site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26384 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 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.

5
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Did The Motte talk about the latest set of oral arguments at SCOTUS for Louisiana vs. Callais? The case is a continuation of the NAACP LDF's efforts to turn this big red blob of a congressional district that Louisiana created into a slightly longer contiguous red blob, but with new lines and a new congressional district. If SCOTUS was to affirm the district court's ruling, then the LDF will have won an additional majority black district in a state that is 33% black. For the sake of context, numbers I find put the state at 30% black in 1990, so this is a relatively stable share.

The decision to upend Louisiana's proposed 2022 map, it was be argued, is what Federal law requires. Section 2 of the VRA has been amended, extended, and litigated on several occasions since the 1965. In 1986, SCOTUS described the Gingles test to determine whether a majority-minority district should be created. I'm sure there are pages of nuance before and betwixt each:

  1. The racial or language minority group "sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district";
  2. The minority group is "politically cohesive" (meaning its members tend to vote similarly); and
  3. The "majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.

According to the NAACP, when the LDF received their favorable decision against the state in 2024, a group of "self-described 'non-African American [Louisiana] voters'" challenged this on the basis of 14th and 15th amendment issues. SCOTUS first heard the case in March of this year, but decided to schedule reargument (somewhat uncommon) which occurred last week. (PDF) The nature of the questions now in play led to a flurry of articles concerned that "justices could upend decades of court decisions holding that states may โ€” and sometimes must โ€” use race-conscious redistricting to protect the voting power of minorities." Other outlets like The Federalist take a Buzzfeed-esque dunk list approach to reporting the case.

My understanding is nobody knows just what kind of scope in ruling we should expect, but that the questions to follow suggest something broader than a Yes/No to a district map. There are all kinds of tidbits worth debating. There's my Big Questions which SCOTUS will not answer like: by how much does the fact my US representative is a black man, whose race I do not share, mean he doesn't represent me? It seems every minority whose vote doesn't represent their A) race and B) party can be considered un(der)represented, even if Congress hasn't provided a statute or adopted a different system of representation to resolve this.

At the time the VRA was written the demographics were very different to today's. Kavanaugh asked Nelson, who was arguing for the LDF, whether there should be a time limit on court ordered, law enforced racial voting maps. He receives a frank reply that is basically "lol, never." It's statute it doesn't just go away unless Congress changes it. That makes sense, but seems to force the hand of a potential majority that has questions on how this all works out.

Justice Jackson covers the more popular argument I see in the wild. She says,

"[Louisiana is] not departing. Their map looks fine, but because of all of these race-based [economic] effects, because of the history of Jim Crow, which I appreciate happened a long time ago, but I'm positing and Gingles allows for us to see where those effects are still occurring."

To her credit, she only mentions the word disparity once in arguments. This is the argument that until blacks disperse themselves geographically as other minorities have, or achieve similar outcomes to something, then states are required to continue to grant them majority-minority districts.

If you transported my liberal sensibilities to 1965 you'd probably convince me with ease that this little unconstitutional carve out was justified and workable. Not so much these days. I don't look forward to a total upending of the VRA house of cards. Sounds messy, but this is the consequence of previous pragmatisms of SCOTUS. The pragmatist leverage left, for me, is the fact gerrymandering is cynical by its nature. If you leave it to states without limitation, then they will discriminate by race for the very reason Justice Jackson says: blacks vote Democrat reliably enough to target. Which means we would still have to answer constitutional questions about lines on a map.

Can we safely assume that they will sit on this one until next summer, as per usual for any controversial case?

Or they'll find against it, but lower courts will ignore the ruling, as we've seen already.

In practice congressional maps go to the Supreme Court anyways, donโ€™t they?

Yeah, but everything takes time. In the meanwhile, elections keep happening. And the Supreme Court already showed they don't have the balls to overturn an election, no matter how many procedural issues there are with it.

Most opinions get issued over the summer, so that seems pretty typical. Although IIRC this one was argued last year too, so it's a bit of an odd duck.

total upending of the VRA house of cards, but this is the consequence of previous pragmatisms from SCOTUS.

IIRC most of the legislation in question from the 60s is, as-written, race-neutral. Those laws generally say "on the basis of race", not "against Black people". In practice there was an agreed-upon direction, and nobody until fairly recently (if now) has gotten much push-back on discrimination against white people, especially those in the South ("segregation" always brings to mind George Wallace, and never redlining in Detroit or Chicago --- not endorsing, just observing), and most of the interpretation of the text of the law by the judicial branch has been heavily-colored by this expectation.

But it is an interesting set of questions about how existing norms adopted against an era of bipolar segregation apply to a modern multi-polar racial society. Maybe there are some echoes of how some world leaders (Putin comes to mind) are attempting to claim a multi-polar world. Once we start considering, I dunno, French-speaking Cajuns, it isn't clear that our ideal districts can be planar. And what we'd do if we "ended segregation" and lived in homogenized neighborhoods (IIRC Singapore does this by fiat), how would we achieve what Gingles asks if the other reasons for the decision were still present?

That said, I think the easiest fix to gerrymandering is to move away from geographic districting, probably to a slate-of-candidates system.

The 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act are what are at issue here. The original Section 2 was just

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

The later version is

(a)No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 10303(f)(2) of this title, as provided in subsection (b).

(b)A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.

Section 10303(f)(2) is about "language minority groups", which are certainly not mentioned in the 15th Amendment. But it's (b) which is the problem here. Taken literally, "in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice" says a racial, color, or language minority is having its right to vote violated precisely by the fact that it IS a minority. It establishes some sort of group right, one in direct contravention to the individual right guaranteed. If we have equal protection of individuals and "one man, one vote", then in as much as a minority group is cohesive in its political desires and opposed to a cohesive majority, then as a group it will have less opportunity (than the majority) to elect representatives of its choice. The Gingles test resolves this contradiction in favor of the group.

Many of the arguments for the Voting Rights Act argue for it on the basis that blacks, as a racial group deserve representation. Thing is, there's nothing which says that in the Constitution. Further, voting representation is zero-sum; if you give it to one person or group you necessarily take it away from someone else. The Constitution does prescribe equal protection. There is no way to reconcile that with a requirement not to dilute a minority group's voting power. The Supreme Court should acknowledge this, and declare all precedent otherwise a mistake and as dead as Roe v. Wade.

They won't.

The Constitution does prescribe equal protection.

Why doesn't this provide equal protection from the state drawing lines on a map every few years with the intent of limiting the impact of my vote/representation based on my race?

Why doesn't this provide equal protection from the state drawing lines on a map every few years with the intent of limiting the impact of my vote/representation based on my race?

My point is that the words on paper straightforwardly do. But most members of the Supreme Court don't want that, even if 5 or 6 justices realize that's indeed what the words on paper say. So they will either come up for some reason to punt longer, or they will make a decision which does say that states can't do that, but with enough loopholes to allow lower courts to keep maximizing the power of the black vote.

A Dobbs-like "We've been doing this wrong all along" is not likely at all.

Whatโ€™s wrong with the 15th Amendment? It specifically mentions race.

