This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Donald Trump vs. the Blob Part 2 : Electric Boogaloo
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been 4 years since our last bout. In one corner, we have the undisputed champ, the greatest of all time, the BADDEST man on planet Earth, the king, the DC blllooob! And in the other corner, the challenger, the next Hitler, the orange man, the Donald himself, Donaaallld Trump.
Let's.. get... ready.. to... rumble!
Holy shit it's been a crazy week for the current members of the Federal bureaucracy. Let's review:
Trump issued an Executive Order that almost all federal workers will have to return to office five days a week
All federal workers also received an offer to resign immediately. If they accept, they will get their current salary and benefits until September (an incredibly generous 8 month severance package). All they have to do is reply with the word "resign".
But also, workers will have to prove that they haven't been working a second or third job (in Reddit parlance, a J2, J3, etc..) It turns out this is actually a crime punishable by prison.
On the other hand side, we have the Reddit hivemind.
There is a Reddit for federal workers called /r/fednews. It's a revealing glimpse into an entitled and mentally ill slice of our federal workforce. Much like every other website, and especially themotte.org, they post almost exclusively during working hours.
These "workers" also may be violating federal law by explicitly campaigning on the behalf of one political party over another. Even posting on Reddit may be illegal.
So who wins?
It's a tough call. On one hand, in theory, Trump controls the executive branch. On the other hand, he doesn't control the judiciary who will ultimately decide the outcome. Already, many lawsuits have been filed on behalf of aggrieved federal employees.
Furthermore, not counting the military, there are 2 million federal employees. This is a massive army of people who, though already 95% anti-Trump, are now galvanized into action to prevent the erasure of their generous pay and benefits.
Has Trump bitten off more than he can chew? Will the champion remain undefeated? Or will the challenger land enough blows to sway the judges. You decide! Respond in the comments below.
This, and especially the ill-fated federal grant pause, suddenly revealed to me all the friends I have who have hitched their households’ wagons to the US federal government.
I’m libertarian and always understood taking taxpayer money to be a political position; I’ve been asked to join the FBI several times by one acquaintance who’s an agent and never pretended to even consider it. But many people seem to be of the persuasion that if you make yourself utterly dependent on it, then it can’t be political. I’ve had three different conversations already with other friends this week stressed out about their work situations because they couldn’t imagine a world where the federal government wouldn’t give them money.
They all seemed to think that these defunding moves were uncontroversially terrible, as if public policy should have absolutely no power to mess with their public salaries.
I don’t know, man… I’m sad my friends are in this position, but I would love for this to shake them loose or at the very least convince other young people that it’s not a great career choice.
More on topic, this will on net make Trump less popular. Like I said, federal money is sacred to a great share of the American workforce, and messing with it is considered way outside the scope of party platforms. They depend on it, so it must be necessary.
My assumption is that a rapidly growing number of people now see that while some government agencies or departments initially have clear or beneficial missions, their focus shifts from fulfilling their original purpose to ensuring their own survival. In other words, the bureaucracy is gonna bureaucracy.
Inefficiency? Check
Mission Creep? Check
Ideological capture? Check
Resistance to Change? Check
At some point, the concern goes from serving public interest to self-interest. I get it. No person in these agencies is willingly going to sacrifice their own job for the betterment of society. They've already convinced themselves that their position and agency is incredibly important. I would too. That being said, these opinions should not matter to the public. The results matter, and the administrative bloat has become absurd.
Is there anyone would disagree with this statement? The actually controversial part is how to cut the deadwood and I'm increasingly concerned the Trump admin are incapable of this.
Based on Elon's moves in the OPM, it seems like the priority is sinecures for their friends (including apparently a high school kid who has a work history of camp counselor and bicycle repair) (and possibly punitive measures for regulatory bodies that fine or slow down Musk companies) rather than improving the organization overall. The Twitter style RTO layoffs are another example of a sweeping move that surely makes fox news viewers happy, but systems minded folk will note changes the incentive structures to reinforce incompetent and ideologically motivated people.
The sweeping federal grant pause is again counterproductive for the stated aim of reducing spending because stopping federal projects (and state and city projects with federal funding) dramatically increases the costs of those projects if resumed and the questionnaire itself is more like a university admissions style DEI statement but in the other direction (both are bad uses of these institutions' resources). If the goal is to weed out bad grants and ideological use of federal funding, it would have made more sense to take over some level of approval for all new grants rather than increasing the cost basis of all these projects.
