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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25655 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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Compare it to a Romney or even Bush-like figure, who are seemingly more content to twist the dials on the administrative state a few degrees here and there and not interfere with their enemy's tactics (or disrupt their funding) so the actual 'balance of power' doesn't shift much.

I would argue that this was a feature. Bush, Obama, McCain, Clinton all had some investment with the status quo. They were playing the game by its written and unwritten rules. If any of them had seen the opportunity to cross the Rubicon and make themselves dictator, they would likely not have taken it, because nobody wanted to go down as that figure in the history books. For all the differences between GWB and Bernie Sanders, neither is willing to throw the democracy experiment under the bus to beat the other.

Not so with Trump. He is acting with a self-interest that would make most kleptocrats blush. He will happily burn 100$ of commons to earn 1$ for himself. He is prizing personal loyalty far beyond qualification.

I am however wondering what will happen to the Trump party once Trump finally croaks. As any player of Crusader Kings can tell you, these systems of personal loyalty are all fine while you are alive, but tend to get very messy on succession.

  • -10

Not so with Trump. He is acting with a self-interest that would make most kleptocrats blush. He will happily burn 100$ of commons to earn 1$ for himself.

This seems silly. Trump almost certainly lost money going into politics, no? What parts of his governance look like that to you? The most obvious ways for politicians to arrange such things are foreign adventurism, warmongering, and massive trillion dollar boondoggle bills for easily embezzled projects, and Trump has been pretty opposed to all of those things.

I notice that some people forget that Trump's Organizations owns or has fingers in real estate all over the planet.

This gives him some pecuniary interest in NOT doing foreign adventurism and warmongering. And avoiding wars involving countries where he has property, at all.

I imagine the thought of big, beautiful buildings getting bombed to rubble causes the guy physical pain.

You'll note that Romney and Bush were not exempt from slanderous character assassination; the only difference between Bush and Hitler were that Hitler was elected. Romney was cruel to animals, had an awful wife, wanted to reintroduce slavery.

Of course Romney genuinely seems to be guilty of nothing more than social awkwardness and Bush had nothing to do with Hitler.

Obama, and in particular Biden, were definitely guilty of targeting their domestic political enemies as well.

Isn't Romney a private equity guy, one of the class of people specializing in what's basically elegant asset stripping?

That’s one way of describing PE but generally seems like a misunderstanding. Does PE cause some businesses to fail by excess debt? Yes. But to succeed, PE generally needs to in the aggregate sell businesses for more than it purchased them for.

Frequently, PE buys distressed businesses to get a good price, tries to turn them around, and sell at a profit.

Sometimes, PE provides liquidity to founders where the company isn’t to the size that would suggest an IPO makes sense at the time. Having this exit option is great for encouraging building companies.

Other times, PE builds companies by acquiring a bunch of small companies, integrating them, and then selling (ie pay 10x EBITDA, get some cost savings combining and sell at 15x EBITDA since the stream of income is a bit more secure).

Again, PE generally doesnt make money from companies failing (one exception is leveraged recaps). They make money by companies succeeding (in ways described above).

But to succeed, PE generally needs to in the aggregate sell businesses for more than it purchased them for.

It doesn't. It just needs to get more money, by say, buying back stock or paying dividends to themselves.

Forgive me for being a bit skeptical. The only time I came across PE was reading about the fate of US gun makers, where the PE invariably made things worse and their business model was basically exploit the good name of a company they bought by lowering quality and then saddle it with debt and finally let it go bankrupt.

E.g. Remington was bought for $360 million, immediately issued a billion $ worth of debt. 10 years later, 700 millions are written off in a bankruptcy, even though they sold off their buildings to a company owned by the PE group so they could rent them back.

https://archive.is/cotTp

This just isn’t the norm. As a general rule, PE buys an entity with debt. Banks don’t permit cash to leave the banking group.

