site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30561 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 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 New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Except for the fact that white young men are now by far the strongest GOP demographic.

That doesn’t matter if young white men are a small minority of the population. Black women are the strongest Dem demographic, they’re clearly not enough to win an election. As the first post suggests, young non hispanic white men are no longer even a majority of young men if you look at gen alpha.

young non hispanic white men are no longer even a majority of young men if you look at gen alpha.

They're still a massive plurality, and might be a majority depending on how the "hispanic"-identification shakes out (if you're the product of a mixed family, are roughly the same color as Taylor Lautner and have the surname "Lopez" are you hispanic or white? It's not immediately obvious absent cultural signifiers which are malleable to self-ID and incentive).

Also, pointing to black women isn't the flex you think it is, because they wield massive political power in the Democratic party, which very much has a puncher's chance of winning any given elections despite being a dysfunctional krazy-glue ethnic spoils coalition. Even gen alpha white men are a much larger and higher-earning-potential demographic.

if you're the product of a mixed family, are roughly the same color as Taylor Lautner and have the surname "Lopez" are you hispanic or white?

There have been a number of shifts in the common definition of "white" (which has occasionally gone by other terms like "WASP") that generally get swept under the rug by partisans. In the late 1800s, it didn't include Italians. Catholics more broadly were probably excluded until maybe the JFK administration.

I sometimes wonder if we'd all get along better if we actively tried to culturally expand that definition to include all Americans, rather than focusing on divisive "hyphenated Americans" (a term which dates back to the late 1800s). But it seems an unpopular idea in political activist circles.

There have been a number of shifts in the common definition of "white" (which has occasionally gone by other terms like "WASP")

I don't think WASPs ever self-described as such. My (boomer WASP) relatives tell me that they had never heard the term until they went to college in the 60's, where it was used in a half-joking, half-derogatory sense by their Jewish classmates i.e. "we have a slur for every other group, so we need one for you guys too." "Anglo-Saxon" was definitely used in the past, but it wasn't meant to imply that non-Anglo-Saxons weren't white (yes, Ben Franklin once wrote the 18th century equivalent of a Twitter shitpost arguing this position, but I've never seen any other evidence that this was a widespread opinion in his day or afterwards).

I sometimes wonder if we'd all get along better if we actively tried to culturally expand that definition to include all Americans, rather than focusing on divisive "hyphenated Americans" (a term which dates back to the late 1800s). But it seems an unpopular idea in political activist circles.

Calling everyone white would be needlessly confusing when we already have the word American. Sure, Spanish-speakers and heritage American ethnic nationalists will be upset that we aren't conforming to their definitions of the word, but this is already how 90% of the population is using it so at this point it's just descriptive linguistics.

But young men in the United States of all races share pretty similar grievances, namely “I can’t get a good job”. Also, while Democrats used to strategically confine their contempt to white men, increasingly they can’t help themselves from going guns-hot against anyone who was born male and didn’t transition. So political platforms that are designed to appeal to white men are increasingly picking up other demographics as well.

My experience with confused and sometimes at risk youths is that they tend to see anti-male discrimination as a very big deal, and racial divisions as comparatively smaller. A ‘men and married women’ coalition is a winning one.

This is likely just downstream from the fact that black people have an outsized influence on blue-tribe politics compared to other racial minorities. When asians and hispanics see POC gets rebranded as BIPOC and the media loudly champion Harris's plan to empower black men, it's no surprise that they feel less valued than their peers.

"if the republican party is to survive" people have been using this line for as far as I can remember, and yet if Trump's win, strong House and Senate showings, the SCOTUS, and the woke-backlash are any indication, the Republican party is doing just fine, even thriving. Both parities operate a lot on vibes. if the vibes are negative , the incumbent may lose, like in 2020,2024. Except for maybe blacks and 'single young urban women' , voting patterns can change at a whim based on vibes.

In short, white identitarianism is not a sustainable strategy for Republicans going forward.

It sure is if the Dems do an even worse job by catering to females, african americans (also females), and various LGBT parties whilst alienating everyone else.

Which is exactly what their own polling seems to be revealing.

https://archive.is/vtqL5

Can't assume what will or won't work for the GOP without considering the actions of its sole competitor.

It sure is if the Dems do an even worse job...

I wouldn't call self-sabotaging while hoping the other guy self-sabotages more a strategy. I agree it is what both American political parties have been doing for the last decade or so.

I do not understand the mental illness that drives such persistent and pointless trolling.

We had an eye on you from the beginning, but the antiphrasis is a dead giveaway. You were about 8% subtler this time. I guess if you keep refining your technique you might last a bit longer each time, but really, why don't you just find something better to do with your life?

See your next alt in a few days, I guess. Sigh

Which one of the chronic returnees is this person again?

I know we have a / a few chronic returnees, but I've long since forgotten/conflated the original strains. It's reached a point where it's receiving a callout it's no longer clear who is being referred to.

Well, we usually don't go into too much detail- no point in giving them tips to avoid identification. But there are several active whom we see regularly.

I think a lot of it is driven by ego. "Curse those Motte mods, how could they clock a superior genius like myself? How dare they ban me? I will prove I am smarter!"

The lack of detail is less confusing than the lack of attribution. I'm not critiquing the moderating decision on sock puppets who troll, but the mod-end comments comes across as a discussion which uses nothing but pronouns with an insinuated but unclear subject.

Which, in other contexts, would (appropriately) come with a prompt to speak clearly for others to understand.

I realize that "Trust us, we know this guy is a troll" is not very satisfying. What if we're wrong? What if we are capriciously banning people on impulse? So we try to let people know that we have reasons (and reasoning) for our actions, but like I said, too much detail, or linking to his last few alts, would be telling him something about our pattern-matching.

In short, white identitarianism is not a sustainable strategy for Republicans going forward.

Any party strategy is a combination of many constituent sub-strategies. The Democrat party heavily appeals to Black identitarianism but it would be wrong define that as their "strategy." Polling and survey data suggests that Latinos are even more sympathetic to white identitarianism than whites are. Appealing to it as part of a broader strategy seems unlikely to dissuade Latino voters. If anything they seem to like it.

Polling and survey data suggests that Latinos are even more sympathetic to white identitarianism than whites are.

Never ask an online neonazi about what race their girlfriend is... or what continent their mitochondrial DNA comes from.

I'm not racist, but, men with amerindian mtDNA and an indo-european y-haplogroup (specifically the R haplotype) are objectively the most advanced genetic hybrids humanity has ever seen. ;)

Except Trump has been far more explicitly White identitarian than past Republican candidates and he is doing better with minorities. Meanwhile the dems are the most openly ethnic spoils and patronizing to minorities they've ever been and they're losing votes.

Seems White identitarianism is something asians and latinos paradoxically find appealing. Maybe they just prefer a cohesive world view to the chaos and racial spoils systems of multiculturalism? I mean when white supremacy culture is things like expecting people to be on time, or be quiet and respectful in public white supremacy doesn't sound all that bad.

Or maybe they think of themselves as white (for the latinos)? Either way going back to the pre-Trump era republican strategy of trying to run latino candidates or do stunts like Bush delivering a radio address in mexican seems like a losing idea.

GW Bush pandered extensively to Hispanics, and now Trump does the opposite and wins them over. Trump has made it abundantly clear, when it's not implied, the distinction between legal, productive immigrants compared to illegal or law-breaking ones. The former know and can infer that Trump is not referring to them.

Also increasingly the illegal immigrants aren’t coming from the same countries and ethnic groups as the Hispanics already in the United States. Most of the people in Mexico who want to be in the United States and have the means to do so already are. There is a pretty big cultural gulf between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans on the one side, and Guatemalans and Venezuelans on the other. And increasingly, while the illegal immigrants are coming across the Mexican border, they aren’t even from the Americas.

Good take. I think Latinos and Asians (that have chosen to be in the states) actually gasp like whites!

First it’s clearly a selection bias, otherwise why would they move to an Anglo country? And secondly, we are generally respectful, rule abiding, and have good business culture. Racism exists everywhere, but whites are much less racist than inter-Asian country racism, and for Latinos, you’re making a hell of a lot more here than for the same work in your home country, so it’s hard to argue with the numbers!

Can't speak for Asians, but for Latinos-

  • Dynamics in the old country are pretty straightforwardly whiter=better. Mexico has significant internal migration towards whiter areas and the countries south of there see immigration towards much-whiter Mexico. This is driven by development and GDP- majority white parts of Mexico are dangerous but otherwise normal industrialized middle income countries, the parts with more mesoamerican demographics are worse than that. Most Latinos take for granted that white people run everything because they're better at it, and often prefer white bosses because they're used to treating workers as something approximating an equal in comparison to more stratified class dynamics south of the border.

  • Blacks and Hispanics Do Not Get Along. In low skill environments that are ethnically mixed the boss is pretty much always white because the Hispanics won't accept a black boss and the blacks won't accept a Hispanic boss. The Hispanic view of Blacks is pretty D.R. twitterati aligned and the Black view of Hispanics is as treacherous, racist, having a 'teacher's pet' dynamic with whites, and add in some complaints about 'why won't they learn English'. Both think that, if not the top criticism, definitely a top five, criticism of whites is bad food- they hate each other far more.

  • The average Hispanic does not feel discriminated against by whites or white society, and many find the idea that they need extra help on the basis of race/ethnicity to be offensive. The Hispanic community in the USA is generally upwardly mobile on a generational basis and the Latin culture understands that most people don't go from picking peaches to millionaires in one generation. Might that change eventually, when they rise to where they probably ain't gonna go no higher? Maybe. But for now Hispanics broadly think that the place they occupy in American society is pretty fair, certainly a better deal than the old country, and that they'll get to where they oughta be eventually.

  • Latinos love performative masculinity. This is something you'd associate with Trump over the rest of the GOP and the GOP over the democrats. Most of the time Hispanics and the red tribe understand each other, or feel like they do- 'you watch football, we watch futbol. We both like barbecue and visiting grandma. Pickup trucks are cool and practical. Success through small business is praiseworthy. America is great because of it. People should go to church more(this does not mean the speaker actually goes).' These things do make them natural conservatives, in the latter-day sense of the word of having cultural commonalities with Trump voters. In contrast Hispanics often have trouble grasping why liberals care about the shit they care about- we've addressed their ideas about Blacks but they also don't understand why anyone would want more gays, don't get why someone would choose sushi over BBQ, don't understand fancy coffee or trendy apartments, are suspicious of what WFH types actually do all day, etc. Rednecks and Hispanics are both peasant populations and they understand each other far more than bougie status symbols.