I suppose you could argue that it only says โ€œvoteโ€ and that โ€œvotesโ€ donโ€™t have to mean โ€œrepresentation.โ€ Iโ€™d say thatโ€™s splitting hairs. The postwar amendments were designed to secure the rights of freed slaves. Then they got a hundred years of stress tests by motivated Southerners. Youโ€™re not going to discover some fresh loophole.

The Fifteenth Amendment protects citizens, not racial groups. It does not say, as the Gingles test does, that if enough blacks vote for the same party, that blacks must get a district. The Voting Rights Act was enacted 100 years after the end of the Civil War and has nothing to do with the rights of freed slaves.

Okay, but there is something in the Constitution which says black people deserve representation. That keeps the VRA constitutional even if subsequent tests were wrong. Youโ€™re not going to get a Dobbs-level reversal.

Okay, but there is something in the Constitution which says black people deserve representation

No, there is not. There is something in the Constitution which says that citizens get to vote regardless of their race. This does not mean they get the representative they desire.

To be more specific, it says that people who are black get representation like everyone else; not that black people the group get representation

Here is the text of the 15th Amendment:

Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitudeโ€“

Section 2: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Nothing in the text gives specific races any special representation. It gives citizens of all races the right to vote. A black person in any given electoral district has exactly the same voting power as a white person in the same district.

The issue is that Congress and the courts have used section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (text here) to enforce a collective right on the part of black people as a cohesive race to get their own majority-minority electoral districts. There are a lot of reasons why this sort of makes sense, but itโ€™s weird and not a direct consequence of the right enumerated in the 15th Amendment.

I more or less agree with those points.

I wanted to emphasize that the VRA has a clear basis in the 15th. Even if thatโ€™s the motte to a โ€œspecial representationโ€ bailey, it is enough to keep the Act constitutional. If thereโ€™s a reversal, itโ€™s going to be limited to the subsequent layers of tests.

The postwar amendments were designed to secure the rights of freed slaves.

And they were written in the same idealistically neutral manner as all the other founding documents; it was the later activist Supreme Courts that made the preferences explicit.

Ames v. Ohio was pleasantly unanimous, but Harvard v. SFFA was not and even the majority had Roberts keeping in a how-to section to keep discriminating; I suspect whatever comes out of Callais will closer resemble the latter.

If you're worried about any kind of minority, racial or otherwise, having representation in government, there are better ways than carving up districts where they'll plausibly win a seat.

Enforced gerrymandering is a hack to get a desired outcome some of the time, when with a refactor we could build the desired outcome into the system. Add or change one of the legislative houses so that we have proportional representation.

I mean the straightforwards way to give blacks representation in Louisiana is to have the blacks elect 1/3 of the reps and whites(ok, 'everyone else', but in practice they are white) the other two thirds. That just happens to be illegal under the VRA, too- AFAICT the black majority districts is illegal too, just less blatantly so.

Even that straightforward approach has some interesting questions to handle about rounding. In this case, 1/3 of 6 seats works out, but it's not hard to look at other states and imagine "24.9 percent of two seats" or things like that.

This is well studied problem in parliamentary democracies where the seats are assigned at the level of the whole country, rather than by district. It is also applicable to determining for each first level division of a country how many seats it should have in the lower house, given the population (not counting Indians not taxed) of each such division.

Apportionment is the key word here, and here is a cool demo showing various methods (click on the name of the method for further description).

Without drastically changing how representatives work, Montana's one house seat isn't going to reflect its entire populace. By some definitions, single-seat states are the most gerrymandered (slaps roof "this district can fit so many minorities without giving any of them representation!"), although clearly not so by local legislative intent.

Montana has two seats. The one seat states are- Wyoming, Vermont, Delaware, the Dakotas, and Alaska.

TIL: It had only one until 2022 (and had two previously last century). My memory wasn't completely wrong there.

I'm going to get on my hobby horse about apportionment.

First, I'm going to assume everyone is familiar with the Constitutional Apportionment Amendment.

For those unaware, there are three premises to this amendment, although it only lists three stages instead of repeating forever:

First, there is maximum number of people per seat.

Second, based on the total population and the number of people per seat, there is a number of total seats.

Third, every time the number of total seats increases by 100, the number of people per seat increase by 10,000.

This started with 30k people per seat for all populations between 0 and 3 million (3m/30k = 100 seats), then 40k between 3 and 8 million (8m/40k = 200 seats), and then 50k for anything higher than that.

If this was continued, and given the 331m on the 2020 census, 308m from 2010, and 281m from 2000, the minimum house seat count would be 1564, 1625, and 1700. In 2000, we'd have 180k per seat maximum, in 2010 it would be 190k, and in 2020 we'd be able to have districts of up to 200k people, and no fewer than 1700 seats. Apportioned so that Wyoming gets its 3 representatives, that puts our max size at 192,283.

This also fixes the Electoral College. Wyoming goes from 1 representative to 3 (2.9 rounded up), while California goes from 52 to a whopping 205. The electoral votes are these +2, so instead of 18x the electoral vote, it's 41x. That's still not equal to the 69x population difference, but it goes a long way towards smoothing the worst problems.

If someone wants to tell me how to format a table I'll make this prettier, but here are the counts by my reckoning.

California 205
Texas 151
Florida 112
New York 105
Pennsylvania 67
Illinois 66
Ohio 61
Georgia 55
North Carolina 54
Michigan 52
New Jersey 48
Virginia 44
Washington 40
Arizona 37
Massachusetts 36
Tennessee 35
Indiana 35
Maryland 32
Missouri 32
Wisconsin 30
Colorado 30
Minnesota 29
South Carolina 26
Alabama 26
Louisiana 24
Kentucky 23
Oregon 22
Oklahoma 20
Connecticut 18
Utah 17
Iowa 16
Nevada 16
Mississippi 15
Kansas 15
Arkansas 15
New Mexico 11
Nebraska 10
West Virginia 9
Idaho 9
New Hampshire 7
Hawaii 7
Maine 7
Delaware 5
Rhode Island 5
Montana 5
South Dakota 4
North Dakota 4
Alaska 3
Vermont 3
Wyoming 3

If someone wants to tell me how to format a table

There is a link to "formatting help" directly underneath the comment preview.

StateRepresentatives
California205
Texas151
Florida112
New York105
Pennsylvania67
Illinois66
Ohio61
Georgia55
North Carolina54
Michigan52
New Jersey48
Virginia44
Washington40
Arizona37
Massachusetts36
Tennessee35
Indiana35
Maryland32
Missouri32
Wisconsin30
Colorado30
Minnesota29
South Carolina26
Alabama26
Louisiana24
Kentucky23
Oregon22
Oklahoma20
Connecticut18
Utah17
Iowa16
Nevada16
Mississippi15
Kansas15
Arkansas15
New Mexico11
Nebraska10
West Virginia9
Idaho9
New Hampshire7
Hawaii7
Maine7
Delaware5
Rhode Island5
Montana5
South Dakota4
North Dakota4
Alaska3
Vermont3
Wyoming3

With so many votes in a single state, I would also add the Nebraska/Maine-style split electors to the mix to dilute the power of swing states.

