site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   29064 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Good write-up. I’ll just offer my own personal experience here, as a federal government employee of many (10+) years.

  • In my office (outside of DC), about ten percent took the voluntary buyout in February. One was a staunch conservative and Trump supporter, who is competent to get a private sector job. Another was ex-military. These are not #Resistance types. My guess is that those who took the buyouts are disproportionately more competent and able to land on their feet with a private-sector job. Animosity to Trump was not a motivating factor. This kind of evaporative cooling will make the surviving federal workforce weaker.
  • My workplace is being offered a second round of buyouts, but this time it’s targeted at the more politically charged functional areas. If enough of those positions don’t get buyouts, then there will be a RIF (reduction in force, i.e. layoffs), again starting with the political areas and then moving to the general workforce as needed to get up to a certain percentage of employees gone.
  • The more damaging, long-term policy is the hiring freeze, which applies to the entire federal government. Every agency needs a pipeline of new employees to replace those who retire, quit, etc. Recruitment will also suffer especially if Congress cuts federal benefits like pensions, in addition to remote work curtailments.
  • Increasing the scope of Schedule F is the only thing I really agree with the Trump administration so far. Most of the federal employee workforce—contrary to popular opinion—are not Democrat slugs entrenched in #Resistance ideology. But many of the top policymakers and agency heads are, and they should go. (And many have gone, through early retirements of their own accord.)

When you disrupt people’s workplace culture and benefits, they become resentful. Apolitical and even pro-Trump employees will become opposed to the administration, and DOGE is a stupid idea for this reason. It plays to the Fox News audience well. But this will undercut Trump’s long-term efforts to reform the bureaucracy. Government services will suffer and the voting public will blame him for it.

This presumes government services provide benefits. I’m sure most government employees believe they provide a benefit (it’s hard to function believing you offer no value while getting a paycheck) but it’s possible (maybe likely) that many government programs are simply make work.

And if that’s right then DOGE is a massive successive because it proves the civil service is unnecessary and outdated.

it’s hard to function believing you offer no value while getting a paycheck

Private sector here, but this is me, and I'm perfectly fine with it.

If the law says that such-and-such projects need to get permits from the such-and-such agency after such-and-such analysis, then reducing the staff issuing those permits is increasing the burden of the government, not decreasing it.

then reducing the staff issuing those permits

This is probably true, but many of those same sorts of staff are the ones writing regulations requiring new types of permits. You can go to regulations.gov and see all of the new proposed rules as they're available for comment. I'm not going to, at the moment, say that any particular rule there up for comment is "make work", but I will observe that the ensemble of all of them has definitely increased workload and doesn't seem to always actually improve things efficiently: see the Ezra Klein/Jon Stewart discussion of rural broadband spending. I could be convinced (but don't have evidence on-hand) that pausing new regulations might be a temporary win over the exponentially expanding administrative state, despite some or even most of those regulations being reasonable and well-meaning.

Indeed, my concern isn’t with those regulations, necessarily, it’s about places where Congress is mandated certain kinds of analysis and given their parties the ability to sue over it.

If the Sierra club or whoever gets to delay your project because of some administrative short coming, then either Congress is going to have to fix it or else. The agencies are gonna have to do their job.

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