Is this coming from personal observation, collected anecdata, or some other form of evidence?

Yes

So, which of the three? (Good thing I used "or," rather than "and/or!") And, if "some other form of evidence," what form of evidence?

The Democrats had nothing to offer any voter who was unhappy with the system as it was. The entire campaign was based around continuity, as it has been since 2012 (at least). Trump promised change, to flip the system. Young people will always vote to shuffle the deck because they have less to lose and more to gain.

The risk is that the left is more than capable of eventually offering rather compelling deck shuffling of its own.

The dems offer a lot: student loan forgiveness, healthcare reform, housing reform, etc. It's just the handouts are not as effective at winning votes.

Sure, but they’ve been offering that kind of thing for decades and it hasn’t happened and voters have internalized that.,

ACA and The Biden-Harris Administration's Student Debt Relief Plan

sure, it's not the same as single payer and free college for all, but it's something

The dems offer a lot: student loan forgiveness, healthcare reform, housing reform, etc.

Do they? One of my major disappointments with the Democratic party since Obama's election is that there has been very little talk about implementing nationalized healthcare beyond what the ACA accomplished. Pre-ACA, the thought among much of the left was that it was to be a wedge in an effort to keep the door to just full on nationalized healthcare. At the very least, it seems that that step was indeed effectively irreversible so far, with not a whole lot effort that I can see from Republicans trying to roll it back. But neither have Democrats been trying to push that ratchet further. If Kamala ran on socialized healthcare or other forms of significant healthcare reform, she didn't do a good job of advertising it.

I'm also not really aware of Democrats making much noise in terms of housing reform. Given how locally Democrat-controlled areas tend not to have the best reputation in terms of accomplishing lower housing costs, I'm not sure they have much credibility for it, either.

The risk is that the left is more than capable of eventually offering rather compelling deck shuffling of its own.

What are their options?

  • Double-down on left-social populism (AKA wokeness)
  • Reorient towards left-economic populism (Bernie Sanders style)
  • Reorient towards liberalism

It seems safe to say a significant part of the reorientation of the young vote is a reaction against "Wokeness." So I don't think they will go that route. The left-economic populism route might appeal to young voters but it won't appeal to the more affluent voters or doner class which the Democrat party has made massive inroads with recently.

A reorientation towards liberalism is unlikely to appeal to young voters for the reasons you've suggested. It will also alienate the progressive base who might churn towards right wing populism as a response.

Obviously they can adopt any combination of the three but it's hard to suggest the right combination of those options that will appeal to young voters.

Probably option 2 in the next financial crisis. Some major donors will leave, others won’t. Many ultra-rich Dem donors are fine with higher taxes on the rich. The Disney heirs, Laurene Jobs, plenty of others besides.

I don't think the Sanders-style socialist talking points are going to activate the suburban college-educated voters (who are going to increasingly come from the younger generation). It's old stuff, every Gen Z voter supporting Trump has heard it all before. Sanders says the exact same thing every speech. It's not going to cause a generational shift.

Dems have lost much of the comparative advantage against right-wing populism, compared to the former state of Republicans adopting strict free-market liberalism. They aren't going to have a monopoly on economic populism any more.

It needs to be something new and I am not sure the left is capable of generating anything new at this point. The Right Wing has soooo much greenspace in comparison.

Gen Z is in a much better position economically than millennials were at the height of Occupy and then the run up to Sanders’ campaign in 2015. Unemployment is extremely low and outside of tech (which only a small minority will pursue careers in) jobs are relatively plentiful for now. It makes sense that economic populism is an unattractive message. “Make the rich pay” always comes back into style when the going gets tough, as does expanding the state to provide more money, more welfare, more services.

A pivot for the GOP into full social conservatism and progressive economic policy is theoretically possible, but not under Trump or his likely successors, who on economic policy still preach a small state, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more liberal financial markets and deregulation etc.

full social conservatism and progressive economic policy

Of course they wouldn't pivot to this: modern "social conservatism" is progressivism, and the Blue party is their political arm. One only need look at what progressive economic policy is- that being "never develop anything, ever"- to see that.

“Make the rich pay” always comes back into style when the going gets tough

Hence why the Blue party was elected in 2020. Progressivism defines {man, white, straight} as "the rich", and their literal mission statement(s) are about making them pay.

Not only that the “tax the rich” thing only works until you start living on your own and get into a permanent job. It’s popular with college kids because they don’t pay taxes and would get free money, essentially. But once you see your first check at a full time salaried job and realize that you’re paying nearly 40 of your check to the government, the appeal of “gibs” goes down a lot.

It’s one of the biggest red pills that people get alongside having a child and owning a house. Once you see how these things affect your life and family, you get cured of socialism really quickly because you realize that you are the one who will pay for it all.

Not only that the “tax the rich” thing only works until you start living on your own and get into a permanent job. It’s popular with college kids because they don’t pay taxes and would get free money, essentially. But once you see your first check at a full time salaried job and realize that you’re paying nearly 40 of your check to the government, the appeal of “gibs” goes down a lot.

Not necessarily. I'm reminded here of my dad's last employer before he retired. Jake was a landlord who owned various properties — apartments, a commercial warehouse, houses — all either as rental properties or as investments to repair/improve and "flip." He was worth somewhere in the tens of millions at his peak. He'd take vacations down to Vegas at least once a year and blow five figures on poker.

Jake also disliked paying taxes. That's pretty much how he ended up going out of business, after he had to liquidate and sell off a bunch of assets when the IRS came after him for a bunch of back taxes and associated fines.

And yet, Jake was a solid Democrat, an avid NPR listener, and a frequent proponent of increasing taxes on "the rich" to pay for more socialist "gibs."

How did he square these things?

Simple. As far as Jake was concerned, he wasn't part of "the rich." He's just your ordinary, overtaxed middle-class millionaire. No, it's the billionaires and the hundred millionaires who need to be paying "their fair share" to fund all these programs he supports, not him. Because when he said to tax "the rich" more, he meant anyone richer than him.

Never underestimate the power of envy.

I mean, affluent voters usually think America can run deficits forever unless they're partisan republicans. I don't think welfare handouts would turn off the laptop class neurotic base democrats have gained recently. 'Medicare for all and free college' doesn't mean anyone in particular actually pays for it- what are we, European?

"Ben Miller, who was most recently the principal deputy under secretary at the US Department of Education during the Biden-Harris Administration" explains "What the Department of Education actually does"

It includes a claim that it's the "most efficient" Department:

The Department of Education sends vast sums of money out the door to states, districts, schools, and institutions of higher education quite efficiently. For every dollar the Department gets from Congressional appropriations, it spends about 3.4 cents to make that money flow, enforce the law, and ensure someone picks up the phone when one of the tens of millions of student loan borrowers needs help.^1 Moreover, Congress appropriates the money for these salaries and expenses separately from the money used for grant programs — spending less money on personnel will not increase the dollars flowing outside the building.

1 Around 35 percent of the salaries and expenses money goes directly to paying student loan servicers, so the spending rate on Department of Education staff is even lower.

The conclusion gets to a question I think is important, albeit in a more biased way than I'd like:

Those clamoring to shutter the Department of Education have always played coy with exactly what they mean.

Sometimes, they’ve meant taking the same functions and moving them elsewhere, like having the US Department of the Treasury take over the federal student loan portfolio. That proposal raises a lot of questions, such as would Treasury actually want to absorb such a massive and complicated portfolio? Would everything done in Federal Student Aid be moved or only pieces? And would the part of the Department of Education that writes rules governing the aid programs now be binding a different federal agency?

But where shuttering proponents are often silent is on the importance of the requirements and standards the Department of Education attaches to the money it awards.

The Department’s signature programs establish a national goal: that regardless of who you are or where you come from, our nation’s public schools will serve you and educate you to a standard of excellence. Aspirations like this have driven our country’s prosperity for decades and have allowed millions of people with disabilities to live as full and productive members of a society that in the not too distant past shunned them.

The Department of Education doesn’t tell states, districts, schools, colleges, or any other institutions how they have to educate anyone. But it has always insisted that they try.

What policy goal is advanced by "reforming" or eliminating the Department of Education? How could other departments/agencies better fulfill statutory requirements? (Any given hobby-horse "Title _" requirement would still exist.) I can make an anti-war on drugs argument for reforming the DEA or an anti-gun control argument for reforming the BATFE, but that DoE is - so far as I know - infamous only for the "Dear Colleague" letter makes me think that they're relatively good about apolitically applying statutes and that attempts to politicize the Department got adequate (relative to other departments) attention.

My problem with it is they never once question the mission. They believe deeply in it and they are (were) efficient at it and scientifically minded (my sister is one of the hated PhDs that was just fired, FWIW), but they simply never question the deeply held belief that every child must be educated and every person should go to college. And these two big beliefs are stressing the hell out of schools and individuals respectively. Schools are bogged down in lawsuits and budget constraints while they try to make sure even the most disabled people get a HS diploma and we have a saturated market for grads and post-grads who are simply not realizing the financial 'promise' of their degrees. I read that post and thought...so what? It changes nothing.

they simply never question the deeply held belief that every child must be educated and every person should go to college

Were those the actual beliefs, or were the actual beliefs Mottes along the lines of "states can't refuse to try to educate every child (because American history has shown that they can't be trusted to decide which children shouldn't be educated)" and "every person who wants to go to college should be able to go to college?"

Well, there's that Upton Sinclair quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” People who make money off of education will tend to genuinely believe that education is good/effective/virtuous/etc., and the causality seems likely to go in both directions. And if we expand it not just to money but status, people with more degrees will tend to genuinely believe it as well, especially the more their use of the degree is insulated from real, concrete, undeniable consequences.

I used to be confused at why the benefits of education was taken as an article of faith by the educated, since education should theoretically make someone more appreciative of the importance of empirical evidence, and as best as I can tell, the empirical evidence that the apparent better outcomes for educated people come almost entirely from the education with almost none from the filtering mechanism seems rather lacking. Which is how you get to supporting the idea that it's better to let poor performing kids go up grades and graduate high school, so that they get the opportunity to go to colleges where they can accrue the benefits of higher education. I'm not so confused anymore.

It's infamous for being full of Education PhDs who change up federal standards so that their side businesses selling education materials generate steady income.

The top Education PhD programs are famous for far left ideological gatekeeping because you need a degree from one of them to work at DoE.

People on the right just think that breaking it up into other departments would result in better people fulfilling it's requirements.

It's infamous for being full of Education PhDs who change up federal standards so that their side businesses selling education materials generate steady income.

Can you give examples? States choose their own curricula, and ~15(?) years ago, there was grumbling about how Texas's bulk purchases drove down the cost of allegedly biased textbooks, which led to other states adopting them, for cost reduction.

It's more of a thumb on scale thing. The ED giver out a lot of grants and also has school evaluation programs. Assorted state groups who live off of grant money will toe the line when ED policies come out. Common Core was pushed out in part using "Race To The Top" grants.

Basically being the major source of education grants lets people at ED control what is trendy in education. It's not direct control but it's a significant influence.

DoE.

I should probably get tired of harping on this, but DoE is the Department of Energy; the Department of Education is ED. Fortunately, there's a helpful mnemonic coincidence that makes this easy to keep straight...

the importance of the requirements and standards the Department of Education attaches to the money it awards.

Exactly. We want those gone.

At the expense of the money? If compliance was a budgetary net-loss, states would simply away the money.

Yes. Among the many problems of the public schools in America is having far too much money and not enough reasonable things to spend it on.

Then why don't states turn down the money, in exchange for exemption from the relevant requirements?

Because it is a losing political issue.

"X politician won't take free federal money to improve our student's education and pay our teachers more!"

Then why not vote to repeal the statutes? What problem is solved by changing which department applies the statutes?

Because the public school system is fully iron-law compliant. The real purpose in the minds of the administrators(who run the system) is to spend as much money as possible, with no thought whatsoever as to the actual results of that spending, and federal money does a great job of that.

Then why not vote to repeal the statutes? What problem is solved by changing which department applies the statutes?

That one department is full of enemies, while the other is full of friends, obviously.

Because the state’s citizens pay federal income tax that funds these grant programs regardless, so turning down the money is functionally equivalent to funding other states’ education systems at the expense of one’s own

Then why not vote to repeal the statutes? What problem is solved by changing which department applies the statutes?

Because the bureaucrats who implement the statutes can not be trusted to do so.

Again, then why not vote to repeal the statutes? Or which department has bureaucrats you trust to apply the statutes to your liking, why do you trust that department, and are the relevant functions being moved to that department?

The Department of Education doesn’t tell states, districts, schools, colleges, or any other institutions how they have to educate anyone. But it has always insisted that they try.

Off the top of my head:

  1. Title I funding incentivizes concentrating impoverished students in great enough numbers to qualify for the funding. There’s a cliff where the funds just go away. I’ve seen this play out when our district was redrawing school boundaries, it was the top priority.

  2. Dear Colleagues

  3. Making funds contingent on keeping kids in or out of the proper locker rooms

  4. Throwing ESSR funds at districts that almost universally used them to fund new permanent programs and then begged for more funding when the always-temporary funds expired

There’s just a ton more strings attached funds that lead to administrative bloat and generally incentivize schools to chase things that aren’t all that useful except that they get rewarded with funds

Title I funding incentivizes concentrating impoverished students in great enough numbers to qualify for the funding. There’s a cliff where the funds just go away. I’ve seen this play out when our district was redrawing school boundaries, it was the top priority.

In my experience, most conservative-leaning people want the poverty to be concentrated, though. I can think of several small districts in old mill towns near me that are having enough trouble staying solvent with Federal funding. If that dries up then it's game over for them and they will be forced to merge with the wealthier suburban districts that surround them, causing a much bigger uproar among Trumpy types than an obscure DOE incentive structure.

ensure someone picks up the phone when one of the tens of millions of student loan borrowers needs help

This is utter bullshit, I had student loans. Nobody picks up the phone.

The Department’s signature programs establish a national goal: that regardless of who you are or where you come from, our nation’s public schools will serve you and educate you to a standard of excellence

And according to many conservatives they have failed to deliver on that goal. America is not known for its excellent public education. Which is a reason to be nuked. Don't spend good money after the bad. If the endgame is illiterate population at least have smaller federal deficit. You can also say that US education system has too many administrators.

The education level of the population won't remain the same after funding is cut, it will get worse, even if it's already bad. That's the same fallacy that many people indulged in with Covid: the numbers don't remain the same when you change the policy that affects those numbers.

Or they will get better. Us education system problem is not lack of money

Copying from another reply: Unless you are positing some actual, specific mechanism through which education will somehow improve when it's less invested in, then I don't understand your argument. Things don't magically improve when you stop investing in them just because you were paying too much for the service you got before.

You don't get to suddenly match other countries quality of education by spending the same as them. For that to be the case, you would have to posit some huge gains in efficiency of cost/pupil educated.

To put it bluntly - you don't help the junkie by giving him more junk to shoot.

Let's see how we can improve the education with less money. First - we fire vast majority of all administrators. Second - we abolish student loans. This will reduce the price of education across the board since for no one's surprise the more generous the loan the higher the prices of college become. Third - by making the education states' affair you will give ability for states to actually innovate. Also less money will mean less chromebooks, ipads and other idiocies. So far I have yet to see anything that beats pen, paper and discussion in class in high quality learning.

Cutting the Department of Education != cutting federal funding for education. The US had federal funding for schools before 1979, and will after.

The author of the OP article somehow thinks that bragging about charging higher percentages overhead that most hedge funds (3.4% apparently) while obtaining far worse results is a winning formula. I think it rather nicely highlights the issue.

Why would you expect that? I wouldn't necessarily. I would expect it to stay about the same, since the core teachers, the children, and the states they live in will remain the same

I don't understand how you can expect the quality of a service to remain the same when a substantial portion of the funding for that service is cut. It seems like a fully generalizable statement that more funding=on average better service. We can quibble about how much funding results in how much improvement in quality for various services, but the principle holds. If police budgets are cut, police service gets worse. Ditto for healthcare, research, customer service, education, and basically everything else.

Looking at the Department of Education in particular: the Office of Federal Student Aid provides 120.8 billion in funding (grants, loans, etc.) for postsecondary education. It seems like a safe assumption that there are, very conservatively, thousands of university and college students who depend on this aid to attend their school at all. This seems like a very straightforward example of a way in which gutting the Department will have a negative effect on the education level of the population at large.

Perhaps you're only discussing the education of minors? Still, in that case the OESE seems to provide a huge amount of programs which top up funds to improve local and state schools. You can see a list here: https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-offices/oese/offices-programs-by-office

Is your position that none of these programs have any impact on the education level of the population at all? Or are you assuming that when the Department is gutted similar funding will flow to the states to spend under their own discretion? Unless that is your assumption, then the teachers and schools will not remain the same because they won't have the same budget. If that is your assumption, then we simply disagree on how calculated/planned out this gutting and refunding will be. There are huge costs associated with recreating programs from scratch.

  1. Congress can still redistribute directly to the states if they want to, and probably will.

  2. Student loans are already a horrible mess, and the DOE and federal government hasn't done anything to sort it out, so it's probably best we have less of them, not more. I went to community college, followed by an inexpensive state college. If those colleges don't have enough money to function in some states, the federal government can redistribute directly to them. Private scholarships are probably useful and good.

  3. I work in a school, and have seem hat kinds of programs the money goes towards. They are mostly not what I would want. The DOE's priorities are not only the same priorities as most children and parents, but not even the same as most teachers. Not even the teachers of superfluous subjects.

  1. There will likely be a pretty ugly transition period between programs being gutted and the states spinning up their own versions of some of these programs, if they manage to sucessfully do it at all. It would be simpler to prune specific programs carefully rather than gutting the whole department and starting from scratch.

  2. I'm not really understanding your point here, it doesn't sound like it makes that much of a difference to me? If the money amounts are the same and going to the same places, why do we need to make a change at all?

  3. Respectfully, I don't agree that some programs being wasteful on an anecdotal scale necessitates gutting a department which oversees a huge amount of programs. Fine, the programs you saw were bad and a waste of money. What about all the other ones? And further to your point, what reason is there to believe that the DOE has wildly out of whack incentives from teachers/students/parents but the states do not? Why not fund it at the municipal level?

Dear Lord man.

It seems like a fully generalizable statement that more funding=on average better service

You can find dozens of graphs showing how much we spend on education vs the results we get. The relationship is almost the inverse of what you've said here.

Do you truly have no qualms with the explosion of over-"educated" people being churned out of universities? The outright fraud at community colleges where dropouts keep their grant money?

I understand the naive desire to have everyone go to college. It's an extremely fun part of life. Stupid people with worthless degrees being there to party with is part of it.

But the cost disease the fed government has wrought on every single stage of education is staggering. The music has to stop here. It's too obvious and too simple to fix, unlike problems such as healthcare.

You are making exactly the same mistake that I called out before. I believe the graphs say what you say and that is not good evidence. America spends more than most other countries and gets worse results. That does not imply that we would get better results by suddenly spending less in line with other countries, that doesn't follow at all. Other countries have a huge amount of other variables going into education that you cannot replicate by simply matching them on price.

Unless you are positing some actual, specific mechanism through which education will somehow improve when it's less invested in, then I don't understand your argument.

Any qualms I may have were not the point of this argument, which was to determine whether gutting the DOE would result in a lower education level for the population. You have argued that the current education level is unnecessary, which is tangential to my point and something I'm agnostic on.

I think the disagreement here is that YFR and others see the spending-versus-results conundrum as a matter of cost disease/"the dose makes the poison," where the cost-benefit ratio is so miserable that no increase in spending can be stomached, whereas you seem to see the problem as a "more dakka" one, where we could actually do better if we just invested more.

There are often problems that are made worse with more money.

There are generalizable circumstances that cause this to happen, and those circumstances often apply to government organizations but not exclusively to them.

  1. Principal agent problems. The money is being spent by an agent on behalf of someone else, and either due to conflicts of interest or lack of knowledge the money is spent in a way that actively harms the principal.
  2. Information gaps. The consumer and producer are not easily able to judge what is good spending vs bad spending in terms of solving the problem. This can cause money to be spent on costly or ineffective signalling items.
  3. Crowding out good money. A working market with a working and functioning incentive system can be thrown off by injections of cash from a misaligned actor. Producers go chasing the extra cash while not caring as much about the original consumer. And consumers do less research than they would if it was their own money being spent. This happens in medical insurance all the time.