I really don't understand how we got into this mess of congressional redistricting. We don't "redistrict" state lines every few years to make senate seats "fairer" in any sense. Why didn't congressional districts just follow this obviously parallel pattern using (e.g.) counties? For that matter, why didn't this get left up to a state-by-state basis to determine how congressional seats are apportioned so that some states could gerrymander if they wanted and others could have a fixed-for-forever set of districts? I don't know if this would result in better outcomes, but it would certainly be more transparent and consistent.

I would love it if anyone could provide a detailed history of this whole mess that starts from the articles of confederation until now.

Reynolds v. Sims has a lot to do with it. To summarize, in 1964, the Court ruled that having fixed districts (e.g., one state senator per county) unconstitutionally violates the โ€œone man, one voteโ€ rule.

Thank you! Reading through the article was very informative. At the end of the article there is a quote from a law professor that this was the "best Supreme Court decision since 1960". I would love a follow on detailed analysis about legal opinions on this court case and the extent to which conservatives/liberals have different opinions.

Ah, Reynolds v. Sims, the case that declared the constitutionally defined structure of the United States Senate unconstitutional.

The justices did address that complaint. tl;dr: States are sovereign, counties are not.

Much has been written since our decision in Baker v. Carr about the applicability of the so-called federal analogy to state legislative apportionment arrangements. After considering the matter, the court below concluded that no conceivable analogy could be drawn between the federal scheme and the apportionment of seats in the Alabama Legislature under the proposed constitutional amendment. We agree with the District Court, and find the federal analogy inapposite and irrelevant to state legislative districting schemes. Attempted reliance on the federal analogy appears often to be little more than an after-the-fact rationalization offered in defense of maladjusted state apportionment arrangements. The original constitutions of 36 of our States provided that representation in both houses of the state legislatures would be based completely, or predominantly, on population. And the Founding Fathers clearly had no intention of establishing a pattern or model for the apportionment of seats in state legislatures when the system of representation in the Federal Congress was adopted. Demonstrative of this is the fact that the Northwest Ordinance, adopted in the same year, 1787, as the Federal Constitution, provided for the apportionment of seats in territorial legislatures solely on the basis of population.

The system of representation in the two Houses of the Federal Congress is one ingrained in our Constitution, as part of the law of the land. It is one conceived out of compromise and concession indispensable to the establishment of our federal republic. Arising from unique historical circumstances, it is based on the consideration that, in establishing our type of federalism a group of formerly independent States bound themselves together under one national government. Admittedly, the original 13 States surrendered some of their sovereignty in agreeing to join together "to form a more perfect Union." But at the heart of our constitutional system remains the concept of separate and distinct governmental entities which have delegated some, but not all, of their formerly held powers to the single national government. The fact that almost three-fourths of our present States were never, in fact, independently sovereign does not detract from our view that the so-called federal analogy is inapplicable as a sustaining precedent for state legislative apportionments. The developing history and growth of our republic cannot cloud the fact that, at the time of the inception of the system of representation in the Federal Congress, a compromise between the larger and smaller States on this matter averted a deadlock in the Constitutional Convention which had threatened to abort the birth of our Nation. In rejecting an asserted analogy to the federal electoral college in Gray v. Sanders, we stated:

We think the analogies to the electoral college, to districting and redistricting and to other phases of the problems of representation in state or federal legislatures or conventions, are inapposite. The inclusion of the electoral college in the Constitution, as the result of specific historical concerns, validated the collegiate principle despite its inherent numerical inequality, but implied nothing about the use of an analogous system by a State in a statewide election. No such specific accommodation of the latter was ever undertaken, and therefore no validation of its numerical inequality ensued.

Political subdivisions of Statesโ€”counties, cities, or whateverโ€”never were and never have been considered as sovereign entities. Rather, they have been traditionally regarded as subordinate governmental instrumentalities created by the State to assist in the carrying out of state governmental functions. As stated by the Court in Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh, these governmental units are "created as convenient agencies for exercising such of the governmental powers of the State as may be entrusted to them," and the "number, nature and duration of the powers conferred upon [them]โ€ฆ and the territory over which they shall be exercised rests in the absolute discretion of the State." The relationship of the States to the Federal Government could hardly be less analogous.

I understand their reasoning, I just think it's a dog's breakfast. The fact that the Senate and electoral college were products of political compromise based on the specific context of the time tells us nothing about how the sovereign states may design their own electoral systems. What place does the Supreme Court have telling the states whether local conditions call for a geographically apportioned legislative house or not? The Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress (and, by extension, the federal courts) the power to interfere in state elections only to the extent necessary to ensure equal protection of the law, and I do not think that power extends to invalidating longstanding and facially neutral electoral systems.

It sounds like you're also interested in context long before the modern era. For that, probably the most important thing to check out is the debate over the Apportionment Act of 1842. Before then, plenty of states used "general tickets". I can't describe it any better than here:

Under this system, voters could cast as many votes as there were seats to be filled in each state, while voting for each candidate only once. In practice, this typically led to voters selecting each candidate on a slate provided by a political party. Proponents argued this method led to more cohesive party delegations, and states that used general tickets almost uniformly sent single-party delegations to Congress.

In 1842, Congress mandated that the states create districts for federal congressional representatives sent to the House. Thus almost inherently requiring some form of redistricting. If you don't make adjustments over time, you almost surely end up with "rotten boroughs" over time, not unlike what was described by the Reynolds v. Sims wiki article @Lewis2 linked:

for example, in the Nevada Senate, the smallest district had 568 people, while the largest had approximately 127,000 people.

That's unlikely to be politically tenable really long-term, so the main questions become who does it, how often do they do it, and what rules do they have to follow when doing it. Even if you want to say, "We're just not going to do it and keep the same districts forever," you're likely to still do it eventually, just when it becomes so politically untenable that you end up with a crisis, as in the Historia Civilis video concerning Britain. And of course, since it's so hard to find durable political compromises that extend well over time concerning those three main questions, we also ended up with judicial meddling in the process.

Districting in general is A Hard Problem.

Thank you especially for the link about the Apportionment Act of 1842. That's exactly the type of reference I was looking for!

The Senate was designed from the beginning to give outsized representation to small populations. The House was designed to give proportional representation based on population. Making the House into a Senate with one extra step buggers that design.

But also just look at the numbers for New York State circa 2000 to 2010, in just one census. Percentage wise the fastest growing counties grew by 10%, the fastest shrinking ones shrank by 10%, by raw numbers +50k vs -30k. Take that over a very long time frame and you would have absolutely bonkers districts.

The bigger problem with redistricting is that before we get into crass political motives there are a whole bunch of different ways that people want the congressional districts to be drawn. Everyone wants geometrical simplicity, the smallest number of lines and vertices possible to delineate an area, else they mock the complicated shapes drawn by the map makers. Everyone wants demographic consistency, we should feel some commonality with our fellow voters. Everyone wants geographic defensibility, the district should constitute a defined region that is used in common understanding and not a random slice of people, the line shouldn't run right through a neighborhood. Basically the ideal in people's heads is square districts that contain a clear common identity.

