afghanistan the first time. But a good candidate answer - clearly the Taliban had become less soldierly and more warrioresque by 2021.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes. The point I am making is that it is hard to find the point at which the British become "weak men" until after the Empire collapses. Indeed, the Falklands War demonstrates (to the surprise of the American elite at the time) that the British could still field enough strong men to achieve spectacular military success as late as 1982.


When we French out of Helmand province in 2014 (seven years before the Americans French out of the rest of Afghanistan) you can make a decent case that it is the first war the British lost in a century (the previous defeats being the post-WW1 interventions in Russia and Turkey).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It doesn't figure in the "material prosperity makes men soft" version of the decadence critique because that is specifically about a loss of martial virtue and not commercial virtue. But in the pro-D model of "decadence" - i.e. progressive institutional rot masked by the rewards of past success - both commercial and martial virtues decline in parallel and government deficits financed by money-printing and the resulting rapid inflation are often among the symptoms.


The cynical reason why people who understand economics don't include this on a list of symptoms of civilisational decline is that it turns out that the optimum inflation rate in economies where most people are wage-earners living in mortgaged houses is slightly greater than zero, and we don't want to give ammunition to the goldbugs who insist that 2-5% annual inflation compounded over 50+ years is a civilisational catastrophe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good point. The logic only stands up if X is something vague that is only identified in the rear view mirror, like "weak men" or "decadence". The post has been up for long enough that I won't correct it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I very much agree with you - see Brett Devereaux and the Angry Staff Officer on why modern America, or basically any civilised society (going back to Athens and Rome) needs soldiers and not warriors.


Interesting military history question - who were the last warriors not to get their arses kicked by soldiers?


People who talk about "warriors" either aren't aware of the warrior/soldier distinction, or are hinting at the cluster of wrong ideas that come when you think of yourself as a Spartiate and your political opponents as upjumped women and/or helots. Devereaux calls this cluster the "cult of the badass" which is why I have occasionally used the term "badass" snarkily in the thread.




Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?




I expect that in the US context it began with not wanting to use "soldier" to describe someone who fights land battles for pay in the organised service of the state of which they are a citizen because it annoyed the Marine Corps.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


both very much in their decadence phases




Lolwut? The first Opium war was 1839-1842. Decadence critiques of the British Empire don't really get going until the Crimean War in the 1850's, and are not particularly convincing until much later. As late as 1897, Kipling writes Recessional as a warning against future decadence, not a critique of present decadence.


The decline and fall of the British Empire is not one where the Roman-style decadence theory makes sense. The British Empire is still vigorous and expanding up to and through World War One*, and is militarily effective in a way decadent empires are not during World War Two. The Empire is abandoned, mostly voluntarily, before the classic signs of decadence appear at home.


* Getting into a stalemate when fighting a peer competitor is not a sign of decadence or military incompetence. Gallipoli was a mistake, but not the kind of mistake a decadent empire would make. WW1 Britain invented tanks and anti-submarine warfare, and General Allenby and Lawrence of Arabia's operations against the Ottomans were dashing British imperialism of the old school.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Sparta bros are implicitly disagreeing and saying that the virtuous society is one (like Sparta) where there is no limit on the ability of warrior elites to extract the resources they need from their inferiors. Given the overlap between Sparta bros and lost causers in American right-wing politics, and the overlap between Sparta bros and manosphere guys advocating an extractive model of male-female relationships in Zoomer Twitter, I think they might mean this.


I think the idea that a virtuous society is one which supports a warrior elite is old, and the innovation of Christian chivalry is that elite class women and priests are now explicitly protected from warrior elite predation in a way peasants are not.  Whether "virtue = share of resources commanded by the warrior elite" or "virtue = egalitarian culture capable of arming and feeding a large militia" depends on whether the military technology in a given society favours a few expensive units or a lot of cheap ones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this misreading of Dune is very common, and probably intentional on Herbert's part if Dune is meant to be Lawrence of Arabia in space (the real WW1-era Arabs did not have a secret industrial base, but positing one fixes the plothole caused by Paul Atreides not having the British Empire as backup). The reader doesn't see the material wealth of southern Fremen society (apart from the high-quality stillsuits) in the first book (and, on advice from trustworthy friends, I haven't read the others). Unless you do a word-by-word close reading, you will come away with the idea that there are more Fremen in the south than expected, but that they are just as "Fremen" (in the Brett Devereaux sense) as the northern Fremen.