I think student loans are actively harmful to many of the people involved.

I'd fix them by making them dischargeable in bankruptcies and making the university partially responsible for the debt in such cases. I'd leave parents off the loan. I'd maybe see them changed to loans where a percentage of post college income is owed. Right now they suffer from all of the above problems.

I appreciate your response and recognize that these are issues that plausibly arise from more funding from non market parties.

I won't debate your points as I agree they are likely the case in some respects, I will only quibble on the point that none of these issues imply that stopping this funding would improve or leave the same the education level of the population. We might be spending money inefficiently, we might be issuing loans in a way that is net financial negative for some students, and we may be throwing off the private market of education, but those are all things you can do while still raising the education level of the population, and indeed goals like that are why we as a society trust the government and not the market for some things.

At this point, it becomes about how much extra money you want to spend for how much education, which is a much harder question, so I'll leave it there.

Higher levels of education is only good if education is mostly capital formation. But if it is mostly signalling then it is doubly wasteful to subsidize it. From personal experience I'm inclined to think of it as mostly signalling, the econ literature apparently agrees with me.

Can you point me to the evidence you're referencing? My impression of the stats was that higher level education at college/university has a quite large lifelong earnings benefit.

i suppose this could still be just signalling that gets them into a higher earning network of like-minded signallers, but if we are trying to change this economic framework we would somehow have to also disincentive businesses from hiring based on this signalling. And that does not seem like an easy ask to me.

More comments

I'd fix them by making them dischargeable in bankruptcies and making the university partially responsible for the debt in such cases. I'd leave parents off the loan. I'd maybe see them changed to loans where a percentage of post college income is owed.

Effectively making the university co-sign the loans seems like a good idea; there are numerous practical problems (e.g. if the student voluntarily drops out or transfers, who is responsible?) but in general it seems OK. But making them a percentage of post-college income owed is giving universities a way to capture nearly all the value of the education, and it worsens the problem of lucrative degree programs subsidizing financially worthless ones.

If the college is going to reap the benefits of a lucrative degree program it might be incentivized to encourage them more.

A college that graduates a bunch of engineers that can go on to make 6 figure salaries is going to be better off than a college that creates a bunch of underemployed barristas.

With the way student loans currently work the university is getting the price of tuition and on campus amenities, and those costs are similar between different degrees. But the cost of teaching the more lucrative degrees is often more expensive, usually because professors that teach it have the option of better private industry jobs, so they command higher salaries at the university.

I think eliminating the DoE would help a bit as it would stop funding trendy educational schemes that don’t work, political indoctrination, and other useless programs. The money can be sent directly to the states and used for education, but not the bells and whistles the federal government wants. This would mean that the schools can focus on literacy and numeracy and teaching science rather than worrying that the kids aren’t learning to be progressives.

I appreciate that this could plausibly be the case, and is not assuming some huge gains in education efficiency, but I still have my doubts the transition will be as clean as all that.

I don’t think it’s going to be an easy transition, but I absolutely believe that schools need to go back to teaching the basics of literacy, numeracy, and scientific literacy. One thing that tends to stop that is the rather large list of special interest topics that schools are required to teach, the educational trends that get pushed by tge bureaucracy, and the fact that all of this takes time away from the actual education kids need.

Just taking history for example. Kids are graduating high school unable to tell you when very key events in American and world history took place. They don’t know when the civil war happened, but we need to shoehorn lots of “specialty history” into the narrative to induce kids to believe The Narrative instead of making sure they know the names dates and actors in historical context for the major events in American or for that matter world history.

Or you could take literacy. Kids are going off to college needing to catch up on reading and writing. Kids go off to college in some cases having never read a nonfiction book. They are used to skim reading a couple of paragraphs to find keywords and phrases but cannot go much deeper than that. And writing is just as bad if not worse.

Imagine it was 1984, and you were an ethnic Latvian, living in what would later be Latvia, and you were well aware of the impact Moscow had on the cultural formation of your children and surrounding community. And then an ethnic Russia, mid conversation one day, brought out some spread sheets to show off how efficiently the Soviet Ministry of Education was being run, and thus anyone who had any problems with the system was misinformed by fake news. You would probably recognize that there was a crucial gap between the actual, deep issues and the argument being presented.

My entire life, since my childhood in the 80s, all the conservatives I know had had dismantling the federal department of education right up there with ending Roe vs. Wade. There was never a time when the adults in my life didn't despise that Department as an organ of cultural domination and social engineering. It was on the same level for the kinds of conservatives I knew as Universal Health Care or Real Gun Control or First Female President is for liberals.

This is absolutely straight up who/whom stuff.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Uses Police to Seize Independent Nonprofit

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency staffers used police and private security to forcefully take over the U.S. Institute of Peace on Monday.

The USIP, an independent nonprofit founded by Congress, had its president, Greg Moose, and its board fired last week by the Trump administration. The Associated Press reported that DOGE workers on Monday had law enforcement escort them into USIP, which is not located in a federal building, after previously being denied access.

“DOGE just came into the building—they’re inside the building—they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” USIP lawyer Sophia Lin told The New York Times as she and other staff members were forced out of the building.

Obviously, if you wanted to paint Trump as a dangerous authoritarian fascist, this is exactly the sort of thing you'd point to as Exhibit A. So I'm trying to determine if this is actually as bad as it sounds, what the steelman is here, and the extent to which this may or may not have been under the purview of the executive branch's legitimate authority.

The linked article and their website describe USIP as a "private" nonprofit that was "founded by Congress". Obviously, the government using the police to forcibly seize private property due to political differences is not a good look. Presumably there are legal minutiae here that would determine the extent to which this organization is or is not still subject to the government's authority (is any organization "founded by Congress" subject to federal government control in perpetuity?).

As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off. USIP describes itself as an "independent organization dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad".

It is as bad as it sounds, there is no steelman.

  • -38

I hope so. If I ever try to take over the world, I can’t imagine seeing all these comments steelmanning my endeavor as some bureaucratic trifle.

I am burning the Erdtree, goddammit! I intend to ascend to Elden Lord and reforge the shattered Elden Ring!

Moon atheist waifu supremacy over anti-horn golden crybabies any day.

  • -11

The Crazed Caca Consumer and the three fingers > all

Who wants to be ugly forever????

Moon atheist waifu supremacy

Every time you post something like this...

How many layers of 4chan are you on, anyway?

It’s a humorous reference to Elden Ring.

Are they just gonna be allowed to insult me? I thought that was against the rules?

  • -17

If I was going to mod one of the many, many quips and insults thrown your way, it probably wouldn't be this one.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what Listening was going for.

What? So you're saying that it was an instance of rule breaking...you just won't mod it? Huh??

  • -14
More comments

Sorry, that was insensitive. How much Crystal Cafe are you on?

I'm going to have to ask you to explain the joke.

More comments

What exactly was the insult?

Presumably that she spends too much time on 4chan to the extent that her perception is skewed by a similar degree to being literally intoxicated.

Context, my dear roadhouse, context.

Moon simping and being a pawn of women in general is Reddit.

True based and redpilled anons aren't afraid to inherit the frenzied flame and crash the lands between with no survivors.

I know this is a troll but again the facts are that a fired president tried to keep people out of the building the acting president wanted in. That is, the only bad thing is that a crazy person illegally tried to seize a government building until the police came.

It's not a troll, it's her honest opinion. It's not well argued (in that it's not argued at all), but she's not being disingenuous to rile people up.

AP article: https://apnews.com/article/doge-trump-us-institute-of-peace-03362c3440884c6b29e28ad0d88f5014

They probably signed a grant contract that has a right to audit, this is probably backed by a court order to allow access to perform the audit. Pretty standard, although usually it doesn't come to police.

How woke are they?

Is that relevant to your evaluation of whether DOGE should be allowed to seize their headquarters?

Honestly yes.

I checked their website on the wayback machine but it wasn't loading fully me so I don't know if they claimed to be "private" or you misunderstood but according to Wikipedia at least they weren't just "founded" by Congress they're also "funded" by Congress.

I don't understand what the word "private" is supposed to mean in the context of a publicly funded organization.

As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off.

This isn't actually true. The Trump administration LOVES giving assistance to foreign countries, even foreign countries that actively murder US servicemen and is even willing to send US forces to die in order to make sure those foreign countries can continue to violate ceasefire agreements. This might sound glib, but I feel like pointing out that it obviously isn't foreign aid itself that Trump is objecting to - there's clearly some other criteria being used here, otherwise policy towards Israel and Ukraine would be very different.

Wait, Ukraine has actively murdered US servicemen? Huh?

Paraconsistent is right - I was referring to the USS Liberty incident. Ukraine to the best of my knowledge hasn't killed US servicemen, just US journalists and citizens (not that many people care about Gonzalo Lira). That said, I do think it plausible that several of the US "mercenaries" serving in Ukraine would have been killed for reasons of friendly fire or corruption - it's just that there won't be any way to confirm those rumors until the war is over, and legally they aren't actually actively serving.

I believe he is referring to Israel and the USS Liberty Incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

Another way of framing this is that a fired president illegally tried to bar people permitted to enter the building from entering the building and the police intervened to preclude the fired president from illegally barricading the building.

Here is DOGE post: https://x.com/doge/status/1901810390323048756?s=46

Come on, it's hard not to have a little sympathy for her at least

Yeah that’s awful. A reasonable compromise here would be giving people who’ve been here for a certain amount of time amnesty and a green card. Hard to support this

  • -13

Making a very large fine an alternative to deportation works. Basically what the IRS does in most cases.

Well it’s unlikely these people can pay a fine. They often do menial labor tasks for below minimum wage (main reason you hire undocumented labor in the first place)

They do not work for below minimum wage. They work for somewhat less than American citizens that would be doing those jobs(mostly ex-cons anyways). This is well above the legal minimum wage, even if it’s still not a very nice salary in either case.

Here in South Florida at least a lot of waitresses are illegal immigrants who don't even get paid any wage at all; tips are literally all they get. If you are already violating labor law by hiring someone, you might as well go all the way.

I’ve never seen that, but, you know, it doesn’t really surprise me- more of a violation of the letter of the law than the spirit.

Why pay for a visa the slow legal way, or a million dollar trump gold card when you can just pay a fine?

Great incentives.

Edit: Edited the fine size, you did say 'very large fine'.

I think some kind of deal for illegals who turn themselves in might work. No guarantees, but perhaps waiving certain restrictions on them applying for legal entry. It could reduce the workload while getting some of the more sympathetic cases into the legitimate system.

That just incentivizes people to have kids tge second they get here. If you can’t deport when the illegal has American kids, you encourage people to cross the border pregnant and once the baby pops out, they get to stay.

Turning immigration policy into a life size game of hide and seek is not just silly, it's encouraging a parallel economy of crime.

People taking illegal shortcuts can't be tolerated. I'd argue the opposite, that your residence and even citizenship should be revoked if you obtained them fraudulently.

A reasonable compromise here would be giving people who’ve been here for a certain amount of time amnesty and a green card. Hard to support this

We tried that compromise in the 80's, and it didn't work then to stem the tide of illegal immigration it only encouraged it. Why would things be any different this time?

I don't think "fake it 'til you make it" is a very good basis for a legal system. Continuously breaking the law for years is worse than breaking it for days, all else being equal.

Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though. There are 10+M immigrants under Biden, and we are selectively going to deport the criminals (good) or the well known ones in their community? Doesn’t seem wise.

Next Dem president likely to let 20M in next round, at this rate…

Next Dem president likely to let 20M in next round, at this rate…

Maybe they think this is a battered wife approach to politics and are just tired of it.

I’m sure this tit-for-tat escalation will be our new reality

Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though.

Highly-publicized deportations seem like meat for the base, and also serve as a chilling effect for illegal immigrants. It's also a wedge issue where the Right gets to paint the Left as opposing the Rule of Law.

There are 10+M immigrants under Biden...

I don't see any reason to deport immigrants who applied and were accepted. At worst, the government could stop approving new applications and let any existing temporary ones expire without renewal.

Immigrants who commit normal crimes (like murder) or break immigration law should be deported and/or punished in other ways. Just like anyone else.

Next Dem president likely to let 20M in next round, at this rate…

That sounds like a call to deport 20M extra so that the immigrant numbers are at the right level at the end of their term. (jk?)

There were over 10M illegal immigrants under Biden, so that would need ~4k daily deportations for the entire presidency to undo. Seems unlikely/impossible to happen.

Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to let people in than kick them out.

There were over 10M illegal immigrants under Biden, so that would need ~4k daily deportations for the entire presidency to undo. Seems unlikely/impossible to happen.

I believe a statement like this would technically be illegal in large parts of the world as it would effectively constitute holocaust denial. You probably don't want to go on the record as stating that it is "impossible" for governments to remove millions of people in a few years.

More comments

There were over 10M illegal immigrants under Biden, so that would need ~4k daily deportations for the entire presidency to undo. Seems unlikely/impossible to happen.

Why? When it comes to the capacity of modern states for mass deportations, I like to point to the example of the post-War "flight and expulsion" of Germans:

Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, about 12 million[4] Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14.6 million,[5] including a million ethnic Germans who had settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II, ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950, and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from former eastern territories of Germany ceded to the Polish People's Republic and Soviet Union (about seven million),[6][7] and from Czechoslovakia (about three million).

So it looks to me that the real question is one of will.

Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to let people in than kick them out.

Well, shucks. Guess it's best to just give up completely, then. /s

If it's hard, then that just means it takes more work. Might as well get started now.

The thing is you don't even need to directly deport most of them. Like people said upthread, this is very unphotogenic and faces contest opposition on multiple levels. What you need to do is make them virtually unhireable.

A Haitian you hired caused a vehicular manslaughter ? Great, the trucking company CEO gets tried for something like felony murder, and the company pays a fine high enough that they'll be in the red for the next quarter. A bunch of Mexicans built a house which doesn't have a single right angle? Great, we'll make it so it makes fines for every code violation raise exponentially. You knowingly helped people cross the border illegally so that you'll hire them? Great, your company gets dissolved and auctioned off.

Within weeks, 75-90% would deport themselves.

Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though.

What constitutes "Good Politics" is indeed the core of the disagreement here. You and others arguing for accepting the illegals appear to believe that Reds should accept large-scale, chronic violation of the law as a fiat accompli, because what can we do about it, after all?

One thing we could do about it would be to, as Blues have a long history of doing, simply stop pretending that laws mean anything when they contradict what we perceive to be desirable or necessary outcomes. And then you and others who make arguments similar to the above can offer your "sure what they did was grossly illegal, but it's done and it'd be far too much effort to fix" arguments to the Blues instead, and see how receptive they are.

I understand that you might not think this sounds like a good idea. What I'm curious about is why specifically it would not be a good idea.

It’s not a good idea because some industries like Ag are completely dependent on this “illegal” labor. If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and instantly deport them all, you’re going to have food shortages and food rotting on the vine in California.

Trust me, I’d rather have a few more Mexican neighbors than have food shortages!

The pathway to citizenship is out of the country and to the back of the line.

There's your reasonable compromise. Not amnesty, not ever amnesty, not ever again.

There is no line. There is no path to citizenship for random people.

I don't want infinite immigrants, either, but I've always found it disingenuous the way some people act like their only problem with immigrants is that they are coming in illegally and jumping the queue instead of waiting their turn. The implication is that there is some kind of workable immigration process everyone can apply for and that the only reason not to do so is because you are too impatient to wait a few years or too dismissive of law and authority to bother going through the proper channels.

This is totally false. There is no path to immigration for the vast majority of people. If you support enforcing current immigration law, you support denying millions the chance to live and work in the U.S. for no other reason than they were born outside of it, condemning them to a much worse quality of life in countries full of poverty and violence, and you need to own that.

I support it, because allowing unlimited immigration combined with a welfare state, affirmative action, and NIMB zoning is unsustainable, but I'm not missing the proper mood; I feel bad about it, but it has to be done.

(Caplan would chime in with the keyhole solution of denying the immigrants welfare and civil rights, but he's delusional if he thinks that's politically stable)

There's a line, it just might be decades or centuries long. If you apply now and life extension is invented within your lifetime, you just might make it in.

      • and by the time you do, your own homeland is more prosperous with a higher standard of living than the US.

(Some of the later Japanese emigrants to Brazil must have been kicking themselves a few years onward).

Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate

Seriously? Your advice to someone born in Venezuela or in Mexico is to stay and use their skills to fix their countries? Those places are like San Francisco on steroids. The government stops any value from being built or protected, and if against all odds you do manage to build some wealth it will immediately get stolen from you by the government or by criminals.

Just because it is in our best rational interest to stop them from immigrating doesn't mean it isn't in their best rational interest to try escape from those hellholes. Even if, democracy being what it is, a large enough number of them will turn first world countries into more of the same, much like Californians escaping to Texas and Florida vote for the same policies that made them leave.

From "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Saying “People who buy dangerous products deserve to get hurt!” is not tough-minded. It is a way of refusing to live in an unfair universe. Real tough-mindedness is saying, “Yes, sulfuric acid is a horrible painful death, and no, that mother of five children didn’t deserve it, but we’re going to keep the shops open anyway because we did this cost-benefit calculation.” Can you imagine a politician saying that? Neither can I.

More comments

Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate

Nobody's got that much skill in some countries (e.g. Haiti), and almost nobody has it anywhere.

This is simply not doable in Venezuela, short of an armed takeover. Mexico has some bright spots but it’s not the sort of thing talented individuals can improve.

More comments

This is totally false. There is no path to immigration for the vast majority of people. If you support enforcing current immigration law, you support denying millions the chance to live and work in the U.S. for no other reason than they were born outside of it, condemning them to a much worse quality of life in countries full of poverty and violence, and you need to own that.

Yes. The average condition of humanity is indeed full of poverty and violence in an economically disadvantaged country. The fallacy in the pro-immigration-for-all argument is thinking that geographic change (transplanting people from poor countries to rich ones) will solve what is fundamentally a social problem (poor countries are poor and remain so because they have poor-quality people). One only need look at Sweden, Germany, or France to see what happens when you allow in high numbers of low potential immigrants. Current US immigration law as written (very different from what is actually enforced) recognizes this and is designed to filter for only the best, brightest (or at least richest), and highest potential immigrants who will add value to the nation. This is a wise policy that reflects the fundamental instincts of nations through the millenia. It is only recently that society has become peaceful enough for suicidal empathy not to be exterminated by Darwinistic processes, though the jury is perhaps still out on that in the long term.

I firmly believe that if you advocate for less restrictive immigration rules, you should be legally obligated to support those immigrants at your own expense, in your own house. If you cannot put your money and life where your mouth is, you have no business telling the rest of us to do so.

The fallacy in the pro-immigration-for-all argument is thinking that geographic change (transplanting people from poor countries to rich ones) will solve what is fundamentally a social problem (poor countries are poor and remain so because they have poor-quality people).

It's also not self-evidently more just even if it were true.

A lot of the criticisms of hardline immigration positions on the grounds of geographic luck count just as much against most migrants themselves.

Why do central Americans have a disproportionate right to see their living standards improved, even if we agree borders are unjust? There are poorer people who couldn't even conceive of making journey. Clearly, nothing about de facto not enforcing the law eliminates the problem either.

Why do you believe this would be a reasonable- as in, reason-driven- as opposed to a pathetic- as in, pathos-driven- compromise?

Keep in mind that weaponized emotional appeals- including appeals to sympathy for social compact violators and shaming campaigns against those not showing enough pity towards preferred beneficiaries- have been a hallmark of the American culture war for decades now, and which the current political context is part of a political revolt against.

This is particularly relevant to this example, as a 'let's compromise on amnesty for immigration reform' was bargained in the past, except that the amnesty given did not lead to actual immigration enforcement afterwards.

Now your proposal is a compromise of further amnesty instead of enforcement for... what, exactly?

Half of half of half a cake?

Yeah this is definitely a culture war issue. I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down. Do you feel intense competition for jobs or homes from illegal immigrants? If you do, then it makes sense to be wary about more immigration.

  • -12

I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down.

Unfortunately it's the natural and necessary reaction to things like benefits specifically for illegal immigrants and certain states like California bending over backwards to favor illegals over citizens and legal residents.

