site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37378 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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:

  1. Trump issued an Executive Order that almost all federal workers will have to return to office five days a week

  2. 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".

  3. 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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

The word stochastic terrorism is rightfully derided, but what do you call this kind of speech, which received 42k votes?

To my fellow Feds, especially veterans: we're at war Announcement

We watched this goon try to overthrow the government on live tv four years ago. Now, we are witnessing him try to overthrow it from within. We are the last line of defense against fascism.

We are being led by the same types of people our grandparents fought against in

They want to harm you. Do not give in to this nonsense and remember your oath to the constitution and the people of America. I don't know what the future holds, but I refuse to bow down to this fascist authoritarian elite class. Nobody is coming to save us but we have strength in numbers. It's time to buckle up, and continue protecting freedom and democracy.

Edited for brevity. If you convince a person that they are at war with Hitler, and in fact the last line of defense against Hitler, what do you think the end result is?

/r/somethingiswrong2024 posters keep wondering when the military and 3 letter agencies will take out Trump. Also more confusingly wondering how NATO can assist. Of course they use "saving democracy" type rhetoric.

They never use the word "coup" when describing this. And I don't think they get that democracy would not be restored post-coup. As though a cabal of CIA and military leaders would overthrow the elected government and then decide to appoint Kamala as President. They explicitly talk about Kamala being made President.

This reminds me of the Roman republicans who naively assumed assassinating the king-adjacent Julius Caesar would re-establish the Republic. Oh how wrong they were.

One of the recurring elements of the resistance to Trump is that those decrying Trump and his supporters as a fascist don’t understand they are engaged in a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t think Trump and his supports are fascist, I generally think that fascism is not a live political force of any real consequence in the USA. I think people who throw the term around loosely almost always don’t understand what fascism actually is, and why it arose.

I cannot think of a better way to actually facilitate the birth of a real American homegrown fascism than killing or jailing Trump and successfully using extralegal methods to suppress the maga movement and stifle their (very popular) core political agenda.

It’s as if these people are trying to do a Weimar Republic speed run. If they got what they wanted, they’d likely also subsequently get what they are afraid of and what they deserve.

It’s as if these people are trying to do a Weimar Republic speed run.

While I agree that murdering Trump would be terrible for the US, I want to point out that the Weimar Republic was basically cuddling up to right-wing extremists. "Oh, he lead a Putsch attempt in which a few cops died. But look at him, he was provoked by all these bloody centrist forces. And nobody who feels as German as he does could possibly be a bad person, so let's just give him the tiniest slap on the wrist to teach him to respect the rule of the law when taking power."

We remember it that way because of how it ended up, but the Weimar was absolutely lousy with serious, revolutionary communists and honeycombed with the most stomach churning levels of sexual and cultural degeneracy ever witnessed in the west at that time. It very easily could have gone the other way.

My general feeling on this matter is that a healthy society capable of self government with aligned values and incentives would have never produced the Nazis in the first place, so if you’re frightened of a reappearance of them the moral imperative is not to produce the same levels of abject moral depravity that produced them in the first place.

Up until very recently, I felt that we were obviously failing that. I feel much more hopeful now.

Weimar was absolutely lousy with serious, revolutionary communists

I recommend reading The Outlaws by Ernst von Salomon. He battled these leftist revolutionaries and wrote about his experiences.

He was too young to be a WW1 vet and Freikorp member. He was a young regular soldier in post-WW1 Germany. So he fought against all sorts leftist revolutionaries circa 1919. But there was a strange issue in which his squad is killing socialists, but a few squad members were secretly socialists and he himself was very socialism-curious.

We exchanged shots with snipers. We tore around corners, hugging the walls, looking for openings; we crouched behind hastily piled-up barricades; we lay behind advertising columns and lamp standards; we forced doors and stormed up dark staircases; we shot anyone carrying arms who did not belong to our company; and every now and then men would fall who had not been carrying arms; and sometimes women and even children; and the bullets whistled over their bodies.

Behind our line prostitutes were strolling about. They sauntered up and down the Friedrichstrasse while shooting went on in the Unter den Linden. They approached anyone who stood to rest for a moment, giving us, who were still in the grip of this confused battle, who were still sighting the enemy over our rifles, a curious feeling of nausea. It was not the whispered solicitation that seemed so intolerable, it was the calm matter of fact way in which they snatched at our bodies - those bodies which a moment before had been exposed to rivers of bullets pouring from the machine-guns. We forced our way through the disorder in the streets, all our nerves strung up to their highest pitch. We pushed past hordes of beggars, of wounded soldiers, of blind men, and from time to time people spoke to us one offering cocaine, another a diamond ring, a third Kiesewetter's latest political verses.

It is so crazed. The casual acceptance of both mass desertion and slaughter of communist uprising. The wild chaos of that time could have led to the Soviet Union consuming Germany. Instead it led elsewhere in the desperate struggle against communist revolutionaries.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats