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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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The mottizen Objectively Rational Classical Liberal cope is always that Trump is going senile and has one foot in the grave - I'm told by reputable posters he's been a couple months from Bidening out for almost a decade. For anyone who remembers the details of Trump's first term and the 2020-24 interregnum, though, it seems pretty clear that Trump is energized whenever he's on the campaign trail ahead of an election, or, sometimes, fighting a very particular fight like the early covid-era daily press conferences, and outside of that he doesn't bring the full stadium rally energy, plays a lot of golf. If previous election cycles are a guide, libs will be perfomatively worried about this for about six months, then right-wingers will be nail-biting worried about him not doing enough for the midterm elections for about six months, then the Trump rally machine will kick in and conservatives will cheer and libs will goldfish.

I mean, an octogenarian being a bit past his prime isn’t the weirdest thing thats ever happened. Statistically he’s going to go senile eventually.

Yeah, but as time goes on, the likelihood of it becoming true increases. I don't think he's at the point of cognitive decline just yet, but I think you are right about physical lack of energy and maybe he's starting to slow down mentally as well. He's 79 now, when he hits his 80s I would definitely expect a gradual diminishment.

In the bible it says: "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."

So every morning I get up and say "The world is going to end today, today is the beginning of the end times." And every hour on the hour I say "Now, it's going to happen now."

Am I saving the world? Maybe. Probably. Of course if the world ever does end, then my experiment still has value, because it will prove God doesn't exist (because if he did I wouldn't have been able to predict the end).

The definition of knowledge is still a tricky thing, but even going by the naive Theaetetus-Gettier definition of “true justified belief”, it can be argued that merely saying “the world is gonna end in an hour!” doesn’t amount to actually believing it, and in any case, there doesn’t seem to be any justification. So if we assume that God uses that definition of knowledge, we can conclude that He would not consider you to “know” that the world is about to end, and there would thus be no contradiction in his ending it.

it will prove God doesn't exist (because if he did I wouldn't have been able to predict the end).

I can only admire your steely determination.

Sure, though there's something about Trump that makes me think he'll keep going fairly strong and entirely Trumply until he keels over one day. But he's always had cycles of energy running along with his political life - you can see that every election cycle Trump fans get a little nervous about his energy the first couple rallies until he hits his stride and we have the campaign trail Trump back - so I don't think that trying to gauge Trump's energy or age based off a couple news cycles is particularly useful.

I'm told by reputable posters he's been a couple months from Bidening out for almost a decade.

link?

I recall Darwin used to bang the drum, and ymeskhout got really into it later (mostly, I believe, after he stopped posting here).

Eventually they'll be right, I suppose. And the probability that it's "this time" increases with every miss. But I don't see any other reason to assume this current time is far more credible than all the previous ones.

I don't keep links to past Motte arguments, but I loosely remember such arguments climaxing around the time of the first Biden-Trump debate. Beforehand it was a deflection to accusations of Biden's mental fitness, and immediately afterwards it was a cope argument. In both contexts, it was an equivocation defense against accusations of Biden's fitness.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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