Yeah this is definitely a culture war issue. I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down

They broke the law. You can't just have people flagrantly ignoring laws, especially ones as big as illegal entry into a country. It devolves trust in the entire system massively.

I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down.

But this isn't being excessively harsh - this is complying with the laws (and punishments as written). There's nothing "excessive" about it.

Do you feel intense competition for jobs or homes from illegal immigrants?

That's the thing about national economies - we all experience warped market conditions (for employment, housing, healthcare, and basic goods) because of illegal immigration. That these experience may be more acute in TX,NM,AZ doesn't mean they are not experience elsewhere in the country.

A massive percentage of the American agricultural workforce is of questionable legality. Yet they've become so endemic that any agricultural concern that tries to play fair and not hire illegals finds their production costs are too high and gets competed out of business. Think about that for a second; there is a large American industry wherein the only way to remain viable is to flirt with legally dubious hiring practices.

I would like to see swift and stubborn crackdowns on that. Excessive would be letting illegal employment continue to be de facto all across the country.

Well if a huge portion of ag labor is from illegal immigrants, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty in deporting them. Most of us still, uh, need to eat every day.

Issue is that other Anglo ex-colonies have legal migrant farm worker visas, like Aus and Canada. It’s called “wuffing”. While we don’t have that at all, we just had an unspoken agreement that you let in some amount of illegal workers to fill the massive need of agriculture help come harvest time in California and other states. Effectively it does the same thing

any agricultural concern that tries to play fair and not hire illegals finds their production costs are too high

It’s not that their production costs are too high- it’s that they are unable to find legal workers at any reasonable wage for the skill level.

There are parts of the American economy where the only people ‘doing the work’ are 1) on a management track(this is a minority and they will not be doing the actual work for very long) 2) here illegally or 3) working there under court order(often parolees, child support delinquents, etc). Plenty of construction trades(especially roofing), most of agriculture, meatpacking plants, etc. I would rather have meat on the shelves and roofs on the houses than live in a 100% white society(not that deporting the illegals will get us there anyways) and republican lawmakers agree with me.

Also tagging @HughCaulk.

I agree with you. I'm not advocating for deportations because of race animus. I'm advocating for 1) deportations of illegal immigrants AND 2) a massive overhaul of labor laws.

Here's is my big post on that point

I don't buy the idea that natural born Americans "just don't want to work" - I believe that combination of the welfare state and labor laws actively prevent them from easily getting basic level jobs. The only way for these basic level jobs (exactly the ones you listed) to get done is to illegally employ foreigners. To be blunt; we have outlawed cheap labor in this country, so the only way to hire cheap labor is to do it illegally one way or another. Who is going to have an easier time accepting and illegal job; someone who is already violating US law or someone who is not?

More comments

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if a business isn’t getting the employees it needs in the numbers it wants them, then the business isn’t paying high enough wages. ‘Reasonable’ is something that potential employees decide collectively through the market.

Whether the meat industry can survive paying true market wages for meat packing jobs is another matter. But importing millions of indentured labourers every generation is not going to work as a long term solution.

More comments

at any reasonable wage

How high have you tried?

More comments

Trucking used to be a well-paying job with excellent safety standards, and now it's been destroyed in the US and Canada by illegal immigration. How many parts of the American economy are we going to sacrifice to squeeze an extra few cents of labor costs while the costs get shifted onto society in general?

What's the net gain when we have truckers blasting past construction signs into oncoming traffic because you're allowed to bring an interpreter to the commercial license test now?

More comments

punching down

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

These people knowingly fucked over everyone who actually goes through the legal process. You're being swindled if you think they're victims.

Other counties legally have migrant farm worker visas like Aus and Canada. We don’t have this system in lieu of “illegal” immigrant work. You’d need to set up a similar system here and transition all these workers to it, otherwise food will be rotting on the vine in California

We have a farmworker visa system already. Most of the shepherds in the US are from Peru for example; their mountain grazing season is the opposite of ours.

Even if it were true, which it isn't, I fail to see how it's a counter argument in any way.

Did it become acceptable to break the law if your business is not profitable and nobody told me?

I swear, farmers have to fill in tons of paperwork to do the slightest thing and get crucified if they don't, but somehow in this one particular case, everyone should just look the other way?

Keep in mind that weaponized emotional appeals- including appeals to sympathy for social compact violators and shaming campaigns against those not showing enough pity towards preferred beneficiaries- have been a hallmark of the American culture war for decades now, and which the current political context is part of a political revolt against.

I'm no American, so feel free to ignore me, but are you sure about this? Is there a political revolt against those kinds of tactics, or is it merely a political revolution that aims to switch out the old good/bad distinction for a new set?

I'm no American, so feel free to ignore me, but are you sure about this? Is there a political revolt against those kinds of tactics, or is it merely a political revolution that aims to switch out the old good/bad distinction for a new set?

First one, then the other, seems the most likely way it will go. Or we'll go back to the old set. But there's definitely an at least temporary reduction of pity, helped along by the administration's wise choice of targets (scary-looking tattooed guys).

Yes. I would re-emphasize the 'part' as in 'is not the whole,' but I would consider it a significant part of the rise of Trump in the Republican party, and later Trump's rise in the broader American electorate.

I don't think you're asking if such tactics were used in the culture-war, so I'll just gloss over the basic point with re-stating that emotional pressures were not only used, but often major elements of the culture war. One of the psychological points of a twitter mob or cancellation campaign is the public shaming ritual dynamic, a significant point of the progressive stack concept is to re-align emotional sympathies for whoever claims the best position deserving of public support against others, and a key function of the 'lived experience' justification was that one's personal views and emotions were on their own basis for deferrence and grounds to dismiss counter points. Resisting these techniques requires resisting the prioritization of emotional appeals / pressures intended to change your position.

For the Republicans, Trump's rise in republican circles was part of a voter-base revolt against what one of our former posters called the Republican patrician class- the Republican elites including the Bush-Cheney dynasties, the Romneys, and other dominant parts of the party in the pre-Trump era. They had been dominant in part because of their alliance with the evangelical / religious-interest wings of the party, i.e. the moralizers of the right. Just from an intra-republican power struggle perspective, Republican party culture would need to develop cultural antibodies to defy and dismiss the religious right moralists (who were a very significant force in the early 2000s, albeit running out as a national movement by that point).

What made the Patrician class discredited to the Republican base, beyond just technocratic failures such as Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis, was their reputation / perception for compromising on Republican base positions for the sake of left-framing media coverage. This was the model of Republican Party wants position A, left-aligned media raises sympathy argument against position A and dares patrician polity to do the unsympathetic thing, Patrician folds / strikes a compromise legislation which trades away base interests for [thing the base doesn't care as much about]. Base was then told it was necessary / just / moral / the best they could expect.

Trump's surge in the Republican primaries for the 2016 cycle was in large part because he was willing to fight on despite to moral condemnations. This was most notable on the topic of immigration, where Trump would do things like counter 'think of the innocent and desperate refugees' with 'rapists and criminals.' This itself was a politized distortion of the full quote, but the reason the quote was a Trump success rather than a slam dunk is because it demonstrated Trump was willing to defy the sympathy-paradigm that was trying to be used. A similar point exists for the failure of the Clinton campaign's October surprise of the lockerroom talk tapes. It could only fail because the electorate was not moved by the attempts to incite and manipulate them via emotional instigation. In other words, the American electorate was sharing in the cultural antibodies against that sort of shame-and-disavow technique.

As the culture war continued, my view is that this tendency got stronger. It's been further by the discreditation of technocrats in the COVID crisis, and with it those covid policy justifications that often ran on emotional appeals (hug a chinese person to show you're not racist; don't protest against covid restrictions because think of others; protest despite covid restrictions for cause more deserving emotional support). But it was also discredited by the people often conveying those emotional appeals (particularly media intermediaries) themselves being discredited as a class, for- among other reasons- pretty transparent attempts to manipulate for political interests. (The conformist pressures against anyone who raised the Biden age-electability issues; the manufactured joy to try and build Harris support during the period of the campaign which ended shortly after she had to commit to public speaking.)

It's a dynamic I feel is visible now with Trump's disruptions to the American federal government, like the shutdown of USAID. This is a policy that is popular despite the stories by anti-Trump/pro-USAID medias about those in desperate need abroad, or think of the former government workers who are living in uncertainty, and so on. These are empathy / sympathy appeal stories. They also are not changing the general electorate- and by extension cultural- willingness to press on despite them.

Because the appeal to emotion is, while not dead, has been scarred as a result of it being used to flagellate the non-compliant. Now the formerly non-compliant are moving against the interests / preferences of those who did, and in many cases still are, attempting to use emotional appeals and emotional pressures and please for compassion / accusations of cruelty.

It is not that 'cruelty is the point'- it is that the accusation of cruelty is no longer sufficiently deterring. And since people tend to attempt to be internally consistent, a resistance to emotional appeals on one front increases the tendency to resist emotional appeals on another front.

It may not be a central part of the electorate revolt, but I would consider it a part of it, in the same sense that destroying the method of abuse is a part of the revolt against an abuser, even if there are more central reasons for the revolt in general.

I (UK citizen) married a US citizen in 2023. We started the procedure to get me a green card immediately. There's a good chance it won't be completed until 2026. We're lucky enough that my wife is able to live in the UK so we can be together while we wait. Many of those waiting alongside us for spousal visas to be approved aren't so fortunate and have to stay apart in separate countries. I don't have a huge issue with the slow processing time, i approve of rigorous vetting for green cards. A number of my wife's friends in the US wonder why I don't just enter the country illegally. They even say that they'll find me work on the black market, no problem. Commonplace stories like the Mexican woman above are why they think this. Why play fair and by the rules if there's no penalty for cheating the system. If, instead, you actually get rewarded for cheating the system.

No, I don't agree that this woman should be given a green card. She should be deported and so should her children.

Well her kids are US citizens if they were born here. We aren’t some barbaric European country!

Yeah you get paid for cheating the system. Welcome to America! Seems like you’ve got a lot to learn.

  • -11

No. Why would any right thinking person without suicidal empathy have any?

It’s easy to see that she should have been expelled in 1997. She doesn’t belong here, and is playing the system at our cost to delay the rightful inevitable for decades. She posts cartoons of Trump getting scalped among other agitprop.

