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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True in western culture, but the wisdom from my internet is that in South-East Asia femme lesbians are supposed to perform femininity sufficiently that they can't be mistaken for butches.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting, because even back in the stone age (the early 90's) I was taught that all women above school age who were not personally known to you were "Madame" and that calling an undergraduate-age waitress "Madmoiselle" was hitting on her.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I understand the feminist objection to referring to women as "girls" regardless of age in dating-related contexts, but it is in fact standard English (both BrE and AmE) usage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah - I don't think that would move the needle either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If those, specifically, are the people you're talking about, they don't run Syria so your original post was wrong.




Not my OP - I don't think the US-backed Salafi-jihadi group that currently controls Damascus "is" Al-Qaeda, although it clearly includes people in senior roles who used to be involved with Al-Qaeda back when Al-Qaeda was a thing. On the other hand, I would make exactly the same statement with "Damascus" replaced by "Riyadh", and that regime is considered uncomplicatedly pro-American. Al-Qaeda the specific terrorist group led by Bin Laden is absolutely defeated (and had been defeated long before Bin Laden himself got taken out in Pakistan), but drone-strikes against large numbers of alleged number 2s were not sufficient to do so.




"If". The US had the ability to blockade with Maduro there, it wasn't sufficient.




Agreed - to the extent that US operations in Venezuela are succeeding, it is a combination of a blockade that made capitulation the sane thing to do and a black-bag op to remove someone not sane enough to capitulate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Wellesley icily replied that:






It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.




Note that Wellesley had three horses shot out from under him, presumably to bullets intended for the rider - and he was an infantry officer so he was only on horseback later in his career when he was in field-grade and general officer positions.


Sniping enemy officers as SOP appears to date back to the invention of effective sniper rifles, given when troops stopped saluting on the battlefield.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Asking a yes-no intention with the transparent intention to treat "yes" as an endorsement of the bailey and "no" as an attack on the motte is one of the oldest tricks in the motte-and-bailey arguers playbook.


I'm sure that Republicans will run on "Democrats are for illegal immigrants, we are for you" in the mid-terms, regardless of what Democrats say or do, and that the Democrats will respond with stories about Republicans deporting nurses, military spouses etc. The voters already know that the Democrats are insane on immigration, and that Trump in particular is borderline-insane in the other direction.


I am reasonably sure that the effectiveness of these lines does not depend on a specific audience-participation kafkatrap - if the Democrats actually had a credible immigration policy, then running tape of them not dancing like monkeys during SOTU would just be standard-issue negative campaigning of the type that doesn't move elections relative to the fundamentals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The defeat of "Al Qaeda" (the professional terrorist organisation with global reach run out of a cave complex in Afghanistan that did 9-11) involved NATO and their local allies in the Northern Alliance conquering Afghanistan with boots on the ground. (The only reason "Al Qaeda" the meme which inspires Muslim immigrants to drive trucks into European Christmas markets isn't a problem for America is that you have fewer Muslim immigrants). I don't think you can defeat either the professional org or the meme by drone-striking enough "Al Qaeda number 2s".


If black-bagging Maduro out of Venezuela delivers on the Trump administration's goals it will be because (a) Delcy Rodriguez was already compromised and (b) the US can threaten a naval blockade to make sure she stays compromised. If they had done the black-bagging with no blockade the regime would be back in control by now (with Rodriguez either working with Maduro's people or replaced).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do we know they aren't burning it? Given the current political situation, the principal target would be Trump personally. And given administration policy towards Iran, either Trump was totally lying about his foreign policy plans in the 2024 campaign (remember "No More Wars"?) or Israel and/or the Gulf Arabs have compromised him.


Dragging America into a forever war against Iran would, from an Israeli perspective, be more than sufficient to justify the whole Epstein operation.


[I don't actually think this is a particularly likely story - just the most likely conditional on Epstein working for Mossad].


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This, but seriously. The only reason why there isn't a populist uprising against the paedophile-riddled establishment is that the person who was supposed to be leading said uprising turned out to be compromised. * Epstein is far worse than the Dutroux scandal (which led to a reorganisation of the Belgian political system) and although the sex crimes were not as bad as the Pakistani rape gangs in the UK, the complicity of elites is far worse. (This has not yet led to a reorganisation of the British political system, but it looks like it may do).


There is an obvious N-dimensional chess story where Qanon and Comet Ping Pong were a deliberate ploy to spike the future Epstein reveal by making paedo panic (a) low status and (b) sufficiently MAGA-coded that opponents of Donald Trump wouldn't jump on it as an issue. (The hypothetical conspirators know that Trump is lying when he engages in populist anti-paedo messaging because he is one of the paedophiles.)  I don't think this is true - I think paedo panic is right-coded because the Anglosphere left have made being the defenders of sexual deviance (other than paedophilia) part of their core values, and the man in the street (mostly correctly) believes that other forms of sexual deviance are strongly correlated with paedophilia.


Right now it looks like the only Americans sincerely opposed to powerful men sexually abusing teenage girls are dissident right-populists like MTG, although I think the MeToo movement showed a few mid-rank figures on the feminist left who were also consistent on this point even when the perp was a Democrat.


* I am using paedophile in the dangerously loose sense the public do - what is relevant to the politics is the view of the typical low information voter, and normies don't care about the Hannaia/Tracey "words have meanings" argument. There were no prepubescent children involved, and accordingly nobody involved is a paedophile in the technical sense, and it is not clear whether or not Epstein trafficked the girls to the clients until they were over the local age of consent. But there was definitely sexual abuse of teenage girls going on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They argues that the media focused too much on the money and didn't pay any attention to their personal lives, which made it clear that it wasn't a sham relationship.




But the story about the money was so much more interesting that even Anna Nicole Smith's tits. 25 years of litigation, continuing after the deaths of both parties and a judge, seven courts in three jurisdictions, two trips to SCOTUS (with amicus briefs by two different SGs), and meaty issues around conflict of jurisdictions and separation of powers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"he left me and married his secretary"




This almost never happened until the 1990's and even then mostly among people in the public eye like actors and politicians. The scenario the older wife would have been worried about before then is "he began an affair with his secretary and I felt duty bound to kick him out".


Given a free choice, men who can keep both women will, and men who have to choose would mostly prefer to go back to the mother of their children than marry a floozy.  At some point the social rules changed so adultery is a purely private matter, whereas trifling with your mistresses affections is mistreating a vulnerable member of a protected group, which made it increasingly disreputable for a man not to marry his mistress, and also increasingly embarrassing for the wife to stay with a cheater.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I disagree. Kavanaugh makes a strong argument that given the Nixon tariff, the meaning at the time of the statue would’ve been clearly understood to include tariffs and therefore MQD is not applicable. The fact presidents haven’t used it since is largely irrelevant.




And Jackson makes a stronger argument based on the Congressional Record that the statute was not, in fact, clearly understood to include tariffs at the time it was passed. I am a textualist, and I would prefer to interpret IIEPA according to its text (which makes this an easy MQD case). But if we want to know what Congress thought IIEPA meant, they told us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also the bull elephant isn't in a hole of any kind - it is on the face of the statute. The statute grants a number of powers expressly, including to prohibit trade. The Kavanaugh interpretation is that all of these, plus tariffs, are implicit in "regulate".


We can argue about whether it is rational to delegate a power to ban trade without also delegating the lesser power to tariff it. (In wartime, which was the original context of the legislation, it obviously is.) But if you interpret the text of IIEPA as limited to its express words (under the MQD or any other canon of strict construction) then that is what Congress did.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Your argument doesn’t address the empirical evidence of SNAP fraud, like the half of Somali Americans using it or its high rate in Haredi enclaves.




Both of those look more like a cultural norm of having more children that you can afford rather than evidence of widespread fraud. Kiryas Jorel has the highest rate of measured child poverty in America, and they really do go without things like one bedroom per child or one SUV per parent that respectable-working-class American parents increasingly consider essential.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Honestly? More money in politics. If Congressional and Senate seats were actually sold to the highest bidder I think you'd get a higher quality of official than you have now.




If I'm Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan just bought a dozen House seats, I am going to put a star legislator in one of them (who I can then get onto important committees and represent my interests) and 11 donkeys who will vote as instructed in the others.  When seats in the British House of Commons could be bought, people didn't buy them planning to sit in them themselves. Some of the nominated MPs were younger sons from aristocratic families where the Lord owned the seat (and couldn't sit in it because peers were disqualified from the Commons), and some of those were exceptionally able, but most went to uninspired placemen who could be trusted not to think for themselves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Worse than that - Kavanaugh (definitely) and Alito/Thomas/Sotomayor/Kagan/Jackson (probably) didn't even vote based on their view of the policy merits of the tariffs - they voted based on their partisan attitude to the President who imposed them.