The only time is when banks lend money to an existing PE owned business with the express intention of repatriation cash (ie a levered recap). Most liquidity events aren’t levered recaps. Moreover, banks aren’t interested in lending to businesses that will go bankrupt (ie banks don’t want to equitize their debt; they want to get paid back on the debt). So generally leveraged recaps will only occur when the risk of bankruptcy is remote.

None of this means all PE companies survive, but in generally PEs cannot successful generate returns by bankrupting companies.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument. I remember the much-to-do about him traveling with his dog in a crate strapped to the roof (which I can't say I like but doesn't really have anything to do with Presidential qualifications).

But yes, on the left much was made of his job being to buy up a company to saddle it with another company's debt.

That said, Romney's social awkwardness specifically was of the the "What could a banana cost, like $10?" variety. To the left, he was like an out-of-touch manager who couldn't empathize with the working class at all.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument.

It is a quote from Biden talking to a crowd of black people saying Romney wants to put them back in chains.

To the left, he was like an out-of-touch manager who couldn't empathize with the working class at all.

The democrats also, in one of the most brazen acts of political gaslighting I think I've ever seen, somehow managed to turn Romney's own efforts at sex-based affirmative action into evidence of his sexism.

Probably one of the worst short-term political play decisions in modern American politics on the part of the Democrats and their allies in the media.

Romney was, and probably will be remembered as, the last major Respectability candidates of the early 21st century Republican party. He was a compromise candidate who was about the best possible synthesis of red tribe considerations and blue tribe value, a Republican who was willing to accept the legitimacy in part of blue tribe framings, and cared about their opinions. He wasn't a perfect candidate for the Republican base, but a man that- outside of a specific election cycle- had a generally consistent reputation as virtuous, even if you disagreed. It was about as close to a synthesis of red tribe and blue tribe as you could hope for, even down to sincerely practicing affirmative action and having an adopted african-american grandson.

The character assassination of Mitt Romney- among which Democratic Senate Majority Harry Reid later defended with "We won, didn't we?"- was probably what I'd point to as the breaking moment where the Republican base revolt that became the Trump-MAGA movement began.

MAGA was in part a revolt against the Republican elite, including significant disatisfaction against Romney for not fighting back. The Republican party's commissioned autopsy that argued the party needed to move decisively to the left made that revolt worse. But almost as importantly the Obama '12 campaign discredited the argument by Republican centrists/moderates, and media commentators more generally, that what the red tribe needed to be treated with respect was to present a respectable candidate.

Romney was the candidate, and was still slandered and jeered. Virtue- and especially virtue as recognized by the media establishment that joined in the jeering- wouldn't be recognized when during an election cycle. And if virtue would not be recognized, nor would it be sufficient to win even if not recognizeed, then appeals to virtue were going to lose support compared to appeals to fight back.

Which, of course, Trump was happy to do... but Trump wouldn't have won without a disillusioned Republican base that no longer responded to appeals to respectability like Romney was willing to.

I remember that. Though I think it was less about sexism and more going back to the sounding like an out-of-touch manager. "How do I talk about women? Talk about binders of resumes!"

It was indeed about Romney's alleged sexism. For example, as the linked Wikipedia states:

The phrase was depicted by Romney's detractors and the Obama campaign as demeaning and insensitive toward women and was widely mocked. This prompted the phrase's use for political attacks on Romney's positions on "women's issues"

Romney was accused of dehumanizing women by using a synecdoche, whether intentionally or not, that related women to a binder of resumes. This was highlighted as evidence of his alleged casual misogyny.

Naturally, neglecting to emphasize the distinct Wonderfulness of each and every woman (only women as a whole) while bragging about how you discriminate against men in favor of women will be held up as evidence of your misogyny. It's not evidence of misandry, however, because giving hiring preferences toward women is the bare minimum in not being a completely awful human being. Plus, he doesn’t deserve credit for the DEI attempt, since everyone knows that hiring more women and non-Asian minorities improves businesses so even a greedy misogynistic pale stale male would prefer hiring women and minorities out of self-interest.

Romney bragging about pro-female affirmative action—and getting hoist by his own petard because of it—provided another amusing example of the epic_handshake.jpg between conservatives and progressives when it comes to women’s Wonderfulness and Lives Mattering More, where they just sometimes haggle over how much more (and in what ways) while conservatives drive the progressive speed limit.

I do still think a lot of it was Romney's social awkwardness and saying it in a very memey way. But I do acknowledge that a Democrat doing a similar thing would get less flak, in a dating in the workplace kind of way. Not necessarily none, because Howard Dean and Hillary both have gotten some mockery from the left for coming across as fake or socially awkward.

That said, it was later claimed that the statement was a lie, and that feminist groups had sent Romney the resumes on their own initiative rather than him requesting them.

Kinda, but that itself was viewed as evidence of misogyny. Contemporaneous examples: The Guardian, CNN, Time.

No, it was sexism. "Binders" was used to imply that he wants to "bind" women.

It wasn't even that. It was a weird phrase that feminists seized as a Schelling point for hating Romney; the rationalizations for why the phrase was offensive came later.

From "Why I defend scoundrels, part 2" by Scott Alexander:

My complaint about feminism - and all the other isms - isn't any kind of object-level complaint like that at all. On the object-level I think they're pretty okay. It's that they have a tendency to really love their group hate-fests, and they make sure to hold them with a halo over their heads.

The last time I mentioned this, people criticized me for making vague claims. So today I'll be more specific. Mitt Romney. Binders full of women. My facebook feed. Twelve posts about it (and I don't have all that many Facebook friends). Five of those twelve included the word "misogynist". One included the phrase "giant d-bag". Then I go on Reddit, where the phrases are more like "condescending prick", "ego so twisted he starts believing his own bullshit", and "I can't see how any self-respecting woman could ever think of voting for him." Plus a link to http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/, because someone was enjoying the hatefest so much they though it would benefit from an entire website.

And what was interesting was that one of these comments ended up spawning a thread where someone defended Romney. It went something like this: "Isn't 'binders full of X' a relatively common phrase?" "Oh, it wasn't the binders that offended me, per se. It was his statement that women only care about flexible working hours." "Well, he didn't say women only cared about, just that it was a special care of women. And surveys show this to be totally true." "But it was that he was getting into this at all, when the question was about pay equity." "But Obama arguably departed even further from the question, talking about free contraception, and no one criticized him." "Well, maybe you're right, but it was incredibly stupid of Romney to phrase his comments in a way that could be interpreted as offensive, and I'm still not convinced there aren't some offensive feelings lurking under the surface."

Notice how incredibly scary this thought pattern is. You express this burning intense hatred for a guy you don't really know based on one remark. When someone demonstrates that this is irrational, you say "Well, okay, but I was still right to hate him because of this totally different thing he did." And then when someone demonstrates there's no basis for hating him, "Well, I can still hate him, because it's still his fault for being so stupid as to say something I misinterpreted."

And from "Why I specifically defend the scoundrel Mitt Romney", idem:

As promised in the previous post, here are the reasons why I think the firestorm over Romney's "binders full of women" remark is an example of people having way too much fun calling "misogyny!" as an excuse to pursue a group hatefest rather than of actual misogyny:

(disclaimer: I got an absentee ballot and have already voted for Obama. I dislike Mitt Romney, just not for this specific reason.)

1. It was offensive for Romney to use the phrase "binders full of women".

I can't Google "binders full of women" or even "binders full of people" directly because it's all references to Romney.

But "folders full of people" gets 9 Google hits of people using it in totally reasonable contexts, like "I had a few file folders full of people who signed up to help this year". One Outlook user says "Up until now i have grouped them in folders of up to 100 people and now have 22 folders full of people."

"Lists full of people" gives 9040 results, including wait lists full of people, email lists full of people, and targeted leads lists full of people.

"Files full of people" gives 5510 results, including "files full of people who are glad they bought travel insurance", "files full of people whose save lists were corrupted", and "files full of people affected by the problem".