Her children should also be denaturalized and expelled.

Not deporting a high profile person openly advertising their illegal status sends the message that you can be shielded from deportation by becoming a pro illegal immigration activist.

It's not as bad as it sounds as long as the Trump administration has the power to fire the board, install new leadership, and then do whatever they want to the organization. It sounds like they do.

As a matter of black-letter law, they don't. The law setting up the USIP says that the board members (apart from the three ex-officio ones) can only be fired for cause, with the consent of a majority of the board, or with the consent of the Congressional committees responsible.

Humphrey's Executor is the SCOTUS case saying that this type of law is constitutional. It is a unanimous decision from 1935 (before FDR threatened to pack the Court) holding that FDR couldn't sack Hoover's appointees on the FTC.

So the claim that the Trump administration has the power to fire the board is the claim that a SCOTUS precedent that has been widely followed for 90 years is incorrect.

I’m not sure that is right if USIP is executing executive authority. See the caselaw re CFPB.

Indeed, you'd have to do a Humphrey vs Seila analysis!

It isn't executing executive authority. The enabling legislation says it has the powers of a nonprofit organised under DC law (so no delegated sovereignty). The stated purposes are all scholarly, except that USIP can advise other government agencies that explicitly seek its advice.

See the caselaw re CFPB.

Seila Law relates to directly appointed agency heads. Humphrey's Executor relates to members of multi-member boards. The distinction is silly, but it is the current case law.

It's not just the number of people on the board. Zeke is right that caselaw today also implicates the kind of power the agency has.

This is fundamentally driven by the Trump administration's attempt to overturn Humphrey's Executor. The law setting up USIP says that the non-ex officio members of the Board can only be fired for cause. Trump attempted to fire them anyway. If Humphrey's Executor is good law, then Trump can't fire the board members, three random board members can't pass a resolution at a meeting from which the majority of the board is excluded, Moose was never fired, Jackson is some rando trying to break into an office building, and the DOGE employees and the police protecting them are common burglars. If Humphrey's Executor is wrong, then Trump fired most of the board, the remaining board members fired Moose, Jackson is the new president, the DOGE employees are his invited guests, and the police were quite properly escorting a fired employee off the premises.

This is an uncommonly silly way to set up a hard-to-punt test case, but if anyone involved sues then it will indeed do so. The litigation is a slam-dunk for Moose unless Humphrey's Executor is overruled. And the fate of Humphrey's Executor can only be decided by SCOTUS.

Maybe the Trump team knows they have a malfeasance case in USIP sponsoring overseas violence other intellegience agency shenanigans.

If the board members stay fired, they keep their secrets.

If they press the issue, then Trump is forced to show his cards.

Given that Trump's people have repeatedly said that they believe Humphrey's Executor was wrongly decided, I don't think a complex explanation is needed. The administration is unapologetically breaking the law because they believe the law they are violating is unconstitutional and that SCOUTUS will eventually rule in their favour.

I mentioned this up thread but Humphrey’s Executor has been pretty extremely narrowed over the years. It isn’t clear to me one needs to overrule it to conclude Trump’s actions were fine.

an independent nonprofit...fired last week by the Trump administration.

What? If they're independent, why didn't they laugh off his powerless bluster and stay on the job? That's what I would do if Trump told me I was fired.

If he has the power to fire them, he probably has the power to access the building. I find it suspicious that they aren't debating the first point.

As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off.

It's one of the more effective ways to force an isolationist, and therefore marginally more autarkic, policy on the country and on his successors. Breaking promises (whether or not those promises ought to have been made) and mangling relationships is Good, Actually; because it prevents a future Democratic or normie-Republican president from putting the pieces back together.

It's like if I had control of my blackout drunk friend's phone, and I wanted to use the opportunity to force him to dump his girlfriend, I need to do so in a maximally cruel way that he can't patch up when he sobers up. I need to do and say things so horrible that (assuming that both he and his gf will think he was the one who said them) it will be impossible to get past them.

Trump and Co. aren't just trying to change American foreign policy, they're trying to destroy it, mangle it, leave some future Newsom or Buttigieg admin with no credibility to build it up again. They're not just trying to trim the fat from the federal government, they're trying to make working for the federal government seem both pointless and insecure.

I get the sense that going too far into this direction may actually turn out to be counterproductive for that goal, though - unlike in the case of the drunk friend, there is no doubt in the case of the Trump administration who ultimately was at the wheel during the "cruel texts", and so for some future Newsom or Buttigieg admin, any loss of credibility would have to factor through the perception that they could be followed by a Vance or Trump Jr. administration that would renege on its predecessors' promises all over again. But the more exceptional Trump's actions wind up being perceived as, the more credible a Newsom/Buttigieg assertion that this was a one-off and appropriate precautions have been taken to not allow a repeat will be, especially if Trump keeps pushing the envelope and winds up being repudiated/defanged/experience a mysterious heart attack/successfully impeached.

Perhaps. But it certainly indicates that you shouldn't build your country or bet your life on US promises.

Which is what we're asking people to do when we support their opposition movement abroad.

Nah, its his second term and he came back with a bigger win than he had in 2016. Can't point to Trump as being some erroneous figure that mind controlled millions of Americans into voting for him. Even in 2016 this was copium from the establishment, the polling data showed that he was more in tune with the voting base than the old guard neocons. Isolationist populism is here to stay.

If anything Trump is popular enough with his base that the more he pushes the more the Overton window will shift and the more things like torching NATO or militarily taking Greenland become acceptable. I mean we have conservative talk show hosts that are fairly main stream now noticing how odd it is that no other country is expected to be multicultural and to not have a dominant ethnicity or culture. That would've been unthinkable on a major platform 10 years ago. Its the kind of thing citizens had to whisper about anonymously in dark corners of the internet.

Eh, trump gained ground with everyone except whites, he’s more popular with voters under 25 than any other group, there’s every reason for a foreign observer to believe that Trump-like candidates will get elected again.

Also every President since Bush II regardless of party affiliation has been growing more and more frustrated with Europe while also trying to pivot more resources to the Pacific theater. Even Biden probably would have been, had the Ukraine War not gone hot during his term. So I’m not sure President Newsom would be jumping up and down to climb back into that quagmire either.

Breaking promises (whether or not those promises ought to have been made) and mangling relationships is Good, Actually; because it prevents a future Democratic or normie-Republican president from putting the pieces back together.

The way you put it here implies that it is OK for prior administrations to bind the current administration by making promises (even improvident ones), but it's terrible for the current administration to effectively bind future administrations by breaking them.

How does my saying that it is Good, Actually imply that it's terrible? I'm in favor of the dismantling of the foreign policy apparatus.

What I'm pointing at is the only way to do it is to be mean, is to be cruel, is to be reckless.

How does my saying that it is Good, Actually imply that it's terrible?

I read "Good, Actually" as inherently sarcastic, kind of like "cool story, bro" doesn't mean that the story is cool, or that they're a bro.

I have no idea why I believe that, though.

That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always understood it to mean. It can be somewhat exaggerated, but how I’ve seen it used is as a direct counterpoint to someone claiming that something is bad by discussing its advantages.

I think The_Nybbler interpreted the capital letters on "Good, Actually" as sarcastic.

Most of these organizations are CIA fronts and sponsor regime changes and some really shady shit. USAID sponsored Operation Phoenix which murdered, assassinated and brutally tortured Vietnamese civilians, and tried to pin these acts on the Viet Cong to turn villagers against the north Vietnamese.

“International development agency” riiiiight…

If these agencies don’t want to get shut down, and actually do legitimate humanitarian projects, then why get mixed up in things like the above? These organizations routinely do evil things and are not run by good people.

What reason is there to think that this agency's actions is analogous to the example agency's actions you cited?

Name sounds the same, same people are screaming and crying about it… seems like Trump and DOGE are right on target with these.

...okay... all I can say is I hope these are not the standards you use to make decisions.

It looks like USIP is structured to get government money and spend it without oversight. It'd be very surprising if it weren't up to anything shady.

That's not the same thing as assuming that it is specifically a CIA front sponsoring regime change and murder. I have no reason to think that about this org based on anything I have heard thus far.

What reason is there to think it isn't? He who controls the null hypothesis, controls the world.

Edit: For the record, my personal null hypothesis is that we should always assume the money was mostly wasted with very little to show for it. People are very good at doing minimal, ineffective work in a maximally photogenic way unless you give them good incentives to actually get anything done. And even then they'll try hard to game the incentives anyway.

Sure, but you don't think there is a difference between your null hypothesis being that any government funded non profit is a CiA front and your null hypothesis being that these orgs waste some money? At a certain point you can judge a null hypothesis and find it wanting based on prior evidence and how much of a reach it is

Verily, it seems like things are proceeding about as I predicted over a year ago. I pointed out in a parent comment that the #Resisters suffer a coordination game problem, and they lack any clear object to coordinate around. There is unlikely to be a singular event that causes all of the resisting bureaucrats to all simultaneously stick their necks out to create a large conflagration where they plausibly have more resources and power that they can bring to bear than the President. Instead, when USIP tries to resist, other bureaucrats sit on the sidelines and watch, perhaps wondering what will happen to them or if they can come up with a plan on their own. But they will not rush to allocate some alternative police force to protect USIP HQ. The head of USIP basically has to decide whether he or she is going to, on his/her own, resist and refuse to let the President's political will prevail.

...but most like I predicted, if and when it comes to the point of, "We're not going to let you into the building," the President can clearly muster the raw force of boots to force the issue. There is roundable-to-zero chance that USIP's paltry security team is going to muster enough force or start shooting bullets. This just isn't the way that the war with the bureaucracy will be fought. If an agency pulls a minor stunt to not let them into the building, the President can and will have his team show up with a very minor show of force, and that will basically be the end of that form of resistance.

Of course, they will take it to the courts, and there, battles can go different ways. Different agencies have different statutes passed by Congress, and different particular legal battles may be resolved in different ways. For the most part, the primary questions are going to revolve around the judiciary, to what extent the executive complies, on what timescales, etc. We see that playing out in other domains. "Some silly bureaucrats think they can #resist by just locking the doors to the building," was never a plausible path.