And that's basically impossible while also achieving the same population, but also changes over time. When I was born my neighborhood was much less developed and more rural, people around here felt more in common with the areas north and west of us, went to the same John Deere dealerships and farm shows as the hicks. Now, after decades of homebuilding, the same area has a population that has more in common with the city to the east of us, going to the same coffee shops and yoga studios. A steady district containing the same geographic area would fail on multiple fronts over time.

We need a bigger House. If we have 10,000 Representatives split proportionally, we wouldn't be squabbling over how to best gerrymander each little slice.

Pros:

  • Less money being raised - representative spends more time governing than fundraising.
  • Representatives would be "Friends of Friends," the ratio would be back to 30,000:1 citizens:representatives, which is where it was at the start of our country. It would be easier to know your representative and for the representative to actually represent a geographic area.
  • Much harder for parties to whip/control the House, which would lead to less gridlock/conformity.

Many other questions are along similar logistical lines: how would voting work? Would they use clickers? What if the clickers break? How could C-SPAN get the cameras in? Wouldnโ€™t a large House end up more under the sway of leadership than ever? Itโ€™s like nobodyโ€™s ever seen a parliament of a few thousand people!

In fact, we know how to run a legislative body consisting of several thousand people, because Americans do just that all the time. Iโ€™ve even participated in one!

The 2014 Minnesota Republican Party state convention had 2,020 voting delegates at its opening. I was an alternate, but ended up serving as a voting delegate. It was a pretty thrilling day! The GOP senate endorsement was closely fought, and we went to ten ballots over two days. (I had to drop out after the first night.) We followed Robertโ€™s Rules of Order, which work just fine for huge crowds, with standard convention rules. We cast paper ballots and handed them to trusted ballot-counting teams. The House floor โ€œdebatesโ€ you see on C-SPAN are mostly on-camera onanism to an audience of six or seven people, but, at the MNGOP convention, we fiercely debated the merits of each candidate among ourselvesโ€”not so much on mic, but person to person. The candidates courted us. Their surrogates courted us. Candidate teams were back in their offices just off-site, printing up supportive flyers and (as the losing candidates grew desperate) nasty slanders for rapid distribution on the floor.

It was a blast. In the end, the body reached a collective decision. Our candidate was not my first choice, but he was far from my last. Similar conventions happen everywhere in the country, year in and year out, for both parties, without major drama or disaster. The House can run just as smoothly! This is what a republic looks like!

Combined with an amendment about making districts boundaries as close to their geographic center as possible, it would create a more fair system overall.

I like it! My only request is that we build a giant dedicated building for it, preferably so tall that you can't see the top from the bottom, and give whoever is taking a turn speaking a levitating platform to stand on that can move around the chamber while they talk.

Joking aside (although I do really like the idea at first), how would various committees work? Just equally large?

The article goes into it a little, but right now we already have 9,000 congressional staffers. It already takes about 10,000 people to run congress, but only a small percentage is elected.

The hope is that if races become smaller, each congressman needs to fundraise less money and spend less time campaigning. Smaller races will be won in the tens of thousands instead of millions. They will have more time to actually run the country and can decrease staff accordingly.

Committees are already divided into subcommittees. It's not unreasonable to divide that even further, into sub-subcommittees.

My only request is that we build a giant dedicated building for it

An open air amphitheater perhaps? One in which we can host bloodsports that better suit the brutal nature of politics in form and function. Besides aesthetics weather adds a new X factor. The arena would also compliment the return of state-sanctioned duels that keeps the massive lower house orderly. We can call it the Polisseum.

The Sergeant at Arms is badly in need of an update to modern law-enforcement standards, RoboCop style.

Maybe a traditional declaration by each speaker. Something along the lines of 'I am the Senate?' and then a vigorous folk somersault.

If I read all that right, then the courts have held that a minority must be given their own voting district because they are not the majority. If minority's "preferred candidates" don't win, they must be made to win, because the majority must not be allowed to elect their preferred candidates. We call this "democracy".

Nnnnnnno?

  • In Robinson v. Ardoine, a court convinced the state that their 2022 map was going to be thrown out for racial gerrymandering. Given its tortured outlines, that was probably correct.

  • Callais v. Landry challenged the subsequent 2024 map for racial gerrymandering. Given the statements made in the legislature, again, this was probably correct. A district court thought so, too, and threw it outโ€ฆ

  • โ€ฆuntil the Supreme Court stayed it 6-3. I donโ€™t understand the politics here. Maybe the conservatives didnโ€™t want it to get mooted?

  • Now the SC is actually hearing it.

I wouldnโ€™t describe any of those in your terms.

Iโ€™m confused about the stay on Callais v. Landry. It was 6-3, with Jackson pointing out that theyโ€™ve previously allowed redistricting with less lead time. Why did the rest of the court want a stay? Was it going to get mooted if the legislature workshopped an alternative to their 2024 map?

Wow. Yeah, the majority said Purcell! The stay preserved the map for the election. Jackson dissented and wrote it's not applicable there's totally enough time for remediation.

"Purcell has no role to play here. There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out... I would have let the District Courtโ€™s remedial process run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was warranted."

The District Court has not yet selected a remedial map, and, were it not for this Courtโ€™s intervention, it may have selected a map that complies with both ยง2 and the Equal Protection Clause. I would have waited until after the remedial process concluded (when it would have been clearer if the intervenorsโ€™ faced irreparable harm) to consider their arguments.

I have no idea if the Purcell time crunch was real or a pretext.

Why did the rest of the court want a stay? Was it going to get mooted if the legislature workshopped an alternative to their 2024 map?

LA draws one the district court accepts, or the district court imposes one. If you consider a narrow "did LA have good reason to use race here" preferable from a turn into 2025 "Whether the Stateโ€™s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution" then punting it back to district court is a way to avoid being in those oral arguments last week with the VRA coming into view.

Is that reasonable?

Iโ€™m confused why people are acting like the Court siding with the plaintiffs in this case is a likely outcome when they ruled just two years ago in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama had to create two majority-black districts on the basis of section 2 of the VRA. Roberts and Kavanaugh sided with the liberals in that case. Why would the exact same judges then turn around and declare that actually, requiring states to create a certain number of majority-minority districts is unconstitutional?

It looks like that case laid the groundwork here. It was a 5-4 decision. Roberts I am less sure of, but Kavanaugh concurred in part:

the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future. But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.

"Hint hint", says Kavanaugh, "what a shame." In the same year as Allen v. Milligan, the "temporal argument" gets applied SFFA vs. Harvard. He brings it up in oral arguments for LA vs. Callais. There might be other details in how each state framed their cases that dissuaded Roberts, or other tactical considerations. I briefly looked through the history of this one after netstack asked a question one comment below.

I find the temporal argument agreeable, but am less sure what it is based on. Times up! I guess lots of talk was had in the 60-70s about many of the positive discrimination stuff being limited and we just kind of forgot about those?

