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naraburns  nihil supernum  5d ago (text post)   Edited 5d ago   3050 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@faceh:

@RenOS:

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of July 28, 2025

@kky:

Contributions for the week of August 4, 2025

@FtttG:

@SirJohnFalstaff:

@Rov_Scam:

@OliveTapenade:

@Primaprimaprima:

@EverythingIsFine:

Gun Mods

@cjet79:

@self_made_human:

Contributions for the week of August 11, 2025

@naraburns:

@07mk on:

Dates and Mates

@quiet_NaN:

@faceh:

@self_made_human:

@urquan:

Contributions for the week of August 18, 2025

@100ProofTollBooth:

@thejdizzler:

@07mk:

@RandomRanger:

@FCfromSSC:

@Amadan:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of August 25, 2025

@MadMonzer:

@Hoffmeister25:

Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Lord

@FCfromSSC:

@FtttG:

You Can't Put a Price on Your Health (That's Someone Else's Job)

@ControlsFreak:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@self_made_human:

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I'm having trouble reconciling two different AAQCs from FC:

https://www.themotte.org/comment/359139?context=3#context

Let's take a concrete example. I used to be very concerned about government spending and the national debt. I thought that it was very important that we get this spending under control, and bring the debt down. This was part of the basis for my voting for George W Bush in 2000. But Bush then blew the budget out funding the war on terror, and then Obama (who I also voted for) blew the budget out even worse (to my recollection, corrections welcome) with his various domestic and foreign policies. Voting for fiscal responsibility did not actually secure fiscal responsibility.

https://www.themotte.org/comment/357773?context=3#context

When I was much younger, I was a deep-blue progressive atheist deeply embedded in the Blue Tribe narrative machine. I believed that Bush did 9/11, that he was a fascist, and that he intended to overthrow American democracy, probably by conducting another false-flag terror attack and then using it as a pretext to suspend elections. This was a quite popular belief among Blues back then, and I bought it all hook, line and sinker. I believed it so firmly that I moved to Canada and seriously considered renouncing my American citizenship. Only, none of the things I believed would happen, the things the people I was listening to predicted would happen, actually happened. There never was another major terror attack anywhere close to the scale of 9/11, false-flag or otherwise. Bush was re-elected in an election I and most of my social circle was certain was rigged, but then four years later Obama trounced Romney, and power transferred as normal.

I can certainly reconcile this on my own, but I am also getting a little bit of a "chameleon" vibe that I hadn't noticed before. This not meant to be any sort of callout, as a longtime fan of FC posting, just a note.

I've written about it a few times before. Short version is that I was raised a Conservative Christian with Rush Limbaugh characteristics, fell off the bandwagon due to the post-9/11 neocon flip, went hard-Libertarian to Deep-blue atheist for a decade (with considerable flirtation with Ron Paul in the middle years), and then got blown off that bandwagon by the Social Justice blastwave in 2014/2015. In the runup to the 2016 election, I was still seriously considering voting for Hillary up until Trump cinched the Republican nomination.

Previous mentions: 1 2 or this thread from the old country.

When I fetched up in SSC's comments section, my previous-favorite blog had been Shakesville, and the political issue I had been most concerned with was a tossup between the burgeoning threat of Rape Culture and the idea that another fucking Bush was being nominated for the presidency.

The short version is that I've spent considerable portions of my life on both sides of the tribal divide. I think a bunch of people here have switched sides once; it seems like fewer of us have done it twice.

Thanks for this. I grew up in the Deep South but with California parents, mostly irreligious and a mild political divide (red dad, blue mom). My dad the provider, my mom raised us to be broadly liberal, in maybe the best way. I grew up thinking of old stodgy conservatives and young fresh liberals, but not quite in those terms. Around 14 or 15 I had a heavy influence from a big leftist peer, though I didn't recognize this at the time, but also developed my libertarian instincts from a high school history teacher slash debate coach.

I went to college and 9/11 hit, and it was big rightward shift. Atheism, Sam Harris, Muslims, Terrorists. Sam Harris of course at this time is nowhere near the right and remains so IMHO. But I had never considered ROTC or CIA or FBI and all of a sudden these are interesting to me. At this time, I am starting to get psyched about shock-and-awe, learning about M-16s and M-4s and AR-15s, but also drinking Sierra Nevadas and going to Phish shows.

For lack of any wrap-up I'll end here.

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