site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8hr ago (text post)   1192 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Marxism and the History of Philosophy:

Most people in most places, including intellectuals, have never worked out their basic worldviews, and thus, they flounder without foundations. This is what Marxism has to offer: foundations and meaning.

We have a worldview that is clear, coherent, comprehensive, and credible. We bring a way to think that combines totality with historicity, a way of processing experience that is both integrative and empirical, and a way of synthesizing that is not an abstract unfolding of a mystified idea, but a constant and dynamic interaction with nature and with labor in a material historical process.

We need to show how the system structuring people’s lives, capitalism, is responsible for the terrible injustices of the world, the ecological destruction of the world as well as for the cultural decadence and psychological disorder of the world. We offer not only analysis in understanding the nature of the system generating the most basic problems, but also a solution in a movement to expose this system and to bring about an alternative system, socialism. We offer both meaning and purpose. [emphasis mine]

If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.

(I have argued previously that wokeism is not identical with Marxism. The relationship between wokeism and Marxism should be understood as being something like the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Adherents of the newer religion incorporate the sacred texts of the older religion as their own, but they also make a number of modifications and additions that adherents of the older religion would stridently reject. Nonetheless, the two traditions are united in certain ethical and philosophical commitments that more distant outsiders would find baffling.)

Much ado has been made about the "crisis of meaning" in the contemporary West, and how "we", as a civilization, "need" religion (and how in its absence, people will inevitably seek out substitutes like wokeism). But speaking at this level of generality obscures important and interesting psychological differences between different individuals. Many, perhaps most, people are actually perfectly fine with operating in the absence of meaning. And they can be quite happy this way. They may be dimly aware that "something" is missing or not quite right, but they'll still live docile and functional existences overall. They achieve this by operating at a persistently minimal level of sensitivity towards issues of meaning, value, aesthetics, etc, a sort of "spiritual hibernation".

It is only a certain segment of the population (whose size I will not venture to estimate -- it may be a larger segment than the hibernators, or it may be smaller, I don't know) that really needs to receive a sense of purpose from an authoritative external social source. And this segment of the population has an outsized effect on society as a whole, because these are the people who most zealously sustain mass social movements like Christianity and wokeism.

Finally there are individuals who are seemingly capable of generating a sui generis sense of meaning wholly from within themselves. This is surely the smallest segment of the population, and it's unlikely that you could learn to emulate their mode of existence if you weren't born into it -- but you wouldn't want to anyway. Such individuals are often consumed by powerful manias to the point of self-ruin, or else they become condemned to inaction, paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties they have placed upon themselves.

I think one of the stronger tells re:Marxism-as-religion is how they treat Marx himself, much more like a prophet than a scholar (despite protestations to the contrary).

I don't think that the way Marx is treated is all that out of the ordinary compared to how other canonical historical philosophers are treated (and you can find other historical thinkers who have a bigger cult of personality, like Lacan imo). I think the locus of emotional investment is more in the cause of socialism itself rather than Marx as a person.

The particular attention paid to Marx's writings and Marx as a person may seem strange to people with a STEM background, where primary historical sources are never read by anyone except dedicated historians. But that's simply how things are done in philosophy. If you want to do serious scholarly or intellectual work using X thinker’s ideas, then you're expected to read what X actually wrote.

No one treats Marx's thought as an infallible edifice which can never be criticized or amended. The Frankfurt school thought that Marxism had to be supplemented with psychoanalysis and cultural criticism in order to address some of its blind spots. Wokes are intrinsically suspicious of Marx because he was white and male. Etc.

A short prompt of good news for starting the week- the likelihood of the current Gaza conflict ending just got significantly higher today, as Hamas has released at least the first 7 of 20 surviving hostages to Israel, with more expected later today (or maybe already completed), as part of a Trump-mediated peace deal that is excepted to culminate in a regional summit this week.

Big if carried through, and while there was leadup to it last week, there was a fair bit of (and fair grounds for) skepticism on if the deal would actually be followed through. There were questions on if Hamas even could deliver all the living hostages given how the hostages were often not under Hamas's direct organizational control (but sometimes under other groups), and this deal does not address the bodies of the dead hostages, among other things.