SCOTUS picks a couple Gun Cases... kinda

SCOTUS has granted cert on two separate firearms-related cases, Wolford v. Lopez and US v. Hemani, for the upcoming term, and they're a bit night-and-day.

In Wolford, plaintiffs asked to block a law after Hawaii had put an effective ban on carry in almost all of the state. This is the 'Bruen says you can't just declare the entire island a sensitive space, Hawaii asked how about five islands then' case. While a couple goofier parts of the law did receive a temporary injunction, the lower courts notably did not block a requirement that CCW permitees get explicit and specific permission from any private property owner before carrying on their property; even the Second Circuit found this sort of requirement (nicknamed a "vampire rule" by opponents) as so likely unconstitutional as to mandate a temporary restraining order against it. Worse, the 9th Circuit did so under a chain of logic depending on very recent laws and sometimes even private company restrictions to justify Hawaii's rule, with little actual relevant to the rule in question here, while simultaneously promoting the historical analogues to such wide spread of generality as to permit any law. For the "vampire rule" specifically, Hawaii was only able to find two analogues even under that widely expansive standard, one an anti-poaching statute and one a literal post-Civil War racist Black Code, and the 9th Circuit still found it close enough despite the explicit text of Bruen that "[W]e doubt that three colonial regulations could suffice to show a tradition..." This is, yet again, plain defiance of higher court rulings.

Which makes the actual cert grant weird, because it's not really getting into all of that. The only question SCOTUS granted cert on was the "vampire" rule itself; the petitioners also asked about the 9th Circuit's fishing expedition into more recent laws (and non-laws), and SCOTUS punted on that despite a wide and clear circuit split. SCOTUS can and has granted cert for broader questions that petitioners asked, before, and without doing so, this seems near-certain to result in a decision good for one case only; even a Thomas-level dicta won't actually have a holding that applies even to other vampire rules, nevermind other 'declare an island a sensitive place'-style laws.

Hemani is more complicated. A lot of media coverage focuses on a comically bad set of claimed background details -- the US government claims Hemani is not merely a drug user or a jerk but a literal Iran-tied worshipper of terrorism -- and to a large extent, those claimed details overdetermine the near-certain resolution of this case. Like Rahimi, SCOTUS wants the case with the worst possible optics so as to give the thumbs-up to expansive gun control regulations; there's even a lot of tea leaves to suggest that the Biden-era DoJ put some effort into tailoring this case, given that the government conceded the case as covered by a different case they thought wrongly decided. A naive reader might hope that this is going to result in some broader rule that, even if bad for Hemani himself, leaves stricter rules for merely incidental drug-and-gun users, but you'd have to be really naive.

Which makes the actual cert grant weird. The lower courts put a lot of analysis on how poorly the government supported a blanket ban and how expansively they held it to apply to cases far more unreasonable than Hemani's, but ultimately it leaves the prohibited person rule in place so long as the government show the drug user wasn't sober while possessing the gun. Indeed, there were other earlier cases with the same constitutional question, answer, and far more palatable facts: the government just didn't request cert for Connelly; they don't seem to have been important enough for SCOTUS to care. Nor, frankly, does this case even seem to leave things unsolvable even for the constraints of its specific people, since not only does Hemani have a bunch of other things going on worth a lengthy prison sentence, it's not even clear why the government couldn't prove or at least present evidence toward the Connelly intoxicated-while-possessing standard.

There might be some schadenfruede to watch the left side of the bench throw away due process rights in favor of gun control (or, conversely, Thomas and Alito throwing gun rights under the bus because eww pot), but only to the extent anyone has any shame left.

On its own, these would not necessarily been that offensive as selections, but they are on their own. The court's selection of other recent cases has not been quick to grab every marginal or borderline case. There's no small number of other, broader cases going up before the court and only getting the punt. Duncan and Viramontes are both up for cert, now, and in Duncan's case both for final judgement and for all the marbles: failing to grant cert does not merely encourage more broad gun control, but actively will claw back a lot of previously-lawfully-owned property with a happy finger-flip to the Takings Clause, too. There's no law saying the court can only take so many gun cases, but if you had to put a bet about whether the court would pick two or four, the over/under is pretty clear.

Vullo Is Back... kinda

lol jk, there's basically zero chance of a cert grant on these facts

Adamiak had his day in the Fourth Circuit... kinda

A jury found Defendant Patrick Tate Adamiak guilty of receiving and possessing an unregistered firearm, possessing and transferring a machinegun, and three counts of receiving and possessing an unregistered destructive device. The district court sentenced him to twenty yearsโ€™ imprisonment. On appeal, Adamiak contends that at least one of his convictions violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. He further objects to the adequacy of the indictment under which he was charged, the sufficiency of the evidence against him, the district courtโ€™s jury instructions, and his sentence...

Adamiak was accused and found guilty of posessing machine guns. The SAF has more details on both the charges and the convictions, but to be as a tl;dr: they weren't actually machine guns, or even guns. The ATF argued, under the Trump admin, that disabled (sometimes to the point of being cut in half) and inert pieces of a firearm were still machine guns or rocket launchers, because they could be brought to real functionality... by long efforts by skilled experts bringing in sizable parts, in some cases including everything that actually functioned.

Only his Double Jeopardy argument succeeds. Having thoroughly reviewed the record and carefully considered the briefs, arguments, and materials provided by the parties, we discern no other reversible error.

Where the court says "thoroughly reviewed", that's got a bit of an asterisk. The Double Jeopardy clause gets a bit more than a page; the other constitutional arguments get...

Adamiakโ€™s Second Amendment challenge is squarely foreclosed by this courtโ€™s holdings in Bianchi v. Brown, 111 F.4th 438, 453 (4th Cir. 2024) and United States v. Hunt, 123 F.4th 697, 704 (4th Cir. 2024), and the relevant statutes are not unconstitutionally vague.

Yes, that Bianchi. Happy Fuck You Too Day, Justices, this is what your punts have bought; this is the nonconsentual volunteer VanDerStok demanded. And it's going to go nowhere. Malinowski is still dead, his widow's lawsuit is going nowhere, and no one cares that the agents involved gathered more bodycam footage of his widow pissing than they did of the actual raid. Dexter Taylor's still in prison, and in the unlikely situation his case ever gets to a court that actually recognized the Second Amendment as existing in their courtroom, he'll have served a majority of his unjust sentence first.

Reese v. ATF Wins... kinda

Reese is one of many lawsuits challenging the federal prohibition on sales of handguns by FFLs to people between the age of 18 and 20. Most of these have died quick deaths to mootness; prospective plaintiffs can only bring a challenge for three years after the matter becomes ripe on their 18th birthday and before it becomes moot on their 21st, court cases making decisions in that time frame (and not involving illegal immigrants) are rare, and they're rarer still in Second Amendment contexts. Organizational plaintiffs have thus had to prepare a consistent parade of young adults willing to sacrifice a lot of potential negative attention in trade for benefits that likely won't include them, while also ducking other procedural hurdles.

But Reese pulled it off. A complaint filed in November of 2020 eventually made it to a January 2025 appeals court decision which held:

Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among โ€œthe peopleโ€ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-oldsโ€™ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence โ€œcannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence."

