site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33119 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

'Many things are happening, so many things are happening at once that sometimes I have no idea what's going on.'

This is likely an apocryphal quote misattributed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in March 2025 via the memetic slop factory. It's one of the factory's better creations and it captures my feeling this afternoon.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, publishes the above account regarding his participation in a special kind of Signal group chat 15 days ago. In this chat strikes against the Houthis were planned, out in the open, with Jeffrey privy to it all. According to the account he gives in the article, Jeffrey was invited by national security advisor Michael Waltz. According to Jeffrey, he was confused, skeptical, and suspicious of this chat.

Seriously, you should read the whole thing.

It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me...

I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

This group chat led to another group chat-- "Houthi PC small group". If true, I am sure Jeffrey's concerns about entrapment and imprisonment grew as he was, allegedly, joined by the Secretary of Defense, Vice President Vance, Tulsi Gabbard. In total, "18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials" as they discussed, coordinated, and monitored strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen-- and presumably some other things.

We [Atlantic staffers] discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds.

I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

Nonetheless, as Jeffrey fretted over his strange-getting-stranger position in a Signal chat group among, allegedly, the highest officials in US public office, these individuals were discussing what to do about the Houthi problem. Jeffrey identifies JD Vance's chat avatar as a cautious, moderating voice on the 14th of March:

The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, in addition to relaying the above and other interactions that went on in the chat he was in, also posted screenshots as receipts-- just in case you thought he was crazy.

In Jeffrey Goldberg's words: "I was still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And I remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of foreign-policy insight were impressive."

According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed.

After the chat, bombs get dropped, Jeffrey confirms the timeline matches what he saw planned, and the chat goes wild.

Some things to talk about as mentioned in the article:

  1. Journalisms. Jeffrey surely had a responsibility to leave this group chat when he figured this was a real thing really happening and he wasn't supposed to be there. As in, legally he shouldn't be privy to classified stuff. On the other hand, if true, this is what journalists are for. If Jeffrey had simply left the chat and reported it as such there's no story. I'm not sure how much I buy the "I'm just a lowly journalist who couldn't believe his eyes if this is real or not" shtick, but also can't really fault the guy for staying in the chat. After all, he was invited.

  2. Security and legal concerns. If the Trump admin is conducting official business on an open-source platform that is supposed to scrub its history this seems probably illegal. It is possible these messages are documented some other way, but it's possible they are not. Just as it is possible Signal is a totally secure, encrypted messaging program, but it's possible it is not.

  3. Goldberg highlights the dialogue that focuses on concerns of US-Euro relations. Wish I could read the full discussions. It seems fine to give Europe a carrot of engaging Houthis -- helping to secure their trade in the Suez -- in addition to the stick as they move to rearm. I don't think the American public has much love for Houthi rebels, though escalating involvement is a concern. I think this supports the idea that this administration is closely wedded to the news cycle rather than strategy or vision. Consideration of what this does for Europe should be second to deterring disruption to global trade-- which should have been priority from the beginning. We are missing lots of context.

  4. What if Elon Musk was gas lighting and trolling journalists with the power and resources of the United States Government behind him?

The level of ineptitude in OPSEC failure for this article to be real is staggering. It blows my mind. Which, as Jeffrey also suspected, makes one wonder if it wasn't intentional. Maybe Jeffrey was invited to one chat to be leveraged for something else, then accidentally invited to the Houthi PC chat. He might have been supposed to be in all those chats to leak it all. Comparisons to Crooked Hillary and her e-mail server abound.

To end, VP Vance reportedly typing “a prayer for victory” after a course of action was decided upon. Followed by two of our nation's best adding "prayer emoji" reactions. All of it is a bit on the nose for Clown World Simulation theory. Exciting times!

This is such a big screwup I have to wonder if it isn't intentional. I mean Yemeni goat herders aren't going to be listening in to group chats and they can't exactly stop the bombs if they are.

They can, however, move out themselves and their stuff out of the blast radius, which actually does make a difference.

Meh. Was the strike intended to kill people or to make a point?

A strike that doesn't kill the people it's aimed at doesn't make a point (or at least, it doesn't make the point you'd want to make by launching it).

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