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

That said- and I think this is good news in general- it's also worth noting this doesn't mean stability or even a lasting peace. While the Yemen-based Houthis have indicated they will stop their Red Sea attacks so long as Israel upholds the ceasefire, this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza. Which remains a huge, unanswered question which could restart this problem all over again, if Hamas remains in power for lack of anyone actively displacing. The NYT is running a piece on how mediators are already signaling this isn't a comprehensive deal for either side.

One thing that isn't in question, however, is that the return of the still-living hostages is going to reshape the underpinnings of Israeli politics, as the post-October 7 war cabinet coalition that kept Netanyahu in power will lose much of the reason for being. This means political instability, for worse or for better, as Israel rebalances. The next election would be no later than late next year regardless, and could come earlier.

Absent some new (and detrimental to all) nonsense, this means that a lot of the people who only supported Nnetanyahu because of the war will likely be more willing to withdraw their support and trigger early elections, which would be no later than about a year from now anyways. This does not, however, mean a general discrediting of the Israeli right, and a decades-belated return of the Israeli left (whose original decline was after the failure of the gaza withdrawal almost two decades ago). The war was a significant polarizing effect on Israeli politics and society, and while I'd not bet on Netanyahu I'd also not bet on any part of the political left seen as opposing the war for pro-Palestinian reasonings.

I'll end it there. While there is plenty of reasons things could yet again get worse, and while I am sure eventually they will, for the moment I'll encourage people to view this new news as good news, which can well make many people's lives better.

This conflict has continued for 70 years and will continue indefinitely until a “final resolution” occurs. Settlers continue to exercise growing power in Israeli politics; while not as fecund as the chareidim they stil have substantially higher tfr than secular Jews. Hamas is re-asserting control of Gaza and still likely has at least 10-20,000 fighters, and very high Gazan fertility rates and a large pool of existing 10-14 year old males means it will have many more in short order.

There are only 4 final resolution states:

  1. Total victory of the Israelis, involving the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, followed by a subsequent peace deal with the surrounding nations that involves some kind of naturalization for Palestinian emigres as full citizens of other nations or another nation. Very unlikely.

  2. Total victory of the Palestinians, involving the ethnic cleansing of Jews (either in a genocidal context or Algeria-style ‘suitcase or coffin’ emigration) from all current Israeli territory and a single Palestinian Arab state. Unlikely for now although less unlikely than scenario 1, and radically more likely if the world enters a period of sustained international upheaval.

  3. A two-state solution imposed by the United States and other powers to Palestine’s benefit. America and other nations sanction Israel or threaten to until it experiences a domestic political crisis and forcibly withdraws settlers from the Palestinian Territories and agrees to a Palestinian state along either 1967 or (less likely) 1948 borders. There is a substantial chance of this turning into scenario 2, although it is theoretically possible with a ‘neutral’ international force overseeing the process. If public sentiment shifts further against Israel in America I think this is plausible in the medium term.

  4. A two-state solution imposed by the United States to Israel’s benefit, which would involve one or more Muslim powers administering a semi-autonomous collection of Palestinian city states in an arrangement with Israel and possibly other global powers, principally America. This was the goal of the Israeli right but seems less likely as time goes on.

The most likely outcome of the current process is that Hamas returns to power in Gaza, the world mostly forgets about the conflict for 5-10-15 years, and then things eventually flare up once Hamas is ready for another big attack.

Why do you exclude South Africa-style reintegration? Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza.

I mean, this is very much understating the extent to which the ceasefire is a chance for Hamas to execute its domestic opposition.

I don't really see the point of taking this for the Palestinians and I'd consider myself broadly in team Israel. Or atleast I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force. Inevitably this will kick off again within months or years and the IDF will resume absolutely mauling whatever resistance Palestine can present aside from random civilian terrorism.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force.

You want to get out at the top, not ride your bit down.

Pre 10/7, Palestinian hard-liners found themselves being abandoned by their long term backers with no realistic path forward. Free Palestine on the western left was becoming a really niche bumper sticker, like Free Tibet or Zapatista tier. Arab powers were showing a willingness to make peace with Israel without reference to Palestine or even the Arab population of Israel. The Abraham Accords were a major step towards permanent defeat of the Palestinian cause. Israel was looking like a normal country with a thriving economy and no problems which would keep international investors out.

The goal of 10/7 realistically was to reopen the conflct, draw Israel into fighting, denormalize Israeli life and economics, isolate Israel on the international stage. At some point you've maxed out the effectiveness of using dead babies for propaganda, and further dead babies have a diminishing marginal return. And at some point, the destruction wrought onto Gaza is net negative for Hamas, the loss of life undermines their ability to govern and rebuild.

