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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26667 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Recently @RandomRanger accused me of strawmanning the Right:

Turok was being banned for being overtly aggressive and obnoxiously creating imaginary narratives like "The "Woke Rightist" looks at his race, sees a mostly imaginary mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts and demands tariffs so that they can rise to the lofty heights of sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain."

That's not what the 'woke right' thinks and he surely knows it. He need only check the MAGA rhetoric from Trump about good factory jobs, or the rhetoric from the right about the need to mechanize dull fruitpicking jobs and raise productivity. Why, they say, should millions of people be brought into the country if AI is going to destroy everyone's jobs? Or the need to have American wealth kept in America rather than sent off in remittances. Or them hating H1Bs as cost-cutting that interferes with developing talent. Or them not seeing the country as purely an economic zone but having responsibility to native citizens. It's an insanely uncharitable and aggressive butchering of other people's ideology.

Did I strawman the Right? Let's ask Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the United States secretary of labor:

FOX: I think American citizens are willing to do the jobs that illegal immigrants are willing to do.

LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER: Americans are willing to do the job. What we have to give them is the opportunity to have those jobs.

DeRemer refers to "Americans," the online racialist Right is talks about whites, but in both cases the vision is the same, uplifting the ingroup means getting them the opportunity to do the jobs currently done by the guy standing in the Home Depot parking lot. Is there any wonder high-income whites are moving away from the Republican Party? Working-class whites, too, don't want their sons working casual labor, which is why in the video DeRemer goes on to talk about how Americans will be given opportunity through being "skilled, upskilled, re-skilled" and how the Trump administration is increasing apprenticeships. Of course, few illegals do those high-skilled jobs, so upskilling Americans won't replace many illegals, but it's not like the Fox News host is going to point out the apparent contradiction.

Given that I've given an example from a cabinet-level Trump administration official, (not "nutpicked" from some rando on Twitter) I expect that @RandomRanger will withdraw his claim that I "obnoxiously created imaginary narratives" in the interests of truth and courtesy.

  • -34

Let me demonstrate how irritating you're being.

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Sam Brinton."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Anthony Weiner."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Jasmine Crockett."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask AOC."

You are not strawmanning. You are weakmanning. You are not giving your political opposition the benefit of the doubt. I have a whole list of leftist politicians, intellectuals, and academics that have said embarrassing and stupid things I'd like you to defend, if you'd care to play at this particular joust.

Wouldn't one expect a cabinet secretary to normally speak, at least to some degree, with the voice and the authority of the President? Different in that way from legislators (or someone lower in the departmental totem pole, like Brinton).

A cabinet secretary does in fact speak for the administration within their area of responsibility. They do not speak for the "woke right" (which itself is just a snarl term). That's like saying something Eric Adams says should be attributed to the progressive left (or to the Democratic Socialists of America, for a concrete group).

They do not speak for the "woke right" (which itself is just a snarl term).

What is your preferred term to describe the type of people that James Lindsay characterizes as "woke right"? I don't like the term either, but there is a generally identifiable group of people who @TheAntipopulist labelled "racialist Right" who are pretty much the same people Lindsay labels "woke right".

I'm OK with "racialist right" or the euphemistic "dissident right", but "woke right" is just a snarl, an attempt to force an equivalence with the woke left. Further, these people mostly aren't the MAGA right, and the Trump Administration cannot be said to speak for them.

Further, these people mostly aren't the MAGA right, and the Trump Administration cannot be said to speak for them.

Yeah, that's exactly the crux of the issue. Lots of these people have claimed that some Trump move - bombing Iran, not releasing the Epstein client list, granting amnesty to farmers - will irrevocably sunder the Trump coalition and that their position is the true MAGA position and anything else would be a betrayal to the voters, but I think MAGA is whatever Trump says it is.

If Trump announced some kind of amnesty for farm workers, that would be MAGA. If Trump announced that "mass deportations" never meant every single illegal, that would also be MAGA.

If Trump announced some kind of amnesty for farm workers, that would be MAGA.

No, in fact, MAGA got upset when it seemed he might and Trump backed off. Also note that MAGA was COVID-vaccine-skeptical and Trump was the opposite. That MAGA won't immediately dump Trump if he deviates from what they want doesn't mean MAGA is what Trump says it is.

But the "dissident right" just isn't MAGA in the first place.

No, in fact, MAGA got upset when it seemed he might and Trump backed off.

