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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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You're not wrong, but if we modded everyone who flays dead horses, we'd have a lot fewer regulars.

I'm not precisely sure what drives 'if we modded this' comes from, because to the best of my knowledge neither myself or the Nybbler have called for mod-hat moderation of it. I cannot speak for @The_Nybbler, but I know I did not report the post.

(I like his posts because he explains law stuff in a lawyerly way, even if he is a bit cute sometimes when specifically criticizing Trump. But his theory that Trump is engaging in lawfare as a fundraising project does not seem unreasonable to me.)

It's certainly an argument... but it also runs into the general point of 'and this is not new or unique to Trump,' which comes back, as many things do, to whether Trump is uniquely bad, or if Trump is getting unique censure for things that go on as a matter of course. Lawfare and fundraising is an incredibly well established practice in a diversity of forms, from non-governmental agencies like the ACLU running literal solicitation campaigns to continue legal activity broadly seen as ideologically partisan now adays to government-entangled ones such as the Obama-era practice of offering corporate settlement offers that resulted in corporations giving money to non-profits or interest groups aligned with the party of government that was taking the corporations to court. There is an entire spectrum, and entire genres of fundraising solicitation emails of '[important thing] is at court- we need YOUR money NOW!'

Which, of course, brings back to the point of distinction of when someone is accused of pretext. 'I know it when I see it' is not a credible standard when highly subjective, and 'this is a Serious Thing' is not a credible claim when contextual examples of lawfare are available that were not held to similar standards. Selective appeals or enforcement of standards are related to the concept of anarcho-tyrrany precisely because the choice to enforce them is generally pretextual. When a general category of action is widespread, the choice to enforce sanction can simultaneously be 'valid' (there is a broken rule) and pretextual (the broken rule is not the reason the sanction is being enforced).

Okay, cool, so is your complaint that he's attacking Trump in an unprincipled fashion, or that he took a poke at nybbler in the process? Because I have some sympathy for the latter complaint (and believe me, it's hard for me to muster any sympathy where nybbler is concerned), but for the former, I have none, because whether or not I agree with your criticisms, this is exactly the kind of argument that is the Motte's bread and butter.

Okay, cool, so is your complaint that he's attacking Trump in an unprincipled fashion, or that he took a poke at nybbler in the process? Because I have some sympathy for the latter complaint (and believe me, it's hard for me to muster any sympathy where nybbler is concerned), but for the former, I have none, because whether or not I agree with your criticisms, this is exactly the kind of argument that is the Motte's bread and butter.

Solely Nybbler and the edit-trolling, and I have made no request or advocacy for mod action against even that.

As mentioned in a different post, I try to no longer engage ymeshkout on top-level post topics due to my judgement of him as a bad-faith actor in iterative engagements. I don't use block lists as a general principle, so the primary instances I respond are when he [insert potentially imprecise but generally negative action] other posters.