site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20752 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Rightful Caliph has blogged over at ACX that The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs.

He is arguing that while tariffs are an "idiosyncratic obsession of Trump’s" which are not a load-bearing part of the MAGA platform, the fact that he can push through them is a consequence of his cult of personality and him being surrounded by yes-men who will not risk his anger by telling him an idea of his is terrible. So the tariffs in particular point to a broader failure mode of right-wing populism, which he contrasts with the ideological capture of institutions by the left.

Which side’s vices are worse? That’s an empirical question, and the past ten years of national politics have been one long IRB-less experiment. The Democrats made a compelling case for their own inferiority during Biden-Harris, but the Republicans are lapping them pretty hard right now, and I’m prepared to declare statistical significance.

I’m not a fan of either the ideological cults of the left or the personality cults of the right. In the absence of an obvious third alternative, I don’t think there’s a better option than taking either the left or the right as a starting point, identifying them as the lesser evil, and trying to fix their failure modes along the way.

He is then saying that he prefers to salvage institutions captured by the left to Trump's approach of starting without institutional knowledge and just see how things go.

As usually, this is compellingly written. It did not make me update a lot on Scott's politics -- he had explicitly endorsed anyone-but-Trump for the presidential election, and extrapolating that he would not be a fan of the tariffs was not exactly hard. I like how Scott took this issue which has been discussed to the death on the object level, then took a step back and asked "but what is the deeper truth about that political system beyond the object level stupidity?"

As usual for Scott blogs about CW-adjacent topic, there is a lot of discussion going on at ACX.

Scott's post begs the question though: what does he think reform of the institutions looks like? I think what we are seeing is what we should have expected.

Governing institutions in a democracy cannot survive by being only trusted by one political party.

What will it take to restore most Republican's trust? Either gutting those institutions entirely, or reforming them with punitive measures until they seem cowed and fully cooperative.

Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s are some of the more recent examples of this phenomenon.

The left isn't capable of reforming institutions, just like the right isn't capable of reigning in their strong-men (and women). They need each other to play those roles. And obviously if you identify more with one side than the other you don't like having to be the side that reigns in the other. My side's honest mistakes and forgiveable excesses, are the other sides willful maliciousness and unforgivable escalations.

I recently spoke with my mother who has worked on cancer research contracts with NIH. She is a lifelong moderate Democrat (pro choice). She had spoken in fearful tones about Trump and Doge. But recently when Doge began taking an axe to medical programs she sounded pretty happy. Apparently they cut some kind of dog cancer research program that my mom always thought was dumb (there is some joke in there about DOGE's meme name sake, but I'm too lazy to find it). Her words were basically that they cut the things she would have cut.

I live in the northern Virginia area. I know many people who work in government. The common refrain is that "yes they definitely needed to trim the fat and slim down government, but this just seems crazy the way they are doing it". But there was an opportunity to trim the fat during the Biden administration and they didn't take it. They were too busy starting dog cancer research programs. So maybe this is the only way you cut things, with a side of bad ideas from a strongman willing to do it.

Apparently they cut some kind of dog cancer research program that my mom always thought was dumb

I know this is only a side note to your main point, but could you explain why?

We're getting better about allowing terminally-ill patients access to experimental treatments, but even in a libertarian utopia there's always going to be a lot of cases where you'd like to learn faster via experiment but where you have a tough time getting volunteers - e.g. with cancers these days there's typically a non-experimental treatment that's not ideal but that's good enough to not leave people desperate for a still-in-testing alternative. Plus, with any research of medical conditions which are linked to aging there's always going to be some benefit to being able to do studies with a population that ages five times as fast.

On the other hand, I could see an argument that dogs specifically are pointless here - start research in mice where you get even faster aging and less ethical concern over their deaths, finish (the animal testing phase of) research in monkeys or apes when you need closer relatives to humans, and then maybe you want to just skip right over dogs.

I only got the brief description that it was one of Biden's "moonshot" research programs. I'm guessing it just was unlikely to have payoff for learning about human cancers. Instead it was likely to have payoff for treating dog cancers, but she thought that was a bad use of taxpayer money.

Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s are some of the more recent examples of this phenomenon.

I don't know enough about Reagan but Thatcher was very cautious and targetted in her attacks on institutions. In her first term she identified a specific enemy (unions, particularly blue-collar unions in state-owned companies) and spent several years planning and executing the attack on them before she went after anything else. She went after other institutions in the same methodical way later, but there was never a purge of the civil service and the purge of middle management in the newly-privatised industries took place over about a decade post-privatisation.

MAGA lump all the PMC-led institutions together, declare war on the whole blob, and demand rapid shock-and-awe attacks on all fronts simultaneously. (Trump responds, but mostly with kayfabe - you don't actually bring the Deep State to heel by cutting USAID's Politico Pro subscriptions). We will see how effective this is, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Governing institutions in a democracy cannot survive by being only trusted by one political party.

I mean, if that's your thesis, surely the current MAGA strategy won't help even if it succeeds at its stated aims. Institutions reshaped by Trump in his image won't be trusted by the Left. Best scenario, you'll just flip the problem.

Yes, but a bilateral conflict is how you reach a new stable equilibrium; one-way ratchets don't have any brakes.

I think there is a degree of stickiness when it comes to trust. That institutions can be bad or against a certain party and still enjoy reputational effects for a while. I think this happened in the Obama and first Trump term when the military and intelligence agencies were still strongly trusted by the right.

I'd argue that the speed Blue Tribers went from thinking electric cars were going to solve global warming to them becoming the tools of the devil that need be purged with fire is Not Encouraging. That Red Tribers have some latency does not demand that the Blues do so.

For a lower-stakes example, see Mercedes Lackey.

This is the way pretty much any sort of energy thing from environmentalists goes. As long as it is expensive, small, and impractical, it's something they point to so they can claim their banning of all the good stuff won't actually leave us shivering in the dark. Once someone demonstrates the new "clean" thing can be done at scale, it's the Devil. Dams kill fish, wind kills birds, solar damages the delicate desert ecosystems (and reduces the albedo of the planet), the transmission lines for all cut off animal migration corridors, and electric cars help Bad Orange Man.

But really, Musk aligning with Trump just pushed up the timetable a bit. The idea was always to take most of the cars away, not replace them with electric ones.

I think it's important to note that lack of trust in institutions isn't a strictly policy problem- the left knows full well the decline in childhood vaccination rates is driven by 'well doctors were actively lying about covid, so...'.

I agree with the strong butterfly, most people don't know.

Even if that’s the case, ‘parents are less willing to vaccinate’ isn’t strictly a policy problem.

not sure i understand your point relevant to what i was saying

That would make sense to me, except I don't know a single leftist who thinks so. There's either a total blind spot in their memory or they insist all statements were made in good faith at the time, depending on whom I'm talking to.

Some will acknowledge that lies were told about masks, but for the greater good. Most don't want to discuss it at all. Again, IME.

Reagan

David Stockman's Triumph of Politics describes the Reagan revolution's failure/betrayal. Stockman left congress to direct Reagan's budget, but was prevented from cutting the welfare-warfare state. They never balanced the budget during Reagan's terms, rather tripling the budget instead.

but was prevented from cutting the welfare-warfare state

Nice use of the passive voice here. Reagan explicitly supported expanding the warfare state, and his big idea on the welfare state side was that free market policies would allow the economy to outgrow the cost of an aging population. Reagan's White House economic team were believers in starving the beast and the two-Santa theory - not in cutting spending themselves.

Stockman was the subject, not Raegan! Betrayed by Raegan!

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