I'm not sure. I think it was actually almost entirely Stephen Miller:

In White House meetings, Miller took the lead in dialing back the president from moving toward anything that could be branded an "amnesty" program.

One idea that was shot down: a "touchback" program under which laborers illegally in the U.S. would have go back to their nation of origin, get a U.S. work visa there and be able to return here.

"Stephen is so hardcore that the president almost jokes about it, saying that, 'You could have a person who has been here for 20 years and has a clean record and everyone loves them, and Stephen will say deport them,' " according to one person who heard Trump's remarks.

Were it not for Miller, we might have something like an amnesty, or at least the policy of not arresting farmworkers would have continued.

Look at the other issues. MAGA was almost entirely united against bombing Iran, and Trump did it anyway. MAGA had a meltdown over Epstein, and Trump dismissed it. I'm skeptical that Trump cares very much about what the Online Right portion of MAGA (which as you say, isn't really MAGA) thinks.

More comments

Whether "woke right" exists or doesn't, "The Right" surely does, and this US administration does rather effectively speak for the Right in the American context.

Did Rubin or even Clinton speak for the left? US parties are really more like coalitions and even the president shouldn't be thought of as the best representative of all the groups, they're the one whose tolerable to the most groups not usually their favorite.

AOC at least used to have a large group she spoke for, but if AOC and Nancy Pelosi disagreed, you certainly couldn't say AOC spoke for the left as a whole.

Not only would Liz Cheney not agree, Elon Musk wouldn't either, so I don't believe this.

Liz Cheney is an unimportant bit player who hasn't been connected to the movement-right for years and Musk is specifically currently trying to start a party that's "neither left or right" (whether that's true or not, that at least is the self-description), so I'm not sure why these would be the figures for estimating this.

If AOC says something and isn't broadly getting a lot of pushback from her party, that would be quite indicative that at least a major fraction of the left believed something, or at least doesn't disagree with her. This is not weakmanning.

So, does that mean the lack of broad, vocal denounciations of Newsome's take here means that the Democrats support illegal immigrant child slavery on drug farms?

Have any Democrats spoken up about the dozen antifa who organized that pathetic mass murder attempt on ICE agents?

How many of these questions could I throw at you before you reject the premise?

that the Democrats support illegal immigrant child slavery on drug farms?

Is this controversial? The Democrats support having lots of illegal immigrants working at below market rates by violating labor laws. I don't think many mainstream Democrats would deny it, although they would probably phrase it differently. That naturally includes underaged workers.

It's the logical conclusion of having a large population of undocumented people. I think pretty much every Democratic politician who has any interest in illegal immigrants is at least aware that it's happening. Presented with a choice between allowing them to operate without the protection of labor laws or getting law enforcement involved and likely getting them deported, they are choosing the former in full knowledge of the consequences of that choice because they think it's the option that causes less harm.

Have any Democrats spoken up about the dozen antifa who organized that pathetic mass murder attempt on ICE agents?

This is a poor comparison. AOC is an elected official, the perpetrators of the "pathetic mass murder attempt" are a handful of deranged crooks.

What was your take on Kamela Harris cackling about the mere idea that the Second Amendment might not allow broad confiscation of lawfully owned guns?

It is still weakmanning to insist that [someone] else speaks for [group X] because arbitrary-subjective sections of [group X] weren't sufficiently vocal in denouncing [someone].

I just don't think that's true. If AOC says something like "abolish ICE" and a decent chunk of the Democratic party waffles as to whether they agree, then it's reasonable to say that a decent chunk of the party is at least sympathetic to the idea, even if they don't explicitly endorse the literal statement.

I think this is broadly true, but also requires notation of exceptions. the Democrat Party (and the Blue Tribe more broadly) is pathologically incapable of policing its' own members, because it's a very loosely-bound coalition of a bunch of different more-tightly-bound groups and the old intra-system methods of policing dissent have broken down in the last decade. So when someone like Kamala Harris or AOC or even Will Stancil says something nuts, there isn't a pathway for dissent to show itself that can't be dismissed as "right wing trolling".

You may not think it's true, but you certainly act as if it's true.

We can all look at your posting history and note that you are not spending your time denouncing or distancing yourself from any given stupid comment by any given political figure. Despite your constant failure to distance yourself from the infinite stupidity of the universe, it would, in fact, be unreasonable to claim that said stupidity represents you to any relevant degree.

There's a difference between "an individual doesn't reject stupid comments by their party" and "the broad mass of believers doesn't reject stupid comments by their party". The latter is much better evidence for the stupid comment being believed.

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