Incidentally, one of the Spartan royal families claimed descent from the semi-mythical Mycenean House Atreides,  so Herbert is also invoking Sparta as part of the trope.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this is an important point that touches on a difference between two theories of "decadence" which sometimes have very different policy implications but which e.g. Gods of the Copybook Headings tries to merge. Pro-Devereaux would cite this as proof that decadence is an incoherent concept, from an anti-Devereaux perspective it is an interesting sub-debate.


@DradisPing is setting out an idea of decadence where a society loses the ability to build and fight at the same time, with the inability to build generally becoming visible first. The Sparta bros have a different idea of decadence where a decadent society is one that focusses too much on building at the expense of fighting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there is schoolboy history going on which suggests that the collapses are faster than they actually were - I foolishly thought that the Manchu conquest of Ming China was much faster than it was, and the traditional British schoolboy thought that Rome fell suddenly in 410AD because both the first sack of Rome and the loss of Britain happened that year. If you pointed out Romulus Augustulus and 476AD he would say that the Western Roman Empire fell suddenly in 410AD and the Emperors between 410 and 476 were local warlords with ideas above their station.


Note that this is a general problem of dating the fall of former hegemonic empires - the imperial title gets assumed by the warlord who happens to control the old imperial capital (and possibly several pretenders as well) so it can look like the empire continued existing for a while after it functionally fell. When did the Western Roman Empire as Diocletian and Constantine understood it cease to exist? mu.


But the canonical examples of declining "decadent" empires are indeed the Western Roman Empire after the 3rd century crisis, the Song before the Mongol conquest, the Ming before the Manchu conquest, and the Ottoman Empire after about 1800. Another obvious example is the Achaemenid Empire before the conquest by Alexander the Great - the events of the Anabasis prove that Achaemenid Persia was already militarily ineffective 70 years before Gaugamela. That one is an example where the collapse is sudden and surprising.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An attempt to summarise the decadence discourse


This has been the most interesting debate on the Motte for several months, possibly because it is only tangentially related to the main thrust of the US culture war. Given the messy debate across multiple top-level posts with various allegations of strawmanning, I thought it was worth trying to isolate what we still disagreed on.


Given that this started with a discussion of Brett Devereaux's Fremen Mirage thread I am going to call the sides broadly in favour and broadly against Devereaux's thesis pro-D and anti-D for brevity's sake. I am decidedly pro-D, but my goal in this post is to identify consensus and disagreement, not to engage in the debate.


Things both sides appear to agree on


(At least within the local Overton window)


    

  • The most literal, stupid interpretation of "hard times make strong men" - i.e. that growing up in material poverty makes you a better soldier, is straightforwardly false. Richer societies normally (but not always) produce better soldiers than poorer ones. We don't agree how many people posting versions of "hard times make strong men" on Twitter believe this literal, stupid, wrong interpretation - the pro-D side suspect large numbers of them do, the anti-D side think that the pro-Ds are strawmanning.
    • 

  • Civilisations don't last for ever. Eventually good times are replaced by hard times, and hegemons cease to be hegemons. Thus any prediction of the form "good times make X, X makes hard times" is likely to come true eventually - including the instant case where X is "weak men".
    • 

  • It is possible for states to become militarily ineffective in a way that is not immediately obvious. States which this has happened to will collapse surprisingly quickly if attacked by a determined (if not particularly strong) enemy. The states most at risk of this phenomenon are powerful states that have enjoyed an extended period of peace. When it happens, it looks like good times making weak men in the ex-hegemon and hard times making strong men in the periphery.
    • 

  • Moral factors and human capital matter in war, and one of the way militarily ineffective societies sometimes lose wars is by producing large, expensively-equipped armies which then can't or won't fight.
    • 

  • The process where this happens is gradual, over timescales of at least a generation and sometimes longer.
    • 

  • It is very hard for a state which has become militarily ineffective in this way to recover, but it can take a long time for the collapse to come if the state was sufficiently hegemonic before it became militarily ineffective.
    • 

  • This is roughly the popular meaning of the term "decadence". (And "decadence" doesn't have a technical meaning distinct from the popular one).
    • 

  • This may have already happened to the United States of America. It has almost certainly already happened to the countries of Western Europe.
    • 

  • The trope maker for this process is the Roman Empire (and later the Western Roman Empire after Diocletian splits the Empire), which was militarily ineffective by 410AD at the latest and ceased to exist as a result in 476AD.
    • 



The disagreement


    