So at some number of dead kids and world outrage, they'll cash out and make peace-noises.

Or at least I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

The only realistic solution that doesn't involve ethnic cleansing is one state, or effectively one state, containing most of the current populations. How one achieves that without destroying what makes Israel worthwhile is the problem.

The Palestinians were squeezed between the IDF and the Egyptian/Qatari axis.

I doubt open hostilities rekindle that soon. There's too much graft to be skimmed from the rebuilding/humanitarian operations. Time some fat years.

Are there ascendant political figures to the left of Netanyahu for the country to unify around ? I know new leaders have emerged to the right of Netanyahu, but thought that political space to his left had being choked out after Oct 7th.

I guess there is Yair Lapid, but he struggled to stay in power in the calm before Oct 7. So, I don't have much hope for him.

I don't have a direct reply, but I'm going to piggy back off this post because I'd written up a related issue. I’d like to look at the prisoner exchange ratio.

We’ve looked at this issue various times before on The Motte, with amazement at the disparate ratio of prisoners being exchanged on each side, and the risks involved in releasing terrorists freedom fighters in a prisoner exchange only to have the prisoners commit attacks on Israel in the future.

This time its 20 Israeli hostages against a list of 1900 Palestinian prisoners.

One way of looking at this is that it’s a release of ‘Prisoners of War’ and that all POWs are released at the cessation of hostilities. Except that the hostages were civilians deliberately taken as.. well as hostages, to prevent military advancement and also as leverage in negotiations such as this peace deal.

In addition, the list of 1900 is not limited to ‘POWs’ captured during the latest war, but includes 250 other terrorists freedom fighters that have attacked Israel prior to the current war)

If this peace plan doesn’t hold then Hamas would have bolstered its force by almost 2000 fighters, not for this war, but the future wars to come.

I don't blame Trump and other peacemakers for trying and I am a fan of lasting peace, but this exchange ratio has always been a bugbear of mine and I don't think I'm alone. At a minimum they should stagger out the prisoner release with the 250 non-POWs to be released after the peace holds for 5+ years.

I feel like the political leverage the hostages represented was probably worth a lot more to Hamas than 2000 additional warm bodies. In spite of any Israeli rhetoric to the contrary, I'm pretty sure if the ceasefire breaks down, Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Has there ever been a Middle East deal what wasn't 'cautiously optimistic'. Things can pop off at any moment. There was a long stretch of peace following the death of Yasser Arafat, so who knows..

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

This led to some incredibly stupid discussions I've seen with both leftists and rightists assuming that the Machado selection was some sort of a woke Yass Queen finger in the eye towards Trump instead of doing just the barest amount of Googling to recognize that this was very much in the line with the Trump admin foreign policy goals, ie. getting rid of Maduro, which was then confirmed with Machado going out of her way to congratulate and give credit to Trump after the selection.

It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.

Yes - I was surprised that the line on MAGA Twitter was "Trump woz robbed" and not to congratulate Machado and make hay out of her anti-leftist status (which she was very much up for), possibly along with a call for Trump to be nominated next year for the Gaza ceasefire. (If it holds, he may have actually earned a Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn't, given the history, he has definitely earned a Nobel Peace Prize).

Trump himself went for the pro-Machado approach, so I don't know why the number of Trump sycophants posting "Trump woz robbed" were doing it. Obvious candidate theories include King Canute's courtiers tier more-royalist-than-the-King competitive uber-sycophancy, back-channel co-ordination to give Trump himself plausible deniability that he was having a bitchfest by proxy about not winning it, and failure of the administration to co-ordinate with its supporters on MAGA Twitter.

I think it was just an atavistic reaction, partly to the simple idea of it being the height of wrongness for the God-Emperor to not get what he wants at all times and partly to the "brown foid from a shithole country? Must be a woke commie!" kneejerk assumption.

What will stop Netanyahu from attacking the Strip again? Now that there are no hostages he can just turn it into fine rubble. It's not like American military and intelligence aid to Israel will stop if he does that.

I mean most likely outcome is that the conflict will kick off again within a few months off whatever random terrorism Hamas can muster

What was stopping him before? Israel had already been accused numerous times of being callous to their hostages' safety, Hannibal Doctrine etc.

What was stopping him before?