We can't tell whether Roberts/Gorsuch/Barrett votes based on the law or their policy preferences because both their view on the law and their view on the policy are consistent, being downstream of their establishment libertarianish worldview. Their opinion has the advantage of being short and obviously correct - if you think the Major Questions Doctrine exists at all, this is an easy MQD case.


The Kav dissent is right about one thing - given this President and this Congress, the practical consequences of the decision are going to be that the clownshow gets worse.


Gorsuch calling out everyone except himself and Roberts for hypocrisy on the MQD is also obviously correct and great fun to read, but probably bad judicial behaviour. The Barrett (arguing with Gorsuch about whether the MQD comes from the Constitution or is just common sense, with no impact on the case) and Thomas (responding to an argument about nondelegation that the majority didn't make) concurrences are entirely unnecessary bloviations. The Jackson concurrence is making an important point about the legislative history of IIEPA that none of the other justices reach for reasons that are not clear to me.


Since it's the Winter Olympics, here is my skating scores (out of 6.0) for the various opinions:


    

  • Roberts (+Gorsuch/Barrett) majority: Technical merit - 5.9 Artistic impression - 5.7
    • 

  • Gorsuch concurrence: Technical merit - 5.8 Artistic impression - 6.0
    • 

  • Barrett concurrence: Technical merit - 5.5 Artistic impression - 5.5
    • 

  • Kagan (+2 other libs) concurrence: Technical merit - 5.5 Artistic impression - 5.8
    • 

  • Jackson concurrence: Technical merit - 5.9 (if you believe in using legislative history in statutory interpretation, 4.5 if you don't) Artistic impression - 5.6
    • 

  • Thomas dissent: Technical merit - 4.0 Artistic impression - 5.5
    • 

  • Kav (+ 2 cons) dissent: Technical merit - 5.7 Artistic impression - 5.6. Particularly impressive given that their theory of the case (that the MQD is real and important and somehow doesn't apply to tariffs) is indefensible.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why do you take "government food assistance" for granted, here?




It's pretty Lindy. Ancient Rome rather notoriously relied on poor relief ("Bread and Circuses") to maintain social stability. In medieval England, poor relief was the responsibility of the Church, which was effectively part of the government and used both spiritual coercion ("pay your tithe or go to hell" is coercive to people who actually believe in hell) and temporal coercion ("pay your tithe or we can legally seize your land") to collect revenue. This system broke down after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, and was replaced in 1601 with a national Poor Law based on elected local government with the ability to collect revenue coercively after it became clear that the practical consequences of not having a functioning system of poor relief were unacceptable.


The 1601 Poor Law was in force in colonial America, and replaced by broadly similar poor relief schemes (legislated at state level and implemented locally) after independence.


The balance between poor relief in the form of support for the deserving poor and poor relief in the form of coercive institutions to punish the workshy (while feeding and housing them) shifts over the following centuries in broadly similar ways in the UK and the US, with the same issues cropping up, including the eternal truth that people who are too old and/or infirm for coercing them into work to be worthwhile are the largest group of paupers, and widows/orphans/babymamas/bastards are the second largest, and the unfortunate truth that trying to "improve" the workshy costs more than just giving them a dole, while almost always failing.


In the US, the New Deal federalises the problem of the elderly poor and LBJ's Fair Deal federalises the problem of families with children but no male earner. But neither created a system of poor relief where none previously existed.


The cost of poor relief has increased a lot faster than the economy in the last century or so. The main reason is that we decided that aged paupers should be able to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or to give a tl;dr, normal rules about e.g. historical cycles don't apply to Genghis Khan because he is just that badass. As far as I can see, the only other leaders who came close to unifying that many steppe nomads for that long were Atilla the Hun and Osman the founder of the Ottoman Empire.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


tended to melt




Or form a pike square, which has its own cohesive logic that empirically seems well-suited to urban skilled workers fighting alongside their literal neighbours. The most famous example is Courtrai in 1302 which is particularly pivotal because it convinced Pope Boniface VIII that Philip the Fair was a spent force, leading to Boniface overreaching, Philip arresting him, the Papacy being removed to Avignon, the new French-influenced Pope allowing Philip to suppress the Templars, and Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay being publicly burned at the stake based on obviously false charges of heresy he confessed to under torture. The resulting Templar curse on Philip the Fair and his posterity led to the rapid extinction of the senior Capetian line, and the ensuing succession crisis was the official cause of the Hundred Years' War.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				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.