  • Pro-D think that "decadence" is a word like "dormitive virtue" which people use to sound sophisticated while obfuscating their lack of understanding of the phenomenon they are talking about. Anti-D think that the popular meaning of "decadence" describes a well-understood process and the connotations of the word accurately reflect what is going on in a decadent society.
    • 

  • Pro-D think that the way societies become "decadent" is complex and multifaceted, and is sufficiently different in each case that trying to define a single overarching model is fruitless, but it probably has something to do with the decay of institutions. Anti-D think that the process is sufficiently simple and sufficiently consistent over space and time that something like Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings serves as a timeless warning comprehensible to normies, and the primary driver is moral decay of individuals (and particularly the individuals who are supposed to be warrior elites).
    • 

  • Anti-D think that decadence has specific visible markers:
    • 



    

  1. Decline in "warrior values" or "warrior ethos"
    2. 

  2. Increased emphasis on physical comfort among elite-class males
    3. 

  3. Decreased willingness to inflict physical pain, including reduced use of harsh training and corporal punishment
    4. 

  4. Decline in sexual morality and/or traditional gender roles
    5. 

  5. Increasing willingness of people who are not battle-tested warrior elites (including priests, merchants, politicians, women, REMFs etc.) to interfere with military decision making
    6. 

  6. Left-wing politics more generally, including increased wealth redistribution. (I'm not sure what fraction of anti-Ds would include this)
    7. 



    

  • Pro-D think this is a bunch of hooey, and that militarily ineffective societies can and frequently do maintain the outward appearance of warrior ethos and traditional masculinity right up to the point where they lose on the battlefield.
    • 

  • Anti-D think that material wealth is at least somewhat causative of a decline into decadence such that "Good times make weak men" is a useful way of thinking about the process. Pro-D think decadence is associated with wealth because we call military weakness in rich societies decadence and military weakness in poor societies something else.
    • 

  • Devereaux argues in another thread that Rome declines as a result of the 3rd century Crisis and that all earlier decadence-callouts in the Latin literature, including Cato the Elder's call for austerity and Augustus' bachelor tax, are therefore wrong. Anti-D think that the early decadence-callouts are accurate early warnings of a long-term negative trend. There hasn't been much discussion of Rome specifically on the Motte.
    • 



Things that are peripheral to the disagreement


    

  • The subthread about Sparta. Devereaux thinks Sparta is Stupid Evil, most but not all anti-Ds think there is something to learn from Sparta about cultivating martial virtue.
    • 

  • @SecureSignals digression about dysgenics.
    • 

  • An argument about whether the Somali fraud ring in Minnesota should be counted as a successful invasion.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this is a more general pattern. I would, only slightly snarkily, say that the greatest weakness of countries ran entirely by warriors is that they have a persistent tendency to underestimate the threat posed by Anglosphere countries and start wars of choice in which we have no choice but to wipe the floor with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The unreasonable success of constitutional monarchies is under-studied - probably because increasingly many of the people who might study it are either Americans or trying to get jobs in American universities, where it is taken for granted that the American system is superior because it produced America.


[FWIW, America is an outlier and parliamentary democracy has a much better track record than presidential democracy. I suspect the overperformance of constitutional monarchies is driven by them all being parliamentary]


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Attempting to redistribute wealth to create collective abundance




It is probably worth noting that, contra Kipling, the first modern welfare state was set up by notorious effeminate pacifist Otto von Bismarck with the explicit goal of creating an urban working class that were able and willing to fight industrial-age wars, and the British dramatically expanded our welfare state after WW1 when it became clear that too may men were unfit for military service due to preventable diseases of poverty.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Quite apart from the thread below, where @self_made_human is right and you are wrong, the thesis that the "Hard times create strong men" works off genetics doesn't make sense, because biological evolution is too slow. The conventional version of the meme is that hard times create strong men within 1-2 generations - to get an appreciable eugenic effect that quickly you have to kill off so many people that the population goes through a genetic bottleneck.


I also don't see why good times are dysgenic in the pre-modern world. Good times equals population expansion, but these societies don't break out of the Malthusian trap so even as the population expands the reproduction of the lower classes is food-limited. Add even a little bit of soft polygyny and good times equals all classes growing but the higher classes growing faster, which is presumptively eugenic.


What really is dysgenic is the kind of war that preferentially kills off the warrior elite, like the English Wars of the Roses or World War One. The genetic and moral effect of WW1 on western Europe is the leading example of hard times making weak men, counter to the meme.