And even more surprisingly the federal government did not appeal to SCOTUS. Perhaps that's downstream of a change in administrations, perhaps it's just caution about setting broad jurisprudence against a law, perhaps it's just about incompetence. But finally, a major change that could drastically impact a lot of people could apply to jurisdictions too wide for legislatures to just file the serial numbers off and try again, even if it's just one circuit.

Why am I only writing about it now? Why hasn't been newsworthy that a whole Circuit has let 18-year-olds buy handguns?

Well, the circuit hadn't; for various procedural reasons the appeals court does not issue mandates, and the trial court was in no hurry. October 7th finally (finally!) had a final judgement issued. And that judgement came with a massive caveat:

The Court enters declaratory judgment, as described in paragraph 3 below, with respect to (a) Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, Emily Naquin, and (b) individuals and federally licensed firearms importers, manufacturers, dealers or collectors who were members of Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Second Amendment Foundation, or Louisiana Shooting Association at the time this action was filed on November 6, 2020.

The Court hereby declares that 18 U.S.C. ยงยง 922(b)(1) and (c)(1), and their attendant regulations, are unconstitutional and violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution to the extent those provisions prevent the sale or delivery of handguns and/or handgun ammunition by and to persons identified in paragraph 2 on account of the buyer being 18 to 20 years old.

That's not even a "if you were a FFL and a member of these orgs before November 2020, you can't be prosecuted under this unconstitutional law". Only where the buyers are under-20 and were members of the groups a half-decade before does the declaration apply. This judgement might not be literally absolutely toothless -- someone might have bought their thirteen-year-old kid a membership in the SAF five years back -- but it's so close that the distinction is meaningless. Forget "old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit", we've got young men making serious sacrifices for shade that covers nobody, ever.

The judgement was revoked for other even dumber reasons -- the judge demanded each org provide a verified membership list within 21 days, which wasn't going to fly at SAF for a variety well-formed objections and the government (claims to) have never asked for or wanted in the first place. So now we're waiting til October 27th to even start planning on how to have a final judgement in a case whose appeal opinion issued on January 30th, and I can accurately joke about how a healthy woman can make a baby faster than Robert R Summerhays, a duly-appointed honorable member of the federal court system, can make a decision protecting the real rights of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. And assuming the judge in question is not excessively overdue, in a month I can even joke about how, no, the courts don't do that for normal people.

(Additional bonus: no attorney's fees for the plaintiffs, so they probably spent between 50k and 150k on a case that means bupkiss. Why? Because fuck you that's why.)

The Second Amendment is obiter dictum for the forseeable future. It will take generations of winning Federal elections and replacing judges based on the single issue, and we're not going to get that. Not within my lifetime, anyway, and I would guess not within the lifetime of anyone alive today.

obiter dictum

Wut

a judge's incidental expression of opinion, not essential to the decision and not establishing precedent.

Ah ok.

Worse, the 9th Circuit did so under a chain of logic depending on very recent laws and sometimes even private company restrictions to justify Hawaii's rule, while .

You kind of just cut off here.

Thanks, fixed.

The only question SCOTUS granted cert on was the "vampire" rule itself; the petitioners also asked about the 9th Circuit's fishing expedition into more recent laws (and non-laws), and SCOTUS punted on that despite a wide and clear circuit split.

I don't think there's too much to read in between the lines here. I think the question already implies an answer, and will box in the potential arguments that can be put into the case.

I think irregardless of text and tradition, the court already likes "sensitive places" and will probably rule that the sensitive places rule is already precedented by Heller (technically not overturned by Bruen) and also supported by text and tradition. The question would then fall to the determination of what a sensitive place is, and the court would likely also rule that the definition of a sensitive place must change with the times and thus the line itself will not be drawn by text and tradition, simply the concept.

What I expect to come out of Wolford then is some sort of test that would be used to determine if a place is indeed sensitive or not. I'd expect to see the vampire rule slapped down, but gun free school zones and federal facilities to survive. We would then have to hope for the best in a test that is reasonably strict that can slap down a a few other bs rules as well.

Worst case is that scotus simply says that the court should determine sensitivity, then vacates and remands without making a test. Then we'd have to spend another 2 years in 9th circuit hell before it gets sent back to scotus.

On the surface level, there's an immediate problem where this case's question is just astonishingly bad for that purpose. Its holding can only be whether "Hawaii may presumptively prohibit the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public unless the property owner affirmatively gives express permission to the handgun carrier?" Anything more specific will be dicta, and the Ninth Circuit will ignore dicta they don't like, and this case only exists because they already ignored SCOTUS saying specifically you can't just declare a whole island a sensitive space.

At the deeper level, there's so much else going on in this case, both in the other question the plaintiffs brought up, and in the other questions relevant in the appeal. If SCOTUS just wanted to a case to nail down a test for sensitive places, it's nonsensical to exclude the Ninth Circuit's bizarre. And the law in question here separately blocked "all parks and beaches, playgrounds and youth centers, bars and restaurants that serve liquor, and places of amusement and libraries", questions squarely presented in the petition. There's so many better and wider questions if they wanted to apply a rule to solve the sensitive places flat.

I'm... a lot more pessimistic on worst-case scenarios. I don't think it's likely that SCOTUS gives a full thumbs-up to the vampire rule, but it's painfully plausible that they'll end up with an explicit test that's either so vague or so broad that any remotely specific ban can pass it, and then punts for eternity as lower courts take that to permit more expansive bans than the 'overturned' one SCOTUS ruled on. Wouldn't be the first time.

It seems to me the only reason to take the case in this particular way is to affirm the vampire rule.

I doubt it. If the court wanted to allow the vampire rule to stand, they would either just do nothing or take a case where a lower court overturned the vampire rule.

Its holding can only be whether ... Anything more specific will be dicta

That's not true. The court will answer that question as part of the case, but whatever test and reasoning they use to answer that question will be precedent. Whether or not lower courts ignore it is a different story.

And the law in question here separately blocked "all parks and beaches, playgrounds and youth centers, bars and restaurants that serve liquor, and places of amusement and libraries", questions squarely presented in the petition.

Not quite, in the link you provided yourself, the only two questions formally presented in the petition are about the vampire rule and the question about historical analysis.

That's not true. The court will answer that question as part of the case, but whatever test and reasoning they use to answer that question will be precedent. Whether or not lower courts ignore it is a different story.

... not really? In normal courts, that's the rule, but the Ninth Circuit specifically has a unique relationship with stare decisis: simultaneously, even pure dicta from within the court may be binding, but to overrule a past case:

We hold that the issues decided by the higher court need not be identical in order to be controlling. Rather, the relevant court of last resort must have undercut the theory or reasoning underlying the prior circuit precedent in such a way that the cases are clearly irreconcilable.

Yes, there's also the problem of lower courts ignoring SCOTUS as a matter of practice, but specifically the Ninth Circuit as a matter of open policy does not merely require the holding be part of the question raised for the case, or even that the holding be essential to the determination in the case, but that its logic be clearly irreconcilable. Otherwise, only an en banc Ninth Circuit court may overrule one of the many copious Ninth Circuit en banc opinions holding the Second Amendment to mean nothing.