Postscript. Matt Levine sometimes talks about the question of, "Who really controls a company?" Often, this comes up for him in battles between CEOs and boards, where they're like both trying to fire each other. Similarly, there are about zero successful attempts of the type "he had the keys to the building, so he locked the doors". However, he notes that sometimes, things like, "He's the only one who has the passwords to access their bank accounts," or whatever, tend to be more annoying. Sure, you can eventually go through the courts and get them to order the bank to turn control over to whoever, but banks are reluctant to take that sort of action on their own without a court involved. Obviously, situations like, "They hold the only keys to MicroStrategy's vault of Bitcoin or the encrypted vault that contains their core product," or whatever may be even more contentious. Fun to think about sometimes, but yeah, "We locked the physical doors," is basically never a viable strategy.

If an agency pulls a minor stunt to not let them into the building, the President can and will have his team show up with a very minor show of force, and

and now the anti-Trump movement has lurid footage of the Fascist Authoritarian threatening random bureaucrats and charity workers at gunpoint. Some would count that as a win. (Though of course, "refuse to give in to the resultant shaming, keep doing this until such incidents lose all novelty value and the media cease to bother" is a viable counter-strategy.)

If the board of a company fires the CEO, but he tries to lock the doors to the building and hole up inside, so the board calls the police and has him evicted ("at gunpoint"), does that make them "Fascist Authoritarians"?

Depends upon the relative political positions of the board and the CEO, of course.

It's something I see often. I recall once reading an online discussion of the political slant in Adorno's Authoritarian Personality and "F-scale," and more recent attempts to address left-wing authoritarianism. Specifically, I saw someone defend the political slant, and argue that there's no such thing as "left-wing authoritarianism." Not that the left can't do the things of hold the attitudes that are used to describe authoritarianism, but that these things are not inherently authoritarian, but only depending on who is doing them; and that under the "proper" definition, these things are only "authoritarian" when done by the Right, not the Left, so that "left-wing authoritarianism" is impossible by definition (because it's different when they do it).

It's the slogan of "no bad tactics, only bad targets" taken to it's conclusion, in the naked tribalism of Lenin's "who, whom?" When they, the bad guys, do it, it's fascism; when we, the good guys, do it, it's antifascism.

You might notice that neither side in my example scenario had any political descriptors attached.

Would you, personally, use the form of reasoning you're describing and come to the conclusion that one or the other side in my example scenario is "Fascist Authoritarian"? If so, please describe how you used that reasoning to reach that conclusion.

You might notice that neither side in my example scenario had any political descriptors attached.

Which is exactly why your question cannot be answered. It's like asking if a blouse would pair better with a light-colored skirt, or a dark-colored skirt, without specifying the color of the blouse. Since the answer depends entirely on the blouse's color, it's impossible to answer either way without that answer.

Similarly, it's impossible to answer your original question of whether the board's actions against the CEO are "Fascist Authoritarian" or not — because the answer does not lie in the nature of the acts, but their political direction.

I can't recall which book by which historian it was, but I remember many years ago an author writing about the origins of "fascist tactics." He talked about Mussolini's early days with the Communists, and went on to detail about how the tactics used by the early Italian Fascists, the early Nazi party, the early Falangists, so on, had all been used by various Communist groups first, and that all the early 20th century "fascist" movements could be seen as starting with people on the right deciding to use the (far) left's own tactics against them. He did this not to excuse the fascists, or reduce any opprobrium against their methods, but only to argue that methods themselves are not inherently fascist. That there are no "fascist tactics," only tactics that are "fascist" when used by the right against the left (and never when used by the left against the right). That whether these tactics are good or evil depends entirely on whether they are used to "punch right" or "punch left."

Now, in the past, when I was more of a linguistic prescriptivist, I might have pushed back harder against this sort of thing. But at a certain point, one has to bow to common usage. And IME, the common usage of words (again, including by plenty of notable academics) like "fascist" and "authoritarian" defines them in this way.

In your scenario, the acts of the board against the CEO make them "Fascist Authoritarians" if and only if the board is to the right of the CEO and they are "punching left"; and they are not "Fascist Authoritarians" (and the CEO probably is) if they are to the left of the CEO and they are "punching right."

it's impossible to answer your original question of whether the board's actions against the CEO are "Fascist Authoritarian" or not

Ok, great. Glad to know that you would not be able to conclude that either side in the example scenario is a "Fascist Authoritarian". Now hopefully we'll find out what @WandererintheWilderness thinks we can conclude.

Private entity, whose board of directors is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Except for the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and President of the National Defense University who are ex officio members. Very private industry. Definitely not another CIA front trying to keep its regime change operations hidden away from public oversight.

I'm not sure how USIP can reasonably be described as a "private" organization given:

The Board shall consist of fifteen voting members as follows: (1) The Secretary of State (or if the Secretary so designates, another officer of the Department of State who was appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate). (2) The Secretary of Defense (or if the Secretary so designates, another officer of the Department of Defense who was appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate). (3) The president of the National Defense University (or if the president so designates, the vice president of the National Defense University).

Further, in its own 2023 Congressional Budget Justification they request:

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is requesting $54,000,000 for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, equivalent to the enacted FY 2022 level, to promote peace in accordance with its congressional mandate to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. Throughout its nearly forty years as a public institute, USIP has played a significant role in national security, working in partnership with U.S. departments and agencies to help prevent and resolve conflicts in countries where U.S. strategic interests are at stake.

USIP presents itself as something a little more than think tank, but less than full blown diplomatic corps. Funded by Congress, so non-profit yes. Private? I don't think so. It's an NGO, minus the non- requirement. In the Justification PDF I can find a few reasons why it'd be targeted.

"Recognizing that religious freedom and coexistence are fundamental to stability and peace in all countries, USIP is providing specialized guidance to the State Department and USAID to help strengthen engagement with religious communities and advance religious freedoms in countries facing violence and fragility"

"Committed to building and mentoring a new generation of peace activists, USIP is funding and guiding community level peacebuilding projects led by youth in more than a dozen countries, including in Colombia, Venezuela, Tunisia, Libya, the Israel-Palestinian Territories, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan."

"Awards: USIP has established the annual Women Building Peace Award to celebrate the role that women play in all aspects of peacebuilding and is renewing the Spark M. Matsunaga Medal of Peace, which has been bestowed on Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter."

Standard fare. I don't see anything particularly woke in their "classroom materials" though this is unlikely to be a primary function which is supported by the (dated) learning modules.

They do have their 2025 Justification out which is about the same as the 2023 one. 2023 was just the first result. In 2025 they say:

Dialogue: USIP experts currently facilitate more than 100 conflict-related dialogues and informal channels across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Specialized dialogues, the composition of which varies depending on conflict dynamics, are underway in 20 strategically important countries and regions including Cameroon, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Armenia, Mindanao, Papua New Guinea, and Ukraine. “Structured dialogues,” which USIP pioneered a decade ago and are used to reduce violence and build confidence between citizens and security officials, are underway in 14 countries

USIP appears to be general blobbery. Maybe it is CIA spooky, but who can say? Small amount of funding at 55 million/yr to create reports and contribute something to US diplomacy and propaganda efforts. The claim that they maintain active dialogues and "informal" channels in 100 different conflicts sounds substantial. It is a justification after all. Might provide comfortable sinecures for blob affiliates to do think tanky legwork or diplomacy for Congressmen. They might do so in a way that is more convenient, more discrete, or more something than dealing with the State Department. Another set of eyes and ears to the ground with another set of mouths to spread the good word.

Any or all of the above would be on brand for targeting by this administration. Consolidate all the various diplomatic blobbery under the State Department, steamroll resistance, and probably destroy quite a bit on the way.

Would someone from DOGE or the administration be able to articulate why any of these things are bad beyond "they're woke"?

Yes, probably. I hope so at least.

Can they explain why advancing "religious freedoms in countries facing violence and fragility" is against the interests of the U.S. government by citing to specific examples of work that USIP was engaged in on this front or arguing that that USIP was not actually engaged in this work?

Presumably they think that they are either doing a bad job of it or not actually doing this job-- or, they consider this redundant because of other government organs.

but did they analyze the actual work of USIP to see if any of it it aligns with any of the goals of the Trump administration?

I doubt they looked at their work very carefully, no. We can't know. It might be a case where there is not much tangible evidence of their work.

Did anyone from DOGE bother to talk to anyone from USIP about any of the work they actually do to assess whether some projects are worthwhile?

No idea.

The most likely explanation is that when DOGE asked about the work USIP tried to play the "private organization" card instead of answering questions.

As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off.

I think it's more accurate to say that he sees foreign policy as solely within the power of the President and doesn't like the fact that there are a bunch or orgs around DC funded by the US government with official sounding names that are undermining the foreign policy of the White House.

DC loves these para governmental organizations. In the case of USIP the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence are ex officio board members. The rest of the board members must be appointed by the POTUS and confirmed by the Senate. So it seems like it's sort of part of the executive branch but also not when it comes to oversight.

I think its also been revealed that there's a big grift inherent to most foreign aid where it is used to pay off the same people who are implementing the payments.

Money gets sent overseas and some percentage of it gets laundered right back into the pockets of existing politicians and bureaucrats and other political actors.

Hunter Biden by all appearances was a bagman for this sort of dealing.

So Trump is aiming to cut off a funding source for his enemies. Whether he will redirect it to his friends might be the question.

I admit I had never heard of USIP before yesterday, but there seems to be a critical disagreement over basic facts about what USIP actually is. I see sources saying it is an "independent" "private" organization, and therefore DOGE and Trump have no authority over it. Meanwhile, it seems to be funded by direct Congressional appropriation, forbidden from accepting private funding, and its board has to be nominated by the President and approved by the Senate. Those two sets of facts do not seem compatible to me, even given that there is a spectrum of organizations between fully public and fully private.

Whether the Administration's actions here are legal depends on which set of facts is really true.

Another QUANGO put to the sword. 'independent' organizations are really just stealthy ways to hide from public scrutiny while taking public money. How can you be a 'private' entity if you were founded by Congress?

100% this

Private organization clearly does not mean what I think it means if you are funded wholly from public funds. “Independent” lol, how can I get one of these organizations for myself?

You probably need to start off with a secret or higher security clearance.

how can I get one of these organizations for myself?

It's a great grift. Someone somewhere sometime did a deal to get their own little fiefdom set up and paid for by the US taxpayer. Great while it lasts.

I think the blob of these leeches/ticks is what is behind the funding of the anti-tesla movement.


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