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Has anyone been checking out the reddit and hacker news reaction to TW's FAA scandal follow-up?
He's downvoted to -44 on /r/atc, which applauded his essay last year. Highlights from the comments:
The top-voted comment on hackernews is accusing it of being a rehashed non-scandal laundered by authoritarian fascists. But the actual comments are mostly in favor, or pointing out that there's suddenly a lot of brand new accounts defending the FAA & claiming "this wasn't real DEI."
Grendel-khan describes the reaction:
Taking it for granted for a moment that a lot of this stuff is totally astroturfed by blueanon orgs with AI-assisted spamming, it looks like doubling-down and tripling-down on full spectrum information manipulation is still the only strategy on the menu, even as it's increasingly failing and backfiring outside of totally controlled environments like reddit and bluesky.
So, what are the next four years going to look like? Is there going to be any evolution in strategy? Are they correct that just repeating a party line hard enough will bring people back into the fold?
I think that right now it's easy to point at this sort of frantic concern-trolling and laugh, but in a few years the average voter won't remember anything about some FAA hiring scandal except that "Trump used a tragedy for a culture war attack on minorities." Because while they'll only read a hackernews thread about TW's article once, they'll have heard the counter-narrative a million times, and will be sick of mustering the mental resources to reply critically with half-remembered anecdotes in the face of emotional blackmail. Eventually they'll forget they ever questioned the need for DEI programs, because only maga Nazis think that. The majority of people will never even see it once because reddit moderators deleted every mention of the article from the default subs, and banned the people who linked it.
So don't count on the familiar manipulation tactics failing forever just because it doesn't seem to be working right now. There is still an enormous propaganda engine manufacturing public opinion, and if I was in charge I'd make fighting it a high priority. But the current counter-elite supporting Trump dismiss that arm of the cathedral as opportunistic mercenaries, and fail to recognize the threat.
Moldbug and especially Thiel may absolutely despise the press, but they see the manipulation of public opinion as a quirk of "demotic" regimes, and have no time for it themselves. Moldbug in particular dismisses color revolutions with the over-simplistic "why does the dictator not simply shoot the revolutionaries with crypto-controlled weapons?" Thiel is quieter but clearly sees controlling the murder drones and spying rings as more important than propaganda. Musk is the only one of Trump's big backers who thinks control of social media is important, and I'm convinced that's because of his showman's instincts and desire for attention rather than some strategic policy.
People here have been talking as if the left will shift to violence and hard power in response to their usual methods failing last year (more assassinations of Musk & Trump, etc.). I'm a lot more worried about them doing the same thing they always do and getting away with it, because people don't have lasting immunity to propaganda.
I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say here beyond, "TracingWoodgrains is just right."
He's just right! There's no way to justify a norm like "never criticise bad things if my side is responsible". That's unironically the sort of logic that gets you the Great Leap Forward, where lower-ranking officials are afraid to report anything that goes against the narrative preferred by the higher-ups, and the result is always disastrous.
Set aside what you think about him as a person. On the specific issue here, he is just unambiguously correct.
The fact that people whose brains have been eaten by partisanship and culture war are unable to see that, whether that be lefties who have to deny and distract and minimise the scandal because it's going to be a win for the right, or whether it be righties who cannot possibly grant that a hated outsider did a better job of identifying and advocating for an issue that should have been an easy win for them, is really their own problem.
TracingWoodgrains is right.
Everything else is distraction.
I don't know who had their brain eaten by culture war if you think that people who don't want to sing praises of your friend must be distracting from the issue.
How did he do a better job identifying and advocating for the issue? He did a better job reporting on that particular story, but when it comes to the issue itself, how has he done a better job identifying it than anyone from James Lindsay through Lomez to the seven zillion witches posting here? How has he done a better job advocating for it, than Chris Rufo? Last I checked he was advocating that people vote for the candidate that would ensure more of this would keep happening.
As I said, it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. Nor do I care whether or not you praise him. The merits of TW as an individual are beside the point. The point is the issue itself.
I submit that TW is right about the issue, and that he has done a better job of bringing this particular issue to the public attention than anybody on the Motte, much less James Lindsay or Chris Rufo. Rufo has probably been more effective as an anti-woke activist in general, but on the FAA hirings scandal specifically - movement there is because of TW. He notes this himself.
And yes, he voted for Harris. He voted for Harris while publicly and passionately expressing his dissatisfaction with her, and after the election, he went on to continue to explain his problems with her, and what he thinks the Democrats ought to do, which means that I think this portrayal of him as some kind of bootlicking Democrat partisan is absurd. He made a judgement that, as much as he disliked Harris, he found her on balance the less-bad candidate that Donald Trump. If you want to blame him for literally everying that Harris or her political faction ever advocated for, then by the same logic we must blame every Trump voter for literally everything that Trump or his political faction ever advocated for. That is a lunatic standard to hold any voter to.
And even so, it is irrelevant, because whatever you think of TW's choice in the 2024 election, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FAA hiring scandal or his activism thereabouts.
On the issue - he is right. You don't have to praise him. You don't have to like him. But he is right about the FAA.
Oh, ok. I thought when you said "the issue", you meant anti-wokeness (or anti-DEI-in-particular), not just the FAA thing. Yeah good for him, he noticed it when others didn't. Why is that supposed to be such a big deal?
EDIT: according to @ahobata, he wasn't even the first to report on this, and one the Internet's infamous noticers beat him to it by a month. So can you explain to me, why is this case supposed to be so embarrassing to the anti-woke?
That's nice, but tell, if more people listened to him during the elections, would there be anything being done against the DEI issue?
I disagree, he very clearly is a partisan in the sense that he'll argue to vote for the Democrats over a Republican that's actually active on the culture war front, regardless of how much he will chastise the Democrats for not doing what he wants. I'm pretty sure I remember an old post of his where he was chastising Biden in much the same way he did with Harris, threatening that if things don't improve he just might defect to the Republicans. Would you say things improved over the course of the Biden administration? Would you say Harris was a better candidate than Biden? What exactly would have to happen for me to be able to conclude that he is, in fact, a Dem partisan?
Again, I disagree. You can't beat me over the head with "TW was right" if he effectively wanted to convince people to have the issue continue.
If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you? To me, the FAA is just one of infinity cases where an institution engages in blatant racism, it's the least surprising thing in the world, and Trace did indeed come out on the side of the issue that is correct. I don't recall anyone here doubting his claims on the FAA.
I don't believe I said anything about the anti-woke as a general category? Honestly, I think that if you're Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, the best response to TW's FAA story is to just applaud. Just say, "Yes, this is what we're talking about."
I am sure that if Kamala Harris were president right now, there would still be lots of people doing anti-DEI advocacy, and TW would no doubt be among them. I do not believe that he would have changed his mind about or refused to engage in the FAA reporting if Harris were president.
That just sounds to me like you think it's partisan to cast a vote at all. Yes, he voted for a candidate that he hated but considered on balance less bad than the other one. But that's what most people do. I would say that a 'partisan' for a particular party or candidate is someone who spends significant time or effort boosting that party or candidate - and since TW has spent much more criticising the Democrats or Harris than boosting them, I don't consider him a partisan for them. I think he just made the decision that, in a presidential election, which is ultimately a binary choice, he found them less bad than the alternative.
I think the fact that he was actively and effectively working to expose and address the issue undermines your point here. You don't need to vote for Donald Trump to oppose DEI. It is possible to take the position, "DEI is bad, Harris' support for DEI is bad, but on balance Harris is less bad than Trump, so I will vote for Harris while continuing to advocate against DEI".
Trump voters can make the exact same move - such-and-such policy is bad, Trump supports the bad policy, but I think that on balance Trump is less bad than Harris, so I will vote for Trump and continue to advocate against the bad policy. You do not have to agree with a candidate on every single issue to judge that candidate preferable at the ballot box.
This was actually an example in Scott's 'Varieties of Argumentative Experience', under the 'Single Facts' heading.
As here:
The top-level post that I was responding to was about liberals who try to minimise the story or attack TW for giving cover to the (ex hypothesi bad and fascist) Trump administration; and I was reading lots of comments here criticising TW for being a centrist Democrat who continues to believe that Trump is bad. I was saying that in the context of all these "who? whom?" arguments, it is worth allowing all of ourselves the sober reminder that what he said was both true and normatively right. That's the ball that we should keep our eyes on.
When he posted his original article, I don't anyone here said anything else.
That's nice, but what would that accomplish? Trace is barely one voice in a massive choir impotently complaining about DEI, and whether he stopped impotently complaining the moment Harris got elected, or complained twice as hard, the result would be the same. By contrast Trump, even if he ultimately falters, is at least making a dent. If you're going to tell me to vote for a politician that would double down on DEI and against one of the few that are likely to dampen it, I feel free to dismiss your claim to be one of the greatest DEI-fighters out there.
No, this is completely unfair. I specifically said he's perfectly entitled to vote for Harris, it's his endorsement that's the issue.
Yeah, but that's not what I'm accusing him of. I'm saying he would never endorse any Republican that would be likely to do anything to put a stop to DEI, or to any other issue he supposedly cares about. He would not endorse DeSantis, he would not endorse Vance, he might endorse someone completely ineffectual (/deliberately sabotaging the side he represents) like Romney, but not someone actually likely to do something to rollback the past 10 years.
Citation needed. There are issues where you can contribute to meaningful change without electing a populist, or taking drastic steps. Take something like the trans issue, there's enough academic pushback to the idea, that I think it's possible to eventually put a stop to it by following all the procedures so beloved by liberals, and without electing politicians that will take drastic action. By contrast 10 years of "exposing and addressing" DEI accomplished absolutely nothing, what worked is banning it from the federal government, and cutting off the money-spigot.
I still don't understand what is the point of this reminder, no one here doubted it. People here are criticizing him, because just like he has his grievances with us, with have ours with him. To me it feels like you're trying to shut off that criticism for no other reason than you personally liking him.
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