I think some people would disagree with it, either because their livelihood directly depends on it or because their livelihood indirectly depends on it (see Democrat politicians). Between those two types, there will be enough squeaky wheels to conflate the real issue of administrative bloat and Elon & crew's mishandlings of its reduction. I think its coverage and the reactions will largely depend on how badly the Trump Admin and Elon manage to piss everyone off in the moderate camp. Your concern about them replacing one biased regime for another is fair, just so long as you can openly admit that the one being ousted was also biased.
I doubt the goal is to weed anything out in a surgical manner. In fact, I think the idea is to not get into the weeds, but simply cut right through them.
If it helps, I'm very conservative, have voted for Trump three times now, and am deeply disgusted with the state of our country and our government. I have an intense and burning disdain for Biden and the Dems in general and a vague positive feeling toward Trump.
Coming from this position, though, my chief priority is fixing systems where possible, not punishing the other tribe or trying to enforce my values from on high. The reality about wokeness and the decline of conservative values as such is that these things didn't happen because Obama decreed they must and hired a bunch of libs into the bureaucracy. These values, ones I deeply dislike, won so to speak in the market in that they both captured institutions which allow them to propagate and more importantly spread organically through the early internet and ground level organizations. The libertarians put up a fight but the conservatives silod themselves and ceded the battleground in many ways.
If the goal is to cut costs or remove ideology from government spending, this is counterproductive. If the goal is spectacle, then I suppose this is a win (but is it a flattering or damaging spectacle?). If the goal is to punish blue tribe, then I'm not sure how much collateral damage red tribe is willing to take. I've heard from veteran coworkers (very red) that their benefits and loans applications were being possibly being impacted or at least paused until the details are worked out. It will take time for the trickle down to work through, but the effects on infrastructure projects on every level are going to disproportionately impact the red tribe who dominates construction and engineering. If the goal is to win Vance-types (red tribers trying to escape bad situations) scaring everyone about impacting FAFSA is counterproductive.
I think the immigration crack down is being handled much better. The focus on criminal illegals first has many benefits - much lower cost in political capital and headlines about rapists being deported are an easy win, early success is a foot in the door to broaden scope later without freaking the public out, it can be used to force though mandatory everify by linking it to punishing criminal illegals etc. This is a much more deliberate and thoughtful approach to illegal immigration than we are seeing on other issues.
I actually disagree here despite ostensibly being on the other side. The alternative to these programs getting cut isn't that they just stick around and everyone is happy - the US is currently on an utterly unsustainable course and if nothing serious is done the US will lose the ability to actually pay for all these jobs anyway when reserve currency status goes out the window. Given your stated priorities you probably don't care about the environmental/resource issues underlying these problems in the same way I do, but I'm sure you can recognise that fiscally at least there's no option to just leave these jobs or spending as they are forever - just the option to kick the can down the road, building up even more of a hangover for when the bill finally comes due. The cut is coming no matter what - ending these positions now, when there's still a lot more slack left in society, is a kindness.
More options
Context Copy link
The idea of fixing systems, whether they be bureaucracies within the government or institutions outside of it, would ideally start on a very fundamental level. That said, I'm not convinced the anti-progressive or moderate segment in our country has that ability right now. The progressive movement maintains that ability because, as you mentioned, they still have the institutions. Things like Entertainment, Higher Ed, etc. aren't conservative in the slightest. They're not even really moderate. As a result, our conveyor belt of future government workers all align themselves on one side. Therefore, the notion of operating within these systems that progressives have taken over (and will continue to replenish) doesn’t sit well with many people, myself included. It seems harder to win that way.
I will acknowledge that what matters to a lot of people are the services that are being provided by the government, and that some people really need those services. I can see how Elon and Trump proposing and implementing drastic measures is concerning to those people, but I still believe the goal is efficiency, not pure destruction. It's fat trimming, except this time it may be done with a cleaver instead of a fillet knife because the fillet knife just doesn't seem to work. I'm also not interested in making political opponents suffer for the sake of making them suffer. I am interested in strategies that will actually address a problem without getting bogged down in the system that is designed to bog things down.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link