Domestic political pressure to bring home as many live hostages as possible.

Yes, Israel had been accused of callousness from without, and Bibi doesn’t seem to care (see e.g. his “super Sparta” remarks). However, his legitimacy and that of his coalition are hanging by a thread and so he is sensitive to political considerations from within.

Thank you for the detailed, succinct write-up. I intended to make a top-level post using the presumptive end of the current Gaza conflict as a jumping-off point to ask a much broader question, namely:

What will the next Current Thing™ be?

In May of last year, I argued that media minutes, column inches and the forefronts of public consciousness follow a Pareto distribution, in which one issue clearly dominates at the expense of all others. In Ireland (and presumably a significant chunk of the Anglosphere and also the entire world), a list of these "primary" issues over the past decade or so looked as follows:

  • Brexit (June-November 2016; intermittently recurs as a secondary topic whenever there's a lull in one of the subsequent primary topics)
  • Donald Trump election and presidency (November 2016-March 2020)
  • Covid (March 2020-January 2022)
  • George Floyd/BLM protests (May 2020-September 2020) [I'm cheating a little bit; while the protests were ongoing they seemed to take up exactly as much space in the discourse as Covid, then after they died down Covid returned as the sole current thing)
  • Russia-Ukraine war (February 2022-October 2023)
  • Israel-Gaza war (October 2023-present)

I'm not saying the Israel-Palestine conflict is permanently over: as a cold conflict which periodically goes hot for 77 consecutive years, it would be very impressive indeed if the imminent cessation of hostilities represented a decisive end to the conflict. But I do think there's a very good chance that it stops being the "primary" issue that dominates the discourse, and retreats to the status it occupied prior to October 7th, 2023. Diehards will still emblazon their balconies with Palestine flags, you have not heard "from the river to the sea" for the last time, there will be periodic calls to boycott and divest — but it will go back to being a page 4 story. I strongly suspect that the era of copycat attacks on random Jewish civilians in First World nations has come to an end.

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?

Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution. Sometimes the easy, obvious answer is the correct one: activists had been complaining about police mistreatment of black Americans for years prior to the murder of George Floyd, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine could not have come as a complete surprise to anyone with even the most passing familiarity with the geopolitics of the region. In this framing, obvious candidates for the next Current Thing™ include AI, the ongoing debate about immigration from the global south, and Orange Man Bad. In the latter case, it's entirely possible that all of the "ceasefire now" people will quickly realise that their moment in the limelight has passed, exchange their keffiyehs for black bloc and get back to partying like it's 2017.

Playing the game on Hard Mode, the answer might be something completely unexpected. In January 2020, who among us could have foreseen that a virus in Wuhan (whether from a lab or a wet market) would determine the course of our lives for pretty much the duration of March 2020-December 2021? In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?

Does the Charlie Kirk thing have legs? It's been the Current Thing in our newspapers since before the body was cold.

It might be a local Current Thing in the US for some time to come, but it didn't seem to get much traction in the wider Anglosphere. In Ireland, people had already stopped talking about it by the following week.

I think most the responses here are taking “Current Thing” to mean something like “biggest issue”, but I disagree. To me the Current Thing is what normie women put in their instagram bio. Palestine, Ukraine, BLM, those were current things. The AI bubble deflating will simply never be the current thing no matter how earthshattering it is

You're absolutely right, I didn't mean "the most important issue facing the world right now". I simply meant "the issue that everyone is talking about", regardless of its importance.

A secondary issue that's been smoldering in the background for sure, my guesses from most to least likely:

  1. The economy and the job market, even the out of touch boomers are starting to notice prices just keep going up and their grandkids with a fresh college degree can't get a job no matter how many times they tell them to walk in with a firm handshake and a can-do attitude.

  2. The AI bubble deflating, even if the bet pays off in the end the rate of cash burn is insane at current revenues. I expect it to at least take a major haircut possibly causing a cascading panic pullback when investments slow down and timelines extend.

  3. Trump rapidly and obviously declines physically/mentally like Biden.

  4. Republicans do something truly insane like massive election interference or rejecting midterm results if Democrats are making big gains.

Mass riots over some ICE injustice. In the leadup to George Floyd you could tell the media was agitating for it with Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, it took them about six months of sustained efforts to get the temperature high enough. The media has certainly been trying with ICE, but until somebody gets shot on camera I don’t think they’ll get much traction. They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

I have a hard time imagining the whole Black Bodies, People of Color, Black-owned Businesses, Defund the Police thing coming back in full force; we're supposed to be over peak woke. I'd like to believe normies got a little sick of it.