Not quite, in the link you provided yourself, the only two questions formally presented in the petition are about the vampire rule and the question about historical analysis.

Fair. They were not Questions Asked in the sense of showing up in that section of the pdf, just questions brought up with a full exploration of their factual and legal background.

a requirement that CCW permitees get explicit and specific permission from any private property owner before carrying on their property

Obviously, I'm not a gun guy but this seems eminently reasonable to me, is this particularly onerous? Does it allow for a business to put up a sign saying "guns welcome" that serves as a blanket permission? Just speaking for myself, I would be outraged if someone carried a gun into my house without notifying me, like if I saw that my plumber was carrying a gun I would be angered by this and would definitely favor a law of this sort.

Edit: I'm not speaking to the constitutional legality of any of this, just my own preferences

The CCW permitee objections to this is (at least) two-fold, one being related to pratical carrying, and the other to the environment that these regulations live in.

  1. First, the practical consideration: If you as a gun owner want to be able to carry your gun outside your home, prior to these laws being passed, the presumption is that you can carry except where forbidden by law, or where prohibited by posted signage. If the default presumption is that carrying is allowed, you can watch for signs indicating businesses that are open to the public where your firearm is not allowed, and avoid carrying in those places, but otherwise live you life. Since legal definitions of sensitive places are static, and most businesses do not post a sign disallowing firearms, odds are that you can both carry and go about your day. If the presumption is that carrying is disallowed, your ability to use your concealed carry permit to carry firearms is effectively limited only to those places that explicitly invite you to do so, which limits your ability to carry at all.

  2. Environmental/explicit permission concerns: if you are in environments where concealed carrying is explicitly prohibited except by explicit permission, businesses that wish to allow concealed carry must provide explicit signage (New York's language requires "clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of firearms, rifles, or shotguns on their property is permitted or by otherwise giving express consent"). But this signage also marks the business as explictly pro-gun, which may carry negative business implications that tacitly allowing concealed carry would not, encouraging those that may otherwise allow you to carry in their environment to avoid providing you the necessary permission.

Given that businesses could previously disallow firearms with a sign, and that states such as New York enacted these immediately after the Supreme Court banned "may issue" concealed carry schemes, these laws seemed aimed at reducing the usefulness of the "shall issue" CCW permits these states are now required to issue.

Obviously, I'm not a gun guy but this seems eminently reasonable to me, is this particularly onerous?

Yes. This statute might look reasonable from first glance, but it's extremely broad and very difficult to actually comply with it short of not carrying anywhere.

Private property is really broad, as it was used in this statute; it doesn't just mean houses or even businesses closed to the public, but businesses generally open to the public, lawns, outdoor areas of strip malls, even some sidewalks and roads. This is worse than average in Hawaii because of its generally anti-fence culture (for similar reasons as the open/closed range stuff in the Southwest), but even parts of the country with clearer deliminations would leave it really hard to tell where property lines start and stop without a deep survey dive for every single location you were visiting or even passing through. It wasn't until fairly late in oral arguments at appeal that the state claimed it wouldn't apply to all parking lots, and then only to exclude large parking lots, and only so far as you trust their nonbinding claims.

Even where the line for a specific private property is known, it's not always clear who could give permission. Even for the standard example of "I'm already CCWing, but I need to pick up some eggs and milk on the way home", if you want to run by a WalMart, what happens? Do you have to park outside of the WalMart's property line, lock your gun, go into the store, track down a manager, and then can they give you permission? Can you call ahead, even if the agent you'd get on the line near-certainly won't be at that specific store? For more complicated ownership situations, it might not even be clear to the people on the ground who could give permission: if you're visiting a friend in an apartment building, is it enough if they're okay with you CCWing, or do you need to call the property manager? If you're a tenant, do you need explicit permission to go through a public area on the way to your own apartment? Does this change whether the shared walkspaces are indoors or outdoors? If you're going through a strip mall, is it enough that you're going to a pro-carry gun store, do you have to call up whoever owns the strip mall, or do you need permission from every tenant?

((And then there's the social side of things. Antigun groups have routinely coordinated dox and protest campaigns against pro-gun establishments in anti-gun states, they've openly called for pro-carry businesses to face ruinously higher insurance premiums, and they've recently called out for civil plaintiffs so they can support lawfare against pro-carry businesses regardless of what connection any real or perceived harms had to the permit policies.))

Does it allow for a business to put up a sign saying "guns welcome" that serves as a blanket permission?

California's version only recognizes permission through a posted sign (of a specific size yada yada), which seems to be part of why it was too much for even the Ninth Circuit (though in turn it also only applied to private businesses open to the public). Hawaii's allows wider breadths of affirmative consent, though there's a lot of legal questions about oral consent that never really got answered.

Just speaking for myself, I would be outraged if someone carried a gun into my house without notifying me, like if I saw that my plumber was carrying a gun I would be angered by this and would definitely favor a law of this sort.

There's policy versions that focus on private homes or houses that's more reasonable, even if it might still raise constitutional questions if anyone could get standing/redressability, to an extent I wouldn't expect the groups like SAF to be willing to put the effort into a challenge. But this isn't that law, or even close to it.

(re: constitutional questions, by contrast, the same Ninth Circuit has held that blocking door-to-door salesman except where homes have "Solicitors Welcome" sign up was unconstitutional (Project 80s v. Poctello). And that law was much more restrained.)

Antigun groups have routinely coordinated dox and protest campaigns against pro-gun establishments in anti-gun states, they've openly called for pro-carry businesses to face ruinously higher insurance premiums

This is rumored to be behind the sheer number of not legally binding no-guns signs; Texas standards require English and Spanish of minimum size and specific verbiage, specific locations, etc etc. A simple โ€˜no gunsโ€™ sign doesnโ€™t suffice and actual licensed concealed carriers know it- but constitutional carriers often do not. One group is not like the other.

The text of the law is here. I donโ€™t carry, but I still find it onerous.

It creates a bubble of misdemeanors around any private property unless the owner adds โ€clear and conspicuous signageโ€ at the entrance. How many people are going to go to the trouble of affixing a scarlet letter?

This is, yet again, plain defiance of higher court rulings.

I'm curious: does SCOTUS have the power to find lower courts who ignore its rulings (e.g. lower court does X, SCOTUS on appeal says they can't do X and remands for consistent proceedings, lower court does X again) in contempt?

No, but it doesn't matter, because they don't want to. The outcome 8 of the 9 justices want is that the gun restrictions remain in place and more are passed. It's just that 3 of them justify this by misinterpreting the Constitution and the other 5 are sneakier about it.

If we're going to be cynical, we should go all the way. The justices don't want to be blamed for spree killings in blue states, and they will be (fairly or not) if they strike down gun laws. Apart from Barrett, I would be surprised if the 5 squishy justices don't hold the same pro-2nd amendment views you do. But I am not in the least surprised that they would rather abandon their principles than see their face in the NYT next to the headline "13 children dead in Brooklyn high school shooting"

I don't think they care about that. They just are elitists who don't think the common people should have guns.

