site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   33991 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Reuters (with links to documents): Trump’s foreign aid freeze stops anti-fentanyl work in Mexico

All of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) programs in Mexico are currently halted due to the funding freeze, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. These programs focus heavily on dismantling the fentanyl supply chain, according to State Department budget documents reviewed by Reuters. Their activities include training Mexican authorities to find and destroy clandestine fentanyl labs and to stop precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the illicit drug from entering Mexico.

In Mexico, INL also donates drug-detecting canines that helped Mexican authorities seize millions of fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, according to a March 2024 INL report.

“By pausing this assistance, the United States undercuts its own ability to manage a crisis affecting millions of Americans," said Dafna H. Rand, former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department from 2021 to 2023. “U.S. foreign assistance programs in Mexico are countering the fentanyl supply chain by training local security services and ensuring maximum U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the fight against this deadly drug.”

...

Through INL projects, the U.S. partners with Mexican authorities operating on the counternarcotics frontline, including the military, prosecutors and police. Beyond narcotics, INL in Mexico also provides support to combat illegal migration and human smuggling.

Hundreds of projects covering billions of dollars in assistance around the world came to a halt, including much of INL’s work globally, after Trump on January 20 ordered a freeze on most U.S. foreign aid, saying he wanted to ensure the spending was aligned with his "America First" policy.

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued waivers for what he called “life-saving humanitarian assistance” to be exempt from the freeze, aid workers and U.N. staff have said most of the programs remain shut and that confusion persists as to what is or isn’t permissible.

One source familiar with the situation said the administration was considering a waiver to permit funding for some foreign anti-narcotics programs, but it wasn't clear if INL’s Mexico projects were among them. Two of the sources said INL’s Mexico projects have not at present been given exemptions.

The funding freeze really seems to have generated many foreseeable problems. This one seems to go pretty directly against the administration's stated policy goals, and I'm having trouble coming up with good defenses of it:

It should have been done by the DEA, not the State Department? Setting aside whether or not this would have been organizationally superior, the way to correct the error of having this be done by the State Department would be to transfer the INL to the DEA... which is apparently not being done.

The administration couldn't have expected this to be done by the State Department, not the DEA, setting aside which is organizationally superior? This would be tacitly conceding their incompetence, and they haven't fixed the problem, despite now being aware of it.

We shouldn't be devote resources to combating drug trafficking on the other side of the border, on principle? Mexico could just as easily say that international drug trafficking is a problem of the recipient country's making, since the recipient country is the one with illicit demand, so Mexico has the principled reason to not devote resources to it.

Anyone have better ideas?

The funding freeze it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: forcing programs to come forward and say, “look, we’re actually something you want to keep because X, please give us some money”.

It feels like a lot of people here are doing the same thing progressives do when asked to defend affirmative action - they just come up with reasons why it might be a good thing, don't think about if it makes sense in context, and then argue it. Yeah, we need diversity because it makes teams more effective, diversity means different backgrounds and experiences, and look at this n=25 study from 2008!

In this case, Trump could have just said 'this funding freeze will go into effect in 90 days', and the agencies and departments would've all started begging for their money pretty quickly, without actually being defunded. Or just, like, used any other method of investigating what the government's spending money on, such as Google or the large amount of public data. These programs weren't secret, all the info was on the web! Actually shutting it all down immediately doesn't accomplish much, other than making a lot of people mad or enthused on twitter.

When has this slow and gradual reform worked in history, especially for something hard like shrinking government or anti-corruption efforts.

I don't understand what you mean. 90 days is not 'slow and gradual'. Slow and gradual reform by the standards of history is decades. Trump's in power for four years.

Also, under the current strategy all of Elon's big cuts have been blocked by judges, because they go directly against the Impoundment Control Act (passed the senate 80-0 in 1974 and affirmed by SCOTUS at the time), among other things. Courts are slow, 90 days is a reasonable timeframe. So the current strategy isn't actually working better.

This is just incorrect. They do not get directly against the Impoundment Control Act. Take USAID. The appropriation by Congress doesn’t say “spend X dollars on items A through AAA every week.” No there is a broad grant for the president and his delegate to use broad discretion.

Thus the president pausing payments isn’t impounding the money; it is the president figuring out what he wants to do with the broad grant given to him.

The Impoundment Act doesn’t come up until after a long while the president eschews spending anything. Of course with a Republican congress hopefully he can get a simple vote and the money is returned.

Now you might say “then why is he blocked.” The answer is forum shopped handpicked judicial activists have issued TROs where they don’t really need to justify their arguments and they don’t really expect to win on appeal but the hope is that delay favors the bureaucrats which it does.

I think this ultra vires judicial activism should be grounds for impeachment.

They do not get directly against the Impoundment Control Act. Take USAID. The appropriation by Congress doesn’t say “spend X dollars on items A through AAA every week.”

This would be more convincing if Elon hadn't attempted to pull almost all USAID workers off of their jobs, sending many of them back to the United States? Which is one of the things a judge blocked. Also if Elon and Trump weren't publicly clear about their desire to dismantle USAID. Judges observe the words you say online.

I agree that if Elon and Trump were smarter, they could've been creative, and tried to massively change the missions of agencies like USAID while still appearing to fulfill the requirements of legislation. He isn't doing that though.

No putting people on admin leave is crucial. It is what happens when you think a business is doing crazy shit because you don’t want those people to continue to do crazy shit.

And firing the people who you think are doing crazy shit doesn’t mean you intend to not do anything with the cash. Hell Rubio was instructed to think through things.

Maybe the problem is the judges were listening to the wrong media.

No putting people on admin leave is crucial. It is what happens when you think a business is doing crazy shit because you don’t want those people to continue to do crazy shit.

I do not understand what you are saying here. How is putting them on leave now, vs in 60 days, "crucial"? They have been doing that "crazy shit" for decades.

(And, again, judges have blocked all his big moves here, as was entirely predictable, so he hasn't even actually stopped them.)

You're doing the thing I mentioned in the above comment where you come up with post-hoc justifications for things Trump/Musk have done that are smarter than what they're actually doing.

From Musk on twitter: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID to the wood chipper." "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.". Trump on TruthSocial: "USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY ... CLOSE IT DOWN!"

If you say that, and then fire all the employees, I can reasonably conclude they're not planning to spend the money on different kinds of foreign aid. If they were planning to do that, they could just Tweet/Truth it. Instead of that. They aren't.

I agree that Musk and Trump could be effectively accomplishing their goals and improving the government on net if they did different things than they are currently doing.

I also still consider it entirely possible Musk, who is very smart and capable, will realize the current approach isn't accomplishing as much as he thinks and do something else. But he hasn't done that yet.

More comments

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