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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   35708 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Nothing Ever Happens

DOGE is as good as dead. They’ve hit the wall.

Federal judge pauses deadline for federal workers to accept Trump’s resignation offer.

DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts.

The one shining light of hope for true government reform was Elon Musk’s DOGE. They seemed to be making real progress. They may not have been loved, but they were feared, and Machiavelli said that’s enough.

Now they have lost the momentum. Stays and injunctions will start pouring in as district court judges stop fearing that their orders will be simply ignored.

If the deep state career civil service can draw blood with a trick as old as “drag-up old racist internet comments”, then DOGE really are toothless. No one will take them seriously anymore.

“Some US officials had begun calling the young engineers the “Muskovites” for their aggressive loyalty to the SpaceX owner. But some USAid staff used another word: the “incels”.

Maybe Congress can tap in…

  • -11

From Musk on Twitter about an hour ago (in reply to Vice President Vance), on Elez:

🫡

He will be brought back.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

And he's back.

They made a good start. “Look how well we were doing until the lawyers brought their cases (and we control the lawmakers)” is a much better case that “hey, shouldn’t we set up something to do something about spending?”. It’s all marketing, but marketing exists for a purpose. There is nothing the Blob hates more than exposing itself on prime-time TV.

DOGE could never succeed because the biggest cause of the deficit (assuming raising taxes is unacceptable) is welfare spending (most of which is not ‘fraud’ but entirely legal and intentional), followed distantly by defense.

If you’re not significantly cutting social security or medicare, medicaid or defense, it doesn’t matter. Trump knows cuts to these are politically impossible, so DOGE can (at most) trim the edges.

Lastly, who really believes that Trump will not tire of Musk in four years?

assuming raising taxes is unacceptable

And do you know what happens when you assume?

Lastly, who really believes that Trump will not tire of Musk in four years?

I do wonder what becomes of their alliance once the honeymoon phase of this term cools down. Imagine trump eventually does something that musk doesn't love being associated with, does musk have the ability to grin and bear it, or would he be tempted to resign from his thankless government job to be a humble private sector executive again?

Elon Musk just posted a poll: "Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?" (It's yes/no, pretty steady at about 80/20)

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902

It didn't occur to me this was even an option, but bringing him back would be even better than not firing him in the first place (in my opinion).

Nothing says his behavior was unprofessional. He just said things which are "inappropriate" as described by who knows whom based on whatever definition of what's appropriate. Most likely not even in a professional setting, if I'm getting the "deleted pseudonym" part right.

based on whatever definition of what's appropriate

There isn't a single mainstream workplace in the Western world where saying 'normalise Indian hate' would not be considered unprofessional.

From the New York Times through academia to Lockheed Martin, expressing racist sentiments has become so mainstream that I have trouble understanding how you could say this. Not only is it normal to shitpost racism on social media when you're off the clock, it's literally in some people's job descriptions.

From the New York Times

I wish there was a bot which replied with just two words under any mention of that guy: "Sarah Jeong"

If you're at home and you stub your toe and say fuck, is that considered unprofessional? Are people supposed to act 'professional' in every part of their lives?

What are you talking about? Non-white non-males say mad racist-sexist shit all the time, and not only don't get fired, but were on dedicated payrolls to do just that.

It's not an exception if the idea they should be fired is purely aspirational.

In what sense is it false? People like this had cozy jobs in both the public and the private sector for like a decade, and were in no danger of losing their jobs at any point. You said this sort of stuff would get you fired anywhere else, that's blatantly false.

Did Vance actually call for cancelling someone like that? It's not like there was a shortage of targets.

The point is that they're making an exception...

An exception from what? Can you point to any left-winger who was fired for similar conduct? (preferably enough of them to make a pattern, but that's way to much for me to realistically ask for)

That's speculation. Can you point to any left-winger who was as an actual matter of fact fired for similar conduct? It doesn't even have to be at/by DOGE, anywhere in the American public sector is close enough for me.

Without that evidence, I think you're just projecting your ideals onto them and accusing them of hypocrisy when they don't live up to standards they never claimed.

Case in point

https://www.dailywire.com/news/shell-game-the-feds-said-anti-white-activists-dei-unit-was-disbanded-she-was-actually-promoted

And J.D Vance has endorsed bringing him back.

Beyond my wildest optimistic dreams - what is happening

From what I read it was under a pseudonym

He used to have the account under his name and later renamed it, which isn't great opsec.

Yeah not exactly genius level behaviour, although the account was deleted in December but people found the archives. Nothing safe online once you attach your name to it

Yes he did change it later to a pseudonym

Firing him for statements that would get him fired anywhere else

Shitposting on the internet should not get him fired anywhere else.

I don't find it obvious at all that "normalize Indian hate" isn't a true reflection of how he feels about Indian people or why it's "shitposting".

Cool, but I come from a world where the idea of digging out someone's social media posts in order to get them fired was seen as absurd, and I'd like to get back to that world.

"would", not "should".

So Indian-hate is about to be normalized?

Wait, who fired him in the first place if not Musk?

They can't get entrenched on this specific battle. They took a casualty, gotta move on, keep the objectives in mind. The objective is not "give this 20 something a job," the objective is "Zero Base Budget (ZBB) the federal government, remove the welfare of the elites." They are at war.

If this person is crucial to the fight it is one thing. If they are just starting a new fight that's another.

They can't get entrenched on this specific battle

This is true of 'both sides' (sorry, convenient shorthand) - but all they have to do is hire him back and go about their business. If anyone wants to blow up about it (which I imagine they would, biblically) then they're the ones getting entrenched, to their disadvantage. Presumably, new giant things will keep coming along for them to continue blowing up about.

Or, ideally they'd just do it this afternoon with an intentionally quiet announcement and everybody would forget about it by Monday after the Super Bowl.

Look at me, being all optimistic - feels good man

If we want DOGE to be popular long term, so that Congress backs its recommendations and they become more permanent than the sitting president, we need to stick with things normies can understand and get behind. If Edgy Tweets turns 5% of normie opinions against DOGE, then DOGE can lose significant ground in the theater that matters..

