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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Oceania was not after all at war with Eric Adams. Oceania was at war with The Federalist Society. Eric Adams was an ally.


A few days ago, news broke that the DOJ ordered the federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams dismissed. As of this writing, the charges have still not been formally dismissed. Apparently, the Attorney General's office can't find anyone willing to sign their name on the dismissal paperwork. The acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned yesterday after refusing to carry out the order. If the name sounds familiar, she was the lead prosecuter in the SBF case. She must be some typical big-city liberal lawyer right? Well, apparently not.

The Federalist Society: "She was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III."

The gorgeous Miss Sassoon wasn't the only casualty. Reports are at least six people have resigned rather than sign-off on this.

It's worth taking a step back here. Six months ago, anyone would have expected that a big-city Democrat mayor getting indicted on federal corruption charges would have been the reddest of red meat to the online right. How did we get to the point that right-wing law influencers are denouncing the Federalist Society for prosecuting Democrats for corruption? The monkey wrench thrown in the gears is Trump's decision to use the charges as leverage to extract concessions on immigration. A few offhand comments by Adams critical of mass immigration are retroactively cast as the Casus Belli for the initial investigation by Biden's DOJ. Am I missing something here? Why is this not an obvious quid pro quo? I can't tell whether the MAGA claim is that, "yes, this is a quid pro quo, and that's fine", or if the claim is that, "no, actually the corruption charges were themselves corruption. Dismissing the corruption charges is actually fighting corruption".

Adams can’t even do anything on immigration. That said, while corrupt, he’s still less corrupt than the average Democrat machine politician in eg. Chicago or Philadelphia and it’s clear he was (even if justifiably) targeted because the party wanted Garcia.

That said, while corrupt, he’s still less corrupt than the average Democrat machine politician in eg. Chicago or Philadelphia and it’s clear he was (even if justifiably) targeted because the party wanted Garcia.

Proof for either of these claims?

Got a source for that, bro?

  • -10

Yeah, how dare bro ask for sources here? Doesn't bro know this is reddit themotte and everyone here already knows all republicans democrats are corrupt?

Do you have a source for themotte being conservative?

That behavior is obnoxious. Don’t ask for sources. If you disagree, provide your own. Rebuttals should involve the same amount of effort as that which they wish to rebut.

No I don't think that behavior is obnoxious. I think it's obnoxious to mock someone for requesting somebody else to substantiate their claims. Actually, if you have just posted this second paragraph initially, I would not have commented, even if I disagree with it.

I don't think the request to substantiate one's claims count as a rebuttal, and the question basically involve the same amount of effort as the initial claim.

Yes, it is obnoxious to demand "Source?" when someone states an opinion. If you think they're wrong, argue the point. If someone makes a factual claim, you can politely ask for evidence, but "Democrats are corrupt" is such a general statement, anyone can throw links arguing for or against the proposition and you know it. Stop this petty sniping.

Time to return to the scheduled programming in which I complain about moderation! I believe the tropey term for statements that are impossible to corroborate or refute is "not even wrong". Either @2rafa's statement was in that category, in which case she should not have made it to begin with; or @sockpuppet2's request for evidence was in principle reasonable, in which case he shouldn't have been mocked for it, nor implicitly unilaterally dinged by the modhat. Even if the request was in fact unreasonable, a mocking one-liner is certainly not mending any broken windows in the neighbourhood.

You looked at an escalation spiral that started with 2rafa's low-quality post (red valence), which invited a low-quality reply (blue valence) by sockpuppet2, which invited an even lower-quality response (red) by jeroboam, which in turn invited an equally lower-quality response (blue) by UwU, which then invited a mercifully higher-quality meta-discussion by the last two, and modhatted it casting blame on the blue-coloured entries in the chain only. Is this not a clear case of selective enforcement (more colourfully, "anarcho-tyranny")? And then you go and act like the community's rightward shift is an unfortunate natural phenomenon that you have nothing to do with and can't do anything about.

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