Even more specific forms get results, for example a police station that has "files full of suspects", and four different marketing groups that have "files full of customers" plus three that have "folders full" of them.

Ignoring the "full", "folders of customers" has 3560 results; "folders of men" has 220, "folders of people" has a whopping 13300 (and yes, I checked the first few pages, most of them are folders containing people, not folders belonging to people.)

But of course as soon as Mitt Romney says it, it's because he thinks women are inhuman objects who are worthy of being stored in binders. Or something. I want to be charitable, but the only person who explained their objection to the phrase used the phrasing in the last sentence. So I don't know.

If you're on the phone with a sales representative, and she offers you a catalog of her store's products, and you say "You ignorant piece of crap! It's not a catalog of the store's products! It's a catalog containing information about the store's products! You're such a worthless idiot!" then congratulations, you can self-consistently get upset with Romney for using the same synecdoche. If you would be utterly appalled by the thought of acting that way to the sales representative, but you posted something snarky on your Facebook about how Romney was a misogynist, you have deeper problems.

Double checking my memory, and not really seeing much of that. More that the perception created of him was that he was only cared about women in order to check a box.

“Here’s a situation where, you know, it should have been readily apparent to anyone that there were plenty of qualified women but they had to make this special effort.”

Instead, he managed to conjure an image confirming every feminist's worst fears about a Romney presidency; that he views women's rights in the workplace as so much business admin, to be punched and filed and popped on a shelf.

One got the sense of Mitt Romney coming from a place where women were generally in the other room, waiting to be invited in only when the moment—or the visibility of the job—called for it.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument.

In 2012, then-VP Biden told a largely-Black crowd in Danville, Virginia that "They're [Republicans] going to put y'all back in chains".

The last sentence in the linked article seems a bit prescient for 2024, though:

Mr. Biden also told the crowd that if they get out the vote, "we can win North Carolina again." Danville is close to the North Carolina border, but it is in fact in Virginia.

Ah. Though from the sound of it that sounds more like Biden making a stupid remark, and alluding more to the sort of Cyberpunk-style "Megacorps make the rules" than literally sending people back to the plantations.

If any of them had seen the opportunity to cross the Rubicon and make themselves dictator, they would likely not have taken it, because nobody wanted to go down as that figure in the history books.

Taking this analogy more literally, none of them faced the sort of ultimatum that Caesar did. They weren't seen as overly popular and powerful and thus a danger to the status quo in and of themselves if they returned to the public sphere.

They enjoyed the mutually agreeable reassurance that if they gracefully retire they can live out their days in ease.

Trump's Rubicon moment was probably in the vein of "If you keep up this election denialism and run again we'll burn down your entire life." Maybe he sincerely truly believed that the election was stolen from him, or he just really hates losing, or he does legitimately think he's uniquely qualified to get the country back on track, but for whatever reason he called that bluff and then survived the onslaught. Where's that leave him now?

I am however wondering what will happen to the Trump party once Trump finally croaks. As any player of Crusader Kings can tell you, these systems of personal loyalty are all fine while you are alive, but tend to get very messy on succession.

Very curious too. How much of the coalition is genuinely tied into Trump the man. There's some who buy into "MAGA" as a broader idea, or "America First," but if Trump does die or, hell, even retires and endorses a successor, what portion of the current GOP will just stop participating for want of an inspiring leader?

Vance is positioned as a legitimate successor, but Trump could throw him under a bus too before going out. Succession fights get ugly. And a decent number of people, on both sides of the aisle, have their careers/livelihoods pinned on Trump's activities and they'll have to re-align quickly if they can't hook on to his train any longer.

Very curious too. How much of the coalition is genuinely tied into Trump the man.

I was a pretty early adopter for Trump, and my thought process went something along the lines of "There's no way the usual gang of Republican candidates are going to be anything other than (leftist-overrun) Politics As Usual, what I want is someone who'll tear up the floorboards and burn out the shit down to the foundation. Who's got the moxie to do it and the money to not be bought away from it? Trump's run before, I've kinda laughed at him running for years, but he's kinda my best bet. Plus shitposting a president into power would be an even better prank than putting dear old mootykins on top of the Time 100 poll, and it'd be a great kick of the tires to see if it's possible to get a president that isn't in The Usual Gang Of D/R Career Candidates."

So, at least for me, it's not that it's Trump the man, it's that it's /ourguy/. Which includes Vance, Elon (and I was not expecting that 12 years ago), DeSantis somewhat, and the people that are willing to play ball. Which does include some of the members of The Usual Gang, but I can work with that.

Hilariously, if you ascribe Trump's victory in 2016 in some major part to 4chan's initial interest in and support of his campaign, Moot was, in fact, the most influential person of 2009... it just wouldn't become clear why for a bit longer.

They enjoyed the mutually agreeable reassurance that if they gracefully retire they can live out their days in ease.

See also how the dems started to gargle Bush's balls for some unknown to me reason that one time.

Seven years ago, I saved this @JTarrou comment, for the purpose of remembering to monitor future developments:

The current Republican president is always the worst person in history. The last one is always surprisingly human. The one before that is always a pretty decent dude.

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

I'd say that Obama is probably still well-regarded, possibly having something to do with some people thinking that he was pulling the strings during the Biden Administration. I'll be interested to watch his future trajectory as years continue to pass, but I do think it might be hard for people who lean left to say much that is negative about the first black president. I suppose I've heard some criticisms from the left that he "was a Republican" in terms of his national security policies, but I certainly don't think I've seen him go through a "corrupt liar" phase. At least not as of yet.

The Republican one seems to me to have the ring of truth to it, but this one:

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

does not.

The Dems were fortunate to have two very popular, charismatic presidents in Clinton and Obama, but I don’t think anyone would use terms like “Star Trek Jesus” when talking about Biden or Carter. Likewise, I’ve never heard anyone say anything remotely bad about Carter as a person or call him a Republican in disguise. Before that you’ve got LBJ (a charming scoundrel, but no Republican), JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today), Truman (who’s too forgettable to engender any strong feelings one way or the other), and FDR (who is of course the OG Star Trek Jesus).

JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today)

Which is odd, considering that JFK's main political policies were cutting taxes on the rich, beefing up military spending based on lies, and bungling regime-change adventurism.

Contrastingly, JFK's main rival, Richard Nixon, re-instituted wage and price controls and founded the EPA.

Ah, but he was sexy and had lots of sex. Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him.

One man once died
but did you know before that he could read all our minds
he was the US Adam with Jack the wife
he was a hyper-charismatic telepathical knight
Jaaaaay-ehehey Ef Kaaaay....

If that song lives in my head from now on whenever I hear JFK, I'm blaming you.

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How would we prove if Republican presidents have in fact been getting worse by this metric? The comment kinda only applies if there isn't a trend.

That's a fair point, but I think the pure contempt with which I remember people speaking about Bush, compared with the number of times I've heard similar people point to him as a surprisingly human decent dude in the past 10 years makes me really skeptical. If he was truly so awful back then, he wouldn't be forgiven and nostolgized so easily, even if someone worse came along, at least not by an intellectually honest person.

I don't think Biden ever had the "Jesus with Sprinkles" phase?

Maybe Biden was never truly president in anything more than a ceremonial sense, and was essentially understood consiously or not, as simply giving executive power back to the administrative state that the Obama administration installed.

The going joke is always the "strange newfound respect" for someone that they had maligned as hitleresque before.

I am just barely old enough to remember how vicious the attacks on Bush II were (and hell, I think some was justifiable!), but hey, the guy paints now, how endearing!

Even fuckin' CHENEY gets a pass now. Probably helps that his daughter is quite Anti-Trump (which could be a bit of a tell, no?)

And I do truly believe that even Trump will be seen with some level of nostalgia once he's gone.

Seems pretty natural to think that 'man in office' is bad and 'man out of office' is decent. I mean, it was never about a judgement of innate evilness. Once you're president the judgements on you are also about the machine you stand atop of and how your personal sensibility interacts with the forces flowing through the country and world.

I actually think it's a good lesson to learn that psycho and even genocidal world leaders could be generally okay to hang out with absent their official role, and therefore not very surprising that opinions on them alter later. Just like one can be charismatic not as a result of your innate characteristics but because of your position in a society (see Randall Collins for details).

It's being in power that magnifies flaws, eccentricities or even charming character traits into problems for others.

If it is any consolation, I was perhaps 16 in 2001 and now that I am 40 I can say that my anger at W has solidified rather than evaporated. For me he will always be the president who made torture official US policy and managed to start not one but two large scale wars which the US ultimately lost. His stupid stunt on that aircraft carrier. Mission accomplished my ass. From US-internal perspective, he was mostly fine, but his foreign policy was quite the disaster, and Trump will be hard-pressed to cause a similar loss of utility even if he decides to invade Greenland.

He was and is an idiot and the people who caused these wars went on to become the only faction that matters in foreign policy circles,with the Ukraine war being their crowning achievement.

Their crowning achievement is something Russia did?

Russia didn't use false flag attacks to stage a coup in Ukraine, disenfranchise their substantial Russian minority and started a civil war.

Ukrainian nationalists weren't getting support & cover from Russians.

Russia started the war with the invasion of Crimea (an action which, all claims to contrary, involved clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces and thus clearly constitutes an offensive invasion of a sovereign state's territory), and the war was then escalated with the filibuster action in Eastern Ukraine by Strelkov and co, without which the protests in Eastern Ukraine would in all likelihood not have escalated to the status of military action.

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From US-internal perspective, he was mostly fine, but his foreign policy was quite the disaster, and Trump will be hard-pressed to cause a similar loss of utility even if he decides to invade Greenland.

That's about the sum of it.

Domestically he did introduce a lot of programs for spying and policing that I CONTINUE to disagree with, but foreign policy was, as you say, disastrous, and while I think Obama had a horrible foreign policy record as well, its hard to quantify just how much damage the warmongering did in sheer human lives cost on top of the economics of it. I look back and I cannot think of a SINGULAR positive thing that came out of it.

Okay, we unseated Hussein, but that led to the rise of ISIS (man, haven't thought about them in a while) and a general upswell of sectarian violence in the region. And they can barely hold their official government together. I genuinely appreciate that Trump made his campaign to squash ISIS as limited in scope as he did. EVERY instinct in me assumed he's put boots on the ground and pull us into another boondoggle because that seemed to be SOP by that point.

The Taliban instantly taking back Afghanistan was quite the cherry on top.

If it wasn't for the destruction of libya and the spurning of Erdogan I wouldn't think the current "migrant crisis" would have happened in the EU quite the way it did, with that no rise of nationalistic parties either. They really fucked up the internationalist global consensus they had going on.

Not in the way it did, but easily in a recognizably similar way.

The Arab Spring revealed systemic issues that were underway well before 9-11, and which would have remained primed for violent escalation even without the American invasion of Iraq. People like to focus on how ISIS had an Iraq power base, but are less inclined to note the series of uprisings against the Assad dynasty or Saddam regime, or how the fruitseller in Tunisia who figuratively and literally lit the match was responding to bog-standard petty tyrants common across the region. Names and places would have changed, but the Middle East would still be a tinder box primed to start major- or even larger- humanitarian crisis. Iraq-Iran alone could light Syria in a different way, if an fruit-seller riot spreading to Iraq led to crackdown on the Shia majority when the Iranian paramilitary capability is already present across the region.

In turn, nothing about the Arab Spring divergences would have really changed the African inflows, or the Russian incentive to use humanitarian border rushes via Belarus, or so on. Deviations might change election cycles, but not fundamental drivers.

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