Here's something plenty of normies can get behind: "One shouldn't be fired for the posts they made on their own time on social media".

This is obviously not a principle without limits though, and for a lot of people being avowedly racist is beyond that limit. How would it even be possible not to take that attitude into the workplace?

Is this obvious?

Fairly obvious. If someone had tweeted [terrorist] did nothing wrong even on their own time it would be disqualifying. It's not so much the act itself but the attitudes it betrays, attitudes which are (or rather ought to be) incompatible with his position.

More comments

Idk, normies pretty regularly get behind firing teachers for starring in porn.

Sexual immortality is different than kids shit posting online.

Classroom teacher is also different from coder / sysadmin.

Unfortunately I'm not sure that's 100% accurate. Most normies have a tipping point. "Maybe a teacher should be fired if they post photos of themselves stripping on Facebook." "Maybe a tech bro should be fired for posting that they would never marry someone outside their race." Everyone draws a line somewhere.

When I was in primary school, in a pretty normal place, there was no Facebook, but there were teachers who stripped. And at least some of the parents (and students) knew about it. And they remained teachers despite this. So no, I think the normies can chill.

Maybe it is about the principle that anti-Doge forces shouldn't have a say who Doge employs. If Doge fire anyone its enemies can dig up allegedly offensive postings of, then it isn't Doge draining the swamp, but the swamp draining Doge.

Or maybe it is a "No man left behind" sort of thing, where one precommits to spending resources (in Doge's case political efforts) to defend your own, as to make sure thoey fight with greater devotion to the cause.

I don't really care about Doge, I care about results. Elon Musk can take care of the Doge staffer by hiring him at Space X or Tesla. Everyone at Doge needs to be aware that success is everything. If they win, they will have a great resume, many tech billionaires willing to pay them nice salaries, etc. If they lose they may never be employed again. They may end up in jail.

These are the stakes. This is the mission. They have one chance at this.

The polling is embarrassing, really. Asking your own fans whether you should do something they want you to do, like a king who needs his courtiers’ permission before every little ruling. Bring him back, do not, let that authority rest with you. Also, who asked him to resign, if not either someone very senior in the White House (in which case Musk would be dimwitted to overrule them) or someone in Musk’s own employ at DOGE? Neither reflects well on him.

The polling is embarrassing, really.

About as "embarrasing" as the emperor getting the temperature of the colosseum before he gives his thumbs up or down.

The poll is to show influential people what the masses really think about it. Musk rehiring him is more defensible when a million people think he should be rehired. When an investor or politician presses him he can say that he asked the people, even if it’s not actually a fair sample size.

Is it just 'his own fans' now on twitter? I'm really asking, I'm still under the impression that none of the spinoffs took off enough to really change that 'everyone' was still on twitter.

Also, Musk is not the King, Trump is. Musk might be the sovereign of his own domain, but in the White House he is himself a courtier. One doesn't have to descend into Kremlinology to see that Elon was probably getting data to cover his ass. Or he might have just been genuinely curious, he does seem to do polls a lot for this kind of thing.

To your last question does anyone know how many employees DOGE actually has now? The memes took off so fast that this image of half a dozen guys reporting directly to Elon is already seared in my mind. Like my instinct is to say Elon personally let this guy go and the decision to hire him back is also his

In my experience on X, Musk's polls tend to overwhelmingly support Musk's side of any given issue. I don't think that Musk is faking the polls, it's just a combination of a certain degree of leftist exodus from X combined with the general tendency that online polls have to skew unrepresentatively heavily one way or another because of a combination of brigading and the natural emotional tendency of one side to get really excited to vote while the other side stamps its feet in disgust and refuses to participate. Since these polls have almost no real-world consequence, there is little emotional incentive for people who dislike Musk to participate in them, whereas people who agree with Musk want to show their support. Certainly the 80/20 figure means little when it comes to gauging the average American's thoughts on the issue.

I understand the dynamic you're describing and it all rings true except for I'm not convinced Elon's preferred outcome was having the poll come out in favor of the fella. Short of not hiring him in the first place, I think he would've preferred it just went away. But there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how we were regressing to the days of freely handing the enemy scalps and I think Elon maybe put the poll up as a result of the umbrage.

Although that's sort of just a little idle Kremlinology, sorry. Thanks for your thoughts, interested to see how it plays out

The poll could be rigged. He owns the website.

The worst it could get it 50/50, do you really want to make a bet that most Americans want to get him fired given the result of the election?

Actually, would you want him fired?

And where is this wall?

You've listed a DOGE member who was too politically toxic to keep in DOGE. Okay. Is he the only member of DOGE? Critical to DOGE? Impossible to replace? Did the great DOGE experiment hinge on this one person?

You have also raised a court case. Was... that not part of the expectation? Was DOGE only supposed to be able to work if literally no one tried to bring a lawsuit against it?

Everyone should have expected resistance. Looks like bureaucrats were stunned by Musk's quick advance, but have now reacquired their composure.

It's far from over. Now the real fight begins.

Nothing Ever Happens. DOGE is as good as dead.

We shall see

I'm still hoping that Lord Dampnut and the Deep State take each other down, and make room for something between Bernie Sanders and Scott Alexander....

The first communist, polygamous state in the modern era?

If the Nibblonians send Old Man Waterfall back in time to become its AG.

Stays and injunctions will start pouring in as district court judges stop fearing that their orders will be simply ignored.

Did you know that you can appeal stays and injunctions on an emergency basis all the way up to the Supreme Court? This isn't a slam dunk to way to a hearing, let alone a win, particularly since you now need to clear emergency hurdles as well as prevail on the questions on the merits - but the court system can move surprisingly quickly when it wants to. And recently, on balance, I would say that it is likely to be deferential to the executive, particularly on these sorts of questions. Trump v. Hawaii is a relevant case here, both in terms of SCOTUS' deference to the executive and in terms of the fact that the case was heard by SCOTUS within a year of the Presidential action in question.

...which brings me to my next question: did you know that people sometimes attempt to provoke lawsuits on purpose?

I have no idea if Team Trump is that smart, but one potential strategy is to draw litigation on an area that you know is favorable (in this case - executive branch's management of its own employees!) and get a ruling from SCOTUS that is in your favor and maybe just a bit broader than absolutely necessary. Now you use that ruling to cover your next round of broader, slightly less precedented actions - and this time your enemies are thinking twice about suing you because they don't want to lose before SCOTUS again and give you cover for whatever your next move is. Really, if you can be confident that the courts are on your side (and they might not be, this stuff is a bit arcane to me so idk) you're in a win-win scenario at this point - either you get away with doing what you want, or you get to do what you want after a short break and you set precedent that lets you do more in the future.

TLDR; I don't think a single lawsuit means DOGE is dead.

Maybe Congress can tap in…

I do think this will be necessary for Continued Trump Winning. I might try to flesh this out more as a top-level post, but basically while DOGE is whipping up the true believers into a feeding frenzy, setting a right-wing narrative about, say, USAID, and perhaps getting solid reform, letting Elon run the narrative has a serious problem: unless you're following along with every Tweet (and most Americans are not) you're sort of vaguely getting splattered by a firehose of information. Now, you'll recall how well that approach worked during the Stop Trump push. Instead of focusing on one clearly bad thing, Team Anti-Trump hit him from 40 different angles and ultimately none of the attacks stuck narratively even if they stuck legally.

Letting Elon Tweet this stuff out in bits and pieces is great for Team Trump morale, but to get a win that sticks in the mind of America Team Trump needs to find a clear-cut case of (ideally criminal) malfeasance by an ideological enemy and then either make hay out of the criminal prosecution or have Congress make a big stink about it. (Ideally don't have Elon tweet about it before it hits the newspapers, that can have an inoculatory effect in some cases.) The narrative needs to be something extremely simple, no more complex than "Under our political opponents, $400 million in fraud was facilitated at USAID," and then they need to get their allies in Congress to do nothing except talk about that exact message until USAID and their political opponents are discredited - and then move on to the next target.

I'm not saying the discombobulating series of actions are bad - it's actually a very good strategy, I think - but for it to have lasting effect, there also needs to be a very simple narrative that everyone can grasp and that everyone can hear. Think Watergate, or even better the Lewinsky scandal.

At least, that's my sense. I'm not trying to argue that it's good or bad for America, I leave that up to you, but in terms of what works, I think America needs to hear something simpler and louder than Elon tweeting for four years. Congressional hearings might just do it.

Trump's true test was always going to be whether or not he can get Congress to work for him. If he crashes on the same shores as Obama did, he's capped at being a powerful executive and doesn't secure a lasting legacy.

I hope that unitary executive action wasn't the only chapter in his plan and that he actually has a consolidation phase in mind. Otherwise this is going to end up a very heroic defeat.

I agree with this, with a caveat: Congress has been pushing more and more off on to the executive. If Trump simply destroys much of the administrative state and streamlines the rest, it's possible he will have a lasting legacy simply because Congress may not sign off on future expansions of the executive and because even if they do, it might take decades for the bloat to return.

However, I you're correct that a consolidation phase is probably necessary to really cement a legacy, particularly when looking ahead towards future electoral dynamics.

In my opinion, that might be a good thing for what I value. I would much prefer for some other arm of Tumpism to be stopped, not DOGE, since I value cutting government bloat... but at least it's something. My politics is based on the idea of keeping the left and the right stuck in a stalemate so that neither becomes dominant.

Now that Trumpism and the new right in general have given the woke a number of brutal punches and the woke is on the ropes in several ways, Trumpism begins to seem to me like the bigger threat, so now I turn my attention to strategies for doing some damage to Trumpism.

This would not have come about, other than that the left turned out to be weaker than I expected. I thought they would put up more of a fight, and that the stalemate I wanted would naturally come about, but I was wrong. The left has turned out to be a bit of a paper tiger and Trump's people have been running wild, which was never my preferred outcome. I just wanted to stop woke authoritarianism. So now I pivot yet again and, since the left turned out to be weaker than I had expected them to be, I now, despite having no love for the left, find myself wanting to at least prevent them from being crushed, since although I am neither left nor right, unfortunately the left is the only political force in the US with enough numbers to contain the right, just like the right is the only political force in the US with enough numbers to contain the left.

You are basically a leftist, dude. The left wins by pretending neutrality and always demanding the right to be impotent.

The right will need to do a lot more victories before anything like a stalemate happens.

A somewhat blunt way to put it, but I agree even as another person who would take 100% Left domination over 100% Right domination without blinking. It would take a lot more to balance the scales - when as many universities test right-wing credentials for applicants to student or faculty positions as do diversity statements and progressive stack scoring and 50% of illegal immigrants to the US have actually been removed, you could talk about the two parties being in a stalemate. The problem is that the US Left has really destroyed any objective sense of what balance looks like by tactical Overton window shifting, so even slight compromises to their preferences are depicted as huge norm-shattering transgressions, and in the end removing some 0.0?01% of illegal immigrants or firing that percentage of progressive federal government workers winds up feeling as if it may outweigh continued progressive domination of whole industries.

The problem in doing this for Leftists themselves, I think, is that in a world where so much power is built on kayfabe or rather the perception of invincibility, this might actually result in their downfall against all odds. You can keep a roomful of unarmed people in check with a machinegun, but if your strategy is to hide the gun and instead insist that you are a Sith lord who could force choke them at any moment, someone calling the bluff on your sad devotion to that ancient religion might just result in everyone laughing and bumrushing you before you can get enough bullets through your barrel.

the woke is on the ropes in several ways

Let me tell you it makes me a bit sick to be doing my best @2rafa impression, but my guy it's been 18 days. It probably took you longer than 18 days to turn against the party of Obama, did it not? Can you explain how the woke is on the ropes in several ways? A few federally sponsored organizations have been told to stop doing some types of work.

What exactly been done that can't be undone January 20th, 2029?

One huge thing is defunding so many USAid payments is almost certain to result in shuttering a huge number of NGOs. Those aren't just fund and restart by a new administration. The brands will be lost, the employees scattered etc. That might be the biggest accomplishment Trump has made in his political career.

I never supported the party of Obama to begin with. I enjoyed seeing the Republicans go down, but Obama's movement creeped me out. I found all that hope and change stuff, and the legions of young people treating Obama like some kind of superhero, to be disturbing in a cult-like way. But I did enjoy seeing the Republicans eat shit.

The woke is on the ropes. First, they have failed to censor discussion. The old meme was "just build your own Internet". The anti-woke did just that, but what's more, they didn't even get driven off most of the existing Internet. Un-woke discussion is completely mainstream on X, Facebook, and YouTube. Second, DEI is being rolled back both in government and business. Third, the Democrats completely embarrassed themselves in the last year. Even a bunch of their supporters are disgusted by their ineffectiveness and elitism and/or are calling for them to become less woke. Fourth, apparently zoomer guys are lurching right.

The woke isn't completely defeated, but they have sustained massive blows. In my opinion, the woke is still a threat but a relatively minor one, at least to my values. The bigger threat to my values, which are largely classical liberal, right now is, I think, for the first time ever, the Trump coalition. I do hope that the Trump coalition deals huge damage to the establishment blob before it goes down, though. That said, I also do not want to live in a country dominated by Trumpism.

Edit: One important thing I should add, which I did not think of when I originally wrote this, is that I still view the woke as being excessively strong when it comes to property crime and violent crime in blue cities. Some progress (as judged according to my values) has been made on this issue lately, as one can see for example from the fact that even on Reddit, which is a solid blue bastion, blue city subreddits have been condemning overly progressive approaches to policing lately. However, the "defund the police" types are still too strong for my tastes.

Obama's movement creeped me out. I found all that hope and change stuff, and the legions of young people treating Obama like some kind of superhero, to be disturbing in a cult-like way.

I know this isn't your main point, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way. It was so creepy the way a cult of personality formed around Obama. Even still, to this day, my mother in law basically equates "the Obamas" with "good people". There's a similar thing with Trump but nowhere near to the same extent as it was for Obama. "Cult-like" is a great way to describe it, and I was astonished how many people just fell into the cult.

Obviously I'm not saying that all Obama supporters were in the cult of personality, much as not all Trump supporters are. But it was so pronounced that it really was freaky.

I think a lot of people today would have a hard time believing how intense the Obama personality cult was. This is partially because it won - it seems more reasonable to people today that he was so admired seeing as so many of his scandals have been relegated to the dustbin of history. It's also partially because it's now irrelevant and discarded - Obama, while still powerful in internal DNC politics, is out of office and no longer really needs a personality cult, which would have been difficult to sustain for so long anyway. But between both of these factors, I don't think most people today realize that the Democratic consensus around, say, 2008-2011, was that you needed a Maoist degree of unconditional support for Obama or else you were an evil white supremacist. He also presented himself in a much more extreme light back then - far from the basically-Bill-Clinton-but-black that we now remember, his promise to America was that when elected, he would usher in a totalitarian Soviet-style communist state, radical change beyond the wildest dreams of what DOGE is trying. We don't remember that because it failed, because it hit the blob and got absorbed.

There's a similar thing with Trump but nowhere near to the same extent as it was for Obama

C'mon, are you kidding me with this?

I haven't seen any actual shrines to trump with candles and offerings at the alter, and I haven't seen any newspaper articles saying "Many spiritually advanced people I know identify Trump as a lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet"

So that's one level of crazy even his colloidal silver quaffing fans haven't reached yet. They just think he executed Hillary Clinton and replaced her with a clone as part of The Plan.

remember this creepy song/chant being taught to children: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qp-ot_vChlU

I know people (unwillingly; they're in my neighborhood) who honestly think that if they can just manage to get Trump to pray for someone sick, said person will be healed. No shrines and prayer candles that I'm aware of, but I don't hang out at their house, either.

I mean to be fair, judging by all the prayer request chain emails I get from friends, they think this about a lot of people. There's some carcinisation features of folk religions that evolve over and over. In another fifty years I wouldn't be surprised to see Americans burning money at funerals so the deceased can tip St Peter the customary 25%

There are people who treat the trump family as royal, but few who have the fawning demigod attitude the left still has for Obama.

No, I'm not. I don't think you remember just how big the Obama cult of personality was if you think Trump is on the same level. Obama's was everywhere. The news, the arts, you basically couldn't get through a day without encountering that stuff.

By comparison, though Trump personality cultists surely exist they don't control mass media (and in fact are shamed by said media, not that that's right either). I've never personally encountered one, whereas I knew several people who were all in on Obama. They simply are not as big nor as much of a cultural force.

Immediately thought of this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk

Seeing that '17 years ago' next to the view count was a real 'Holy shit' moment because it does feel like yesterday

Personally I'll always remember the Chris Matthews. He was the 'I felt this thrill going up my leg as he spoke.", who also cried over an Obama speech and compared him to Jesus.

One of my formative political experiences was going all in on the cult of Obama (as a Brit) and being told by an American friend of many years, “who the fuck do you think you are to tell me who to vote for? You know nothing about American politics, nothing about McCain, and you’re telling me how I should vote?”. I’ve never forgotten it.

Second, DEI is being rolled back both in government and business.

I work at a company where DEI has been rolled back and internal discussions of this are uniformly condemning the change. I have literally not seen a single person defending them. I know I can't be the only one who isn't sorry to see them go, but the culture is still such that people don't feel safe expressing that.

Woke at the top may be on the ropes, but on the bottom it's still alive and well.

The woke are not on the rope. They have not even begun being dislodged. What has happened is the start of some setbacks for them. It is fine to admit you don't want them to be dislodged, which is what will happen if victory is declared already.

The anti-woke did just that, but what's more, they didn't even get driven off most of the existing Internet.

Non anti woke liberals support censorship and woke agendas. They support doing it on progressive grounds and zionists on zionist grounds.

There isn't this movement of moderate, centrist liberals out there, because mainstream liberalism shares the pathologies of anti white racism, virtue signalling authoritarinsm, hatred of dissent, distorting things in favor ,progressive political corectness over what is true, obviously it is part of patronage networks and corruption where money is directed to them and their client groups. Are definetly nationalists for their favorite demographics and are definetly motivated by hostility towards the continued existence of homogeneous ethnicities of their etnhic outgroups and want to replace and end them both for ideological and ethnic hatred and to gain an electoral advantage. They see fascism in the existence of european ethnicities which is very extreme, and also treat with fanatical hostility those dissenting with them on such issues.

And so, I don't think from the depths of such hostility that you can have people who respect freedom of others. Nor are all freedoms equal, the freedom of totalitarian tyrants to impose their struggle sessions on their ethnic and ideological outgroup is not equal to the freedom of not having this imposed against you and suppressing political commissars who demand that you hate your group. The liberal war on all sorts of isms leads them to support cancel culture constantly and with intensity.

National freedom necessitates keeping out extreme foreign nationalists or Communists for example, that favor your nation destruction and subjucation out of ethnic hostility or ideological hostility to your nation, or both. That liberals blacklist those who don't share their extreme ideology, in addition to discriminating against white males, is something that can't be forgotten, since we can't have institutions be controlled by people who abuse their position.

This isn't to say that those who claim to be anti woke can't be for censorship either on progressive, which is most common, zionist, or even right wing grounds.

There is also the question of what measures are necessary for a good public morality. I doubt the Trumpian right which is authoritarian on criticism of Jews and Israel, is going to ban porn. Authoritarianism in line with the same old establishment ends seems more of a threat than genuinelly right wing cultural authoritarianism.

Personally, I would rather people who tell the truth and care about what works well, are promoted, while those who lie, censor, are suppressed. And the first get rewards and praise while the later get scathing criticism and lose opportunities. And there are some general ethical priorities too. People who care about their own nation's well being, and therefore can't be for maximizing individualistic hedonism, but are honorable in their dealings with rest of the world. I don't believe you can have every institution this idea of "everything goes". Discernment inevitably will exist, and it should weight against the Walter Duranty characters but in favor of the Gareth Jones type of characters. Instead of letting the Walter Duranty types of the world as it happens today, to cancel the Gareth Jones types of the world. https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news/a-tale-of-two-journalists-walter-duranty-and-gareth-jones/

Now, as far as liberalism goes, it falls in the Walter Duranty side rather than the Gareth Jones side. Cancelling their patronage network hasn't even started happening and would be welcome news.

To the extend one can identifie a pervasive liberalism that differs from a pervasive "woke", it will still share most its pathologies, with the woke are just even further extreme on the same direction.

My view of the matter is that it does not make sense to pretend of a center left that doesn't exist, because far left policies is the behavior of the mainstream left, and of mainstream liberals. Extremism is what the supposed center left is about. This pretension just ends with the far left doing far left things while those who aren't them, we let them and are asleep. It is just a big myth to justify their anti right wing extremism and their far left politics.

That liberals who think the right which hasn't even started doing things, should stop, is part and parcel of the extreme ideology against the right wing doing things which has lead to things being so far left to begin with. It is obligatory for right wingers who have started changing things to not listen to liberals who oppose them from doing so, and see them as part of the entrenched far left. The far left has become such a big problem while there has been countless rhetoric of liberals downplaying the problem of far left extremism and exaggerating the problem of right wing extremism during that time. In response the right wing has started to evolve, and these tactics no longer work anymore.

I'm not sure why I should invest in responding to one of your typical walls of text if you start out by assuming that I am basically a leftist, which in fact I am not except from your sort of pretty far-right perspective on the political spectrum, and that I wrote my comment because I want to stop people from further attacking the woke, which in fact is not why I wrote my comment.

I see you as a far leftist who defines as far right people who disagree with you and defines yourself incorectly as centrist. Since this is a very common tactic of the left to win, I think it is an important issue.

You can fit into what is tried to be presented as mainstream center left and disagree with people further left than you and still be sufficiently far to the left to qualify as far left though. Because the mainstream left is far left in its agenda. Same applies with the establishment agenda in institutions that you declare has already changed too much, even though it has not. It is a woke agenda that hasn't been dismantled and so it is obviously reasonable to question whether your self identification is inaccurate over what you actually support.

You might even honestly define yourself incorrectly as more moderate than you really are and others as much more extreme than they really are. I understand why far leftists who constantly do this tactic don't want to explore this issue, but they are actually the aggressive party, defining everyone who doesn't share their radical ideology as far right. The common principles of the mainstream liberal ideology are a far left radical ideology and you personally have fitted sufficiently with this ideology with your sentiments of insulting on people on the right who oppose for example the great replacement and aren't liberals. Again what you promote fits with wanting wokeness to remain entrenched which is an obvious point that you could have addressed directly.

It is only fair after you guys constantly try to aggressively label and marginalize others, to accept people who disagree with this and see you as the radical extreme faction. Sorry but you can't just win unopposed by just incorrectly labeling others inaccurately and labeling yourselves inaccurately, and after labeling others that you can't complain for others who disagree with your labels. Feigning neutrality while doing far left things is the tactic of far left 101 that it has constantly done.

I even worked to break down how some of the principles of liberals are extreme. That I don't just lazily label you is not the advantage that you think you are. Nobody forces people who don't want this to read only shorter posts. Let me do this again.

The truth is that if we are to put ideologies into circles, if your circle does not have shared ground with what you call far right, on nationalism, you are far left. And the reason you are far left is that your ideology is too extreme and hostile against a group and proposes a radical destructive vision, and shares within it hateful intolerant authoritarian perspective. If your ideology is a radical ideology that says that your ethnic outgroup should go extinct and be happy to do so, including the demographics that historically made a big part of a nation, that is very radical. It actually fits within treasonous hetoric in many countries, even within the text of their constitutions. It is even more radical if it is within your own nation. It isn't far right to be hostile to this ideology, but far right is a self serving arbitary label to justify this extreme agenda. In fact it is an element of the extremism that people want to label others as far right for opposing it.

If we are to put a line from anti white to pro white for example of one issue, you and mainstream liberalism will be on the far left. Or consider heteronormativity, or fertility rates and whether it makes sense to be dogmatic for liberal dogma. Or intersexual relationships and feminism vs more conservative norms. What is called far right for being too pro white for example often encompasses more moderate space than liberals. By the principle that to be too extreme in one category makes one far right, then liberals should be considered far left. Or take conservatism. When it comes to social behavior, the liberal typically is not a moderate who combines conservative with non conservative notions at least the non left wing sense, and what is called far right tends to encompass those who are more synergistic in combining conservative and some elements of social liberalism in less amount than the liberals. Or take censorship, you try to present non woke liberals (which should include neocons who are not conservatives but a form of the tribe of iberals) as betters for censorship but the discussion had various people who others wouldn't label woke, who supported this guy being fired after being doxed for his more right leaning non liberal views. A position more extreme than Vance's which was that he disagreed with him but he shouldn't be fired, because he might be good in his job and that this was the result of left wing doxxing.

If we are to analyze ideology through circles that encompass ideology, purity spiraling means to really avoid to have any shared ground with others on the areas they aren't wrong. This is a central aspect in what the space complaining about far right does on issues of nationalism, social liberalism vs conservatism, interethnic relationships. The position of the mainstream establishment fails to be at all a reasonable synthesis, or compromises in line with Aristotle's approach in Nicomedean ethics that seeks a moderate virtue that contrasts two extreme vices.

Beyond the liberals declarations of others to be far right, and for the liberals to represent some sort of reasonable center lies begging the question and purity spiral dogmatism. It is one of the biggest myths and assumptions that must be challenged and reexamined.

If people don't want to bother with doing that because it isn't in their advantage to do so, it is expected. If you want to be lazy about it, then posting that, just sounds like an excuse to avoid confronting the argument and to dismiss the other party. I think to an extend liberals have grown entitled due to expectations of censorship, allowing them to get away with just labeling themselves and others and win, without examining in the substance, if what they support is actually good and reasonable and to dissent is to be an extremist as they present it. That, and because of previous march on institutions and authoritarian measures and stubborn zealotry in repeating such associations, to an extend it has stuck and even people who oppose liberals to an extend sometimes adopt their terminology. It hasn't stuck with everyone thankfully and it is arbitrary self serving propaganda that is meant to help a political faction at the expense of any opposition, and what is true and good. That is because you are willing to label too positively untrue and destructive agendas and label too negatively true and moral perspectives.

There isn't this movement of moderate, centrist liberals out there

I might be misreading you, but while I think you nailed most of this post chum, here you are wrong - there is, it's called the maga movement. Also I think actual moderate centrist liberals are definitely nationalist, it's the natural cultural foundation.

I agree that within the american political system, MAGA is more centrist than liberals and neocons. But not sure that it is a centrist liberal movement. And in practice it doesn't seem to be a break from neocons sufficiently. For one, it is willing to champion foreign policy moves and rhetoric that does not fit into that. Like Trump's rhetoric about annexing Canada.

I don't think liberalism is a good thing and a centrist movement would not be liberal but not totally exclusionary of liberal notions. It would be a synthesis of some liberal notions, with conservative and nationalist, with even some dose of internationalist. Like I am a family first type of person but try to treat people outside my family with honor, provided they do the same.

Liberalism in practice is the purity spiral dogmatism. Historically there have been some people more in line with what I favor that might have called themselves liberals as within the national liberalism ideology but they lost and have been overwhelmed by the new left type which is the dominant and representative of the historical trajectory of liberalism. This includes the people who call themselves classical liberals. What they want is new left liberalism with its dogmas and consensuses.

And so I am against it. Only in lower amounts and on specific issues is it valuable. To go with zero liberalism and adopt a purity spiral as liberals do towards conservatism and nationalism (for their white ethnic outgroup, they are more supportive of nationalism for ingroup), would lead to abandoning good things. I like liberal opposition to war crimes for example but then there is a liberal tribe that is also for war crimes. While liberals fail to do this as a tribe, liberalism is to an extend related with concept of political impartiality which is valuable again to an extend. Liberalism in practice fails to even follow its supposed virtues but while I would abandon liberalism, I wouldn't abandon anything related to it. Trying to avoid the same folly that liberals war on "fascism" that leads them to support the extinction and second class status of white people and to aggressively hate those who think otherwise.

The purity spiral to be part of the dna of liberalism and how it developed, but within the views, principles that are associated with liberalism there is some value to be extracted. But to be a liberal is to adopt a framework that will lead you adopt dogmatically too much the new left agenda.

To give it as an exercise: Homosexuality is not illegal but society promotes heteronormativity and champions nuclear families and tries to promote more pro natal monogamous ideology and social mores which is reflected in the media. Promotes its historical reBecause the current situation is actually too unbalanced against heteronormativism and healthy social mores and fertility.

Such society, does not present homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality since the later is both more normal and useful for society, and less related % with other even nastier sexual behavior that to an extend appears as more prevalent with LGBT groups. And there is a patronage network to promote this. It bans surgeries that mutiliate people and doesn't accept trans ideology. But it also doesn't try to aggressively humiliate homosexuals for example.

It is nationalist and pursues its own interests, obviously tries to maintain its ethnic community and promotes some level of pride and self confidence but is honorable in its dealings with other nations. It would never side, support or allow its people to act like some other groups that engage in rape gangs and then close the wagons, or try to convince ethnic groups that they should have no national identity, self hate, and go extinct and be replaced by them and would never tolerate people doing this to them. So this is a synthesis but of course fits well outside what liberals would accept.

Seems to me that decentralizing liberalism from the way we identify is important to having a vision that manages to synthesize important things that both liberals and liberalism are found in opposition to. Since liberalism fails to be a synthesizing reasonable vision, why treat it as a category that we, or the MAGA movement must fit into?

The MAGA platform is bog-standard populism: pro-government-intervention for their side of social issues. That’s not centrist. Especially not given the OP’s argument that the mainstream left can’t be centrist because it gives too much time to the extremists!

MAGA is an archetypal national-liberal political movement. Down to even the McKinleyite foreign policy. It's made up of a lot of people who don't like or care about liberalism, but there's the irony of our current situation for ya.

What would you say is a natural right-wing movement, if MAGA isn't it? Religious fundamentalism? Ethno-nationalism? But then what would be left to count as far right? (This is a genuine question, not an attempted gotcha.)

But then what would be left to count as far right?

The original right wing, per the defining of "left" and "right" in the seating organization of the French National Assembly during the revolution: Throne-and-Altar Monarchy and hereditary aristocracy.

As far as I know, I am the only De Maistre-ian social conservative(you know this is a different thing from nrx, right?) on the motte. If even on the motte you can only find one of us then there are not enough to occupy a meaningful part of the political spectrum.

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Outside of Moldbug's wildest dreams, this is not a position that meaningfully exists in America, nor is it likely to within our lifetimes, or our children's, or our children's children. I don't see why we should skew our common-sense political terminology just to leave a whole quadrant permanently unoccupied.

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It's a tough subject to tackle, because as the battlefield currently lies yeah, it's right wing. But if there is any objective basis to the political axis at all (a big if) I think it's hard to call the party that unites the likes of Rubio, Vance and Gabbard anything other than centrist. And like Igi says it's goals are the archetype of the national-liberal. I don't know what a natural right wing party looks like to be honest, I only know there hasn't been one since I became politically active.

This is not a "no one is right wing enough for me" argument btw, I am on the Trump train precisely because of this. Like @aquota mentions elsewhere, I also want an equilibrium between the right and the left. Further though I believe the most stable equilibrium puts the right in charge with the left as counterbalance, due to the personality types each side attracts.

posted comments that most people would find racist

Uncharitable small minded people, perhaps.

Of the online comments attributed to him which is the most racist?

eugenic immigration policy

Aren't most points based selection criteria or 'skilled' immigration policies broadly eugenisist?

you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity

'Most people' don't marry outside their ethnicity. This 'controversial' interview from 1971 with Muhammad Ali seems to be broadly supportive of the sentiment. It's not something you hear much in current year, so much has fallen to 'you do you'. A desire to marry within your ethnicity is not racist. While I would agree that 'most people' would say you should be able to miscegenate, 'most people' in fact do not. His expression that there is no dowery large enough to induce him into miscegenation, seems consistent with the observed behavior of 'most people'.

Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool

In current year, where so much is 'racist', espousing non-DEI, non-antiracist, views is called racist. The term is used so widely and frequently as to have lost substantive meaning. He's a twenty-something being edgy on the internet.

alt-right / dissident right isn't necessarily racist.

A more charitable understanding, in the context of edgy SV adjacent kids might be

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration.

What a coincidence you forgot "normalize Indian hate".

Wasn't included in the coverage I read. There are more charitable interpretations were you inclined.

In context with his age, industry and medium and other posts attributed to him

99 percent of Indian H1B [visas] will be replaced by slightly smarter [large language models], they’re going back don’t worry guys.

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration. Fits well enough, and is absent the inflammatory language.

That's not what he wrote.

Attributed to him here

https://futurism.com/elon-doge-resignation

I'm sorry, are you disputing that he wrote "normalize Indian hate" or are you just refusing to address that sentiment?

I addressed it in responses to both you and wowwowwow.

In context with his age, industry and medium and other posts attributed to him, there are more charitable interpretations were you inclined.

A more charitable understanding, in the context of edgy SV adjacent kids might be

Normalize opposition to mediocre Indian H1b immigration.

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I'm 100% on team HBD, because that's where the evidence strongly points, and I'm sick of midwits trying to smear those of us who can actually follow the science as racists, but "normalize Indian hate" sounds an awful lot like actual racism to me.

I think Muskateers was a much better way to refer to the Dodge staffers.

And if one of the four resigned it's now the Three Muskateers so even better!

I feel like this whole thing is a microcosm of how the world works.

So these DOGE kids can push their way past the weather nerds at NOAA, but what would happen if they tried that at the Pentagon or CIA? Surely the billions vanishing into thin air at those two places are far more pressing.

The DOGE kids have done very little so far beyond getting read-only access to some non-classified disbursements that they can’t actually stop.

Surely the billions vanishing into thin air at those two places are far more pressing.

Yes, but in their defense, these kids have their whole life ahead of them.

The delay in closing date is actually doing Musk a favor by allowing an extension of time for more workers to accept the offer in the meantime. Only 40k have accepted so far.

Its not dead and there legal challenges were always going to happen. For the curious, the tweets in question were from this summer.

“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,”

“Normalize Indian hate” in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley

“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool"

“I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Not sure how that last one is conceivably racist. The now-deleted account was @nullllptr but previously was called @marko_elez - the staffers name.

I'd agree that these are racist. I'd also point out that there have been many, many, cases of leftists crying wolf when they supposedly dredged up something racist that someone did, and 9 times out of 10 it's innocuous, happened twenty years ago, or both. Having it actually pan out is unusual. That's why this case was met with a lot of skepticism--most of the time something like this doesn't pan out.

They're racist. Now what? They're racist in a way that's extremely common if you observe how people actually behave. Most people won't in practice date outside their race. This guy just admitted it. A healthy society is structured such that people don't have to lie all the time in public about their honest preferences.

Why would he ever say these things under his real name?

Did he say those things when the account was under his real name? Or did he say them after the account had been renamed?

I'm actually a little happy to learn that America is still a republic with the rule of law.

As you say, Trump and Congress can work together to realize his goals with DOGE. I think there is a huge difference between Trump doing things entirely on his own, and doing them with the cooperation of Congress. Slash budgets if that's what the voters want, but do it the right way.

When the bureaucracy is strong and you need Congress, the Courts, and the Executive to shrink the bureaucracy do you really live in a Republic?

I think there is an interesting question around whether you can have a true republic in which the popularly elected assembly is powerless in the face of an also-elected single leader. Probably

Well yes. Both / and. I just find it curious that people are upset and calling it dictatorship when the elected executive reduces the unelected bureaucracy seemingly with the support of the majority of congress.

Isn't it just a Russel Conjugation?

I'm pruning the excesses of the unelected, self-serving buerocracy

You're making cuts to government agencies

He's destroying vitally important institutions

I mean, you totally can, as long as it’s elected. A republic doesn’t have to have checks and balances.

That's not how it works. The democratic parts of the American government are set up in a rock-paper-scissors type way. Where if any one part of government tries to get something done another one can block it with everyone just pointing fingers at each other to shift blame. This is to ensure that democratic priorities never get addressed so that the unelected bureaucracy can work on lobbyist priorities unhindered.

Exactly!

There’s no shortage of Republicans willing to defund the D.Ed or whatever. Get them to propose a short, straightforward bill whenever courts block one of the DOGE cuts.

Looks like they're going after Medicare and Medicaid:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14364811/doge-elon-musk-target-fraud-medicare-medicaid.html

That's the big one. Do it, Elon. And social security while you're at it. It's what the people voted for, after all.

Any major Social Security savings are going to have to come from legislation, because the formulas for payouts are dictated by law. Maybe they find some people cashing dead parents' checks, but I don't expect that to be more than a small single-digit percentage, if that. Plus there's no real room for discretion, since payouts are only based on contributions and age of retirement.

There's some room for fraud in disability, but rooting that out without inspecting each individual on a case-by-case basis might be tough. Maybe they can look for doctors with anomalously high rates of diagnosing disability that can't be explained by specialty.

There's a lot more room for fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, because there's much more room for discretion. Again, reviewing individual cases is probably not possible, but maybe they can find providers with anomalous numbers.

Apparently, medicare/medicaid fraud is a big thing with hospitals. Apparently, there is a US Senator (R) who used to be a CEO of a hospital company that engaged in a large amount of fraud with the US government.

I think you're thinking of Vivek Ramaswamy.

rick scott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) but maybe there are two

The 65 year old vooooters would turn on Trump real quick if those particular funds were touched at all.

I suspect that medicare billing fraud normally doesn't benefit the patient much.

Yes but that's not how it will be framed and discussed. It will be "$X Billion cuts to Medicare!1!1!!!"

The fraud isn't in the over 65s it's in all the working age people getting disability payments.

SSDI pays out $150B yearly. Unless it's mostly fraud, it's not that much of the federal budget.

While true, that’s still like $1000 per taxpayer. Fixing government fraud and waste will involve cobbling together lots of small wins. Like a fine wagyu steak the fat is everywhere, not just in one easily removable chunk.

It's more like $400 per taxpayer (and it's not all fraud) but sure, I agree that it's probably more fertile ground than the piddling $1M NSF grants that were being bandied about a few weeks ago.

Just how many taxpayers do you think there are?

Fair, I was calculating per person. About 80% of people pay some kind of federal tax (including payroll taxes) so it's like $550 per person.

That’s a death knell? How many people were even going to take it, anyway? It doesn’t make a difference if Musk can keep refusing to disburse apportioned funds.

I won’t feel comfortable until I see enforcement of the Impoundment Act. Are there any suits bringing that forward?

It doesn’t make a difference if Musk can keep refusing to disburse apportioned funds

Wait, who's the President, again?

Benjamin Netanyahu

I think it’s Vince McMahon?

Obviously Musk. Trump is his PR representative.

IMO the right play would have been to announce massive unforgiving layoffs immediately after the deadline. Anyone who took the offer gets 8 months pay. Anyone who gets laid-off gets the absolute minimum. That’s how you establish credibility.

Only problem is 8 months is less than the minimum, for folks at about the mid career stage after 22 years of service you're guaranteed to get more than 8 months pay as severance.

I thought max buyouts under federal law is 25k?

I was referring to severance under an involuntary separation. There's of course a formula.

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/severance-pay-estimation-worksheet/

Except they can’t offer 8 months pay since there isn’t yet a budget after March.

Here’s what I’m confused about: if they can’t offer 8-months pay because there isn’t a budget after March, how come they can offer to not lay-off everybody in March? It seems like everyone expects that money to be there. The only question is if the employees in question will be required to work.

Because there’s a specific law against offering such payments before the funds have been appropriated.

Presumably that law applies also against making binding commitments to not fire those persons for that duration.

Only works if you’ve got an iterated process, though. If done one department at a time, that’d deploy the fear of God.

There was never a doubt that court orders would be followed. This isn’t 1964 Alabama.

Federal judge pauses deadline for federal workers to accept Trump’s resignation offer.

I was initially surprised by this, not because of any detailed reading of statute, but because federal employees can simply ignore the offer. I find it intuitively odd that proceeding with the status quo is fine, making this offer without a deadline might be fine, but making the offer with a deadline isn't fine. Concerns about enforceability seem at least plausible to me, but I really struggle to understand why a short deadline to make the decision would be a problem in and of itself. If you don't take it, well, you're just back where you were a couple Tuesdays ago.

Because the deadline is likely the marker for what happens "next" - the RIF. The probie list has already started getting marked up

It sounds like it’s the combination of the deadline with the ongoing litigation. Can’t force a decision while the outcome is still up in the air.

Plus, I’m guessing neither unions nor employer wants to deal with an employee who accepted the offer if the courts walk it back.

Question is how quickly can the government get this to a higher court. This is sad.

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