I don't think this is likely. There's definitely agitating for it, but having those sorts of riots depends on the authorities tolerating them, and if it happens Trump is going to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the National Guard before the relevant Federal judge even wakes up.

I can definitely envision nationwide anti-ICE protests in the same ballpark as 2020 BLM next year.

Are you serious that there have been no domestic Irish issues that were the Current Thing in Ireland at any point in the last decade? (I agree Brexit and COVID had pretty large domestic impacts, such that being the Current Thing in Ireland is reasonable).

Domestic issues that have been the Current Thing in the UK over that time period include Brexit (obviously), COVID (obviously), ongoing uncovering of cold case paedo scandals, Partygate, Trussonomics, and small boat immigration.

I may have exaggerated slightly. Prior to Covid, the gay marriage referendum was the thing everyone in Ireland was talking about for the first half of 2015 and several months prior. The campaign to legalise abortion via constitutional amendment was likewise a really big deal for several years prior to its successful legalisation in 2018, occupying discussions almost as much as Brexit and Orange Man Bad (Irish people would put "Repeal the 8th" in their Instagram or Tinder bios, and plain black sweaters with the word "REPEAL" emblazoned on them in all caps sold in their tens of thousands). One sometimes gets the impression that progressive politicians and activists in Ireland were victims of their own success: after both gay marriage and abortion were legalised with massive public mandates, they found themselves at a bit of a loss for what to do next, hence their eagerness to lend their support for foreign causes like Ukraine and Gaza. Nebulously-defined "trans rights", nor farcical efforts to portray Black Lives Matter as a movement which has the slightest relevance to Irish politics, don't scratch quite the same itch. The campaign to amend the Irish constitution to remove any reference to "marriage" or "mothers" was a resounding failure, being rejected even by many who consider themselves progressive. Likewise the so-called "hate speech bill", which was never put to a public vote but which was so controversial that it was shelved.

Other than those two, in the linked post, I listed some domestic Irish issues which were the Current Thing in Ireland — but, as a rule, only for the duration of a single news cycle. For a few weeks in January 2022, everyone was talking about the murder of Ashling Murphy, then promptly forgot about it as soon as her killer was arrested, and immediately started talking obsessively about Ukraine for the next twenty months.

Looking back over the past two years, I sincerely cannot think of any domestic Irish event or issue which captured the public's imagination (or had nearly as much staying power) as much as the conflict in Gaza has. There have been literally hundreds of protests against Israel across the country; both our prime minister and President have weighed in on the conflict several times, as have virtually every recently-minted Irish celebrity (and some less recently minted); our government are considering passing a bill which would make it a criminal offense to do business with certain Israeli firms and so on and so forth. The only domestic issues which even came close to this level of omnipresence were a) the ongoing debate about immigration, and by extension the anti-immigration riots in Dublin in November 2023; and b) the civil rape trial against Conor McGregor, which everyone was talking about from the tail end of last year and early this year.

I do note that the main article currently on the English language section of Yomiuri, a Japanese paper, is about Gaza.

The Palestine situation is not over. Israel is continuing to oppress Christians, is continuing to occupy parts of the west bank, is continuing its war in Syria and is continuing its meddling in other country's policies. AIPAC's absurd meddling hasn't gone away. The US is still wasting billions and billions on Israeli interests in the middle east and Israel is still making it hard for refugees to return from Europe.

I explicitly stated that I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict will come to a complete end any time soon, so I don't know why you're pointing that out. It doesn't seem like a productive contribution to the discussion.

Environmentalism vs Reindustrialzation in the US. For Military purposes we need to reshore rare earth refinement. This will undoubtedly lead to some desert in Nevada getting radiated and risk the extinction of some heretofore undiscovered species of jackalope.

Alternatively, bringing freedom and democracy to Venezuela. The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner was practically begging Trump for it.

Reindustrialization would inevitably entail giving well-paying jobs to universally reviled toxic smelly dudebros. We need to keep that in mind.

You mean the guys who drive pick up trucks and already destroy the environment with their capitalist spending habits? Guys like those will turn Nevada into even more of a wasteland? Anger! Let the culture war commence!

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats