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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26310 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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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.

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