The process that selected Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Alito was designed to select justices who agreed with mainstream legal conservative positions on all the hot-button issues (which very much includes that the common people should have guns). I think the idea that a justice cucked after appointment is more plausible than the idea that a secret opponent of gun rights got through the right-wing vetting process.

Barrett was the most reliably pro-life woman available with nothing else mattering. Roberts was chosen to be easy to confirm in a 50-50 senate. So I wouldn't be surprised if either of them turned out to be a closeted gun-grabber. My impression of Roberts is that he is a judicial minimalist who is generally inclined to uphold the (federal or state) legislation if it is a close call, almost regardless of the issue.

The process that selected Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Alito was designed to select justices who agreed with mainstream legal conservative positions on all the hot-button issues (which very much includes that the common people should have guns).

Only as a theoretical issue. The mainstream legal conservatives very much believe in the right to keep and bear arms as a debating point. They just don't think it should cash out in people being able to buy and carry guns.

I am not a SCOTUS-bar lawyer and this is not legal advice, but from understanding, no, contempt can only attach to parties. SCOTUS can answer a petition for writ of mandamus with a direct order to lower courts doing things, and that's been mentioned in a particularly egregious case, but eventually there's not much the justices can do but order a change in trial judge, and for process reasons they don't actually have that much power there, either, when a majority of a full circuit is flipping them the bird.

And, like The_Nybbler says, I think they just don't want to. It'd be one thing if we were only talking machine gun cases or the hairy edge of convicted criminals, but SCOTUS isn't even enforcing its own precedent when it comes to stun guns, or to whether the fourth amendment applies to people who own a gun. They just don't care.

WRT Hemani, it really seems like some court at some point needs to question whether marijuana really fits the definition of a Schedule I controlled substance. I'm not a user, or even a fan of it, but "no known medical use" seems pretty flat on its face given that most states have accepted medical uses. But I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath for government policy to have to, uh, actually make sense to a lay person like me, and it doesn't impact me directly anyway.

Maybe if a hypothetical right wing administration tried to put Mifepristone on that list would we actually see some questions about "rational basis" here. But (fortunately, at least for my moderate views on abortion) the broader right seems mostly-okay(?) with the status quo where the FDA has legalized and regulated it nationwide, despite newfound state regulation of other (non-drug-induced) methods.

I mean, the literal legal ruling would be something like โ€˜47 states or whatever are breaking the law and itโ€™s up to congress to change itโ€™. Obviously courts donโ€™t want to touch that and bringing a lawsuit wouldnโ€™t actually do anything.

That does seem like the most likely outcome, especially with the current high court, but there have been cases where courts have "pressed X to doubt" on questionable factual assertions by the executive. "Is there lawlessness on the streets of [several cities] sufficient to send in the National Guard?" is one such case that's ongoing (I largely expect SCOTUS to side with the executive there, for better or worse). But I guess half a century of Tradition! in this case is only one of "arbitrary and capricious".

I think we are slowly starting to establish the evidence base for the current schedule to maybe be appropriate.

For a long time "medical" use was just cover really, and for some of the proposed indications (anxiety, insomnia) it's at this point understood to be an actively bad idea. Chronic pain is a bit more debatable and for increasing appetite it actually works great.

The bigger problem is the growing damage to general human flourishing and the really significant negative impact on patients in the psychiatric population.

Would you be willing to make a deep dive/effort post about pot? Iโ€™ve definitely gotten the impression that itโ€™s gotten an undeservedly good rap.

Ughhhh for medical work a deep dive involves citation which sounds like a lot of work. Maybe at some point, but for now some thoughts:

  1. Weed is a drug. Maybe more on the alcohol tier, but it's still a drug. If you talk to people who use many of them sound like addicts. It's not a mistake to notice this, they are. You can have withdrawal (although it's in many ways not as bad as some other withdrawals). People in denial of having a problem... Also, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is a thing. You'll see patients come in multiple times a month with profuse vomiting and we know the exact cause and they have zero ability or willingness to calm down. Total addiction.

  2. It hampers human flourishing. For many people the primary problem is that it makes them feel okay with their life being ass. To some extent that's a good thing but I know plenty of people who didn't try to fix stuff as a result. That's bad.

  3. Plenty of people (as with alcohol) use a little bit and don't have any problems at all. Moderation is possible. This creates a context of false sense of security.

  4. The association with positive impact on the supposed indications is questionable. Anxiety and insomnia are best treated by addressing root issues. Use a drug is a crutch that prevents recovery. For many it actually worsens these things, and passing out does not mean "sleeping."

  5. Most importantly, like with alcohol a particular subset of the patient absolutely cannot. Psych patients. These people will go by even more unsafe street weed these days if they can't get it at dispensary (usually stepped on with a....variety) so hard to stop it, but it worsens all kinds of shit and can make recovery and tons of these people think its an adequate treatment.

Nearly every patient with a psychiatric diagnosis you see in the hospital - and I'm talking on medical floors too, has a massive weed addiction.

Some of these people also appear to have been created by weed.

Additionally, when I was young I remember people going "pshh they are overstating the risks, but risks exist?" with drugs. Lots of young people today are "this is perfectly healthy."

Lots of young people today are "this is perfectly healthy."

It's a cope. It's a way for us to ignore the severely blackpilling issues. Some non-trivial percentage of young men and women will realistically 1) never own a house, 2) never have a stable long-term relationship, 3) never have a social circle more than 2-3 people they can trust. So, why not get high (or drink) most days?

These personal problems are, of course, connected to the large-scale social problems that will cause despair in even the most radical optimists. I'm an optimist, but the dating situation is pretty severe for young men and women. It's hard for anyone 30+ with a stable relationship (or a stable past relationship) to understand.

I mean, I get why people take the Soma, but also it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Additionally most people don't have that insight into why they are doing it.

For decades there have been synthetic THC pills approved for medicinal use such as Marinol. THC is FDA approved. So strange that extracting THC from marijuana is Schedule 1 but synthesizing it in a lab is not.

It really seems like some court at some point needs to question whether marijuana really fits the definition of a Schedule I controlled substance.

Apparently (article, opinion), this happened back in 1994, but the appeals panel found that the DEA's interpretation of the statute was not unreasonable.

Our review of the record convinces us that the Administrator's findings are supported by substantial evidence. The Final Order canvasses the record at length. It recites the testimony of numerous experts that marijuana's medicinal value has never been proven in sound scientific studies. The Administrator reasonably accorded more weight to the opinions of these experts than to the anecdotal testimony of laymen and doctors on which petitioners relied. The Administrator noted that

[w]ith one exception, none of [these doctors] could identify under oath the scientific studies they swore they relied on. Only one had enough knowledge to discuss the scientific technicalities involved. Eventually, each one admitted he was basing his opinion on anecdotal evidence, on stories he heard from patients, and on his impressions about the drug.

These findings are consistent with the view that only rigorous scientific proof can satisfy the CSA's "currently accepted medical use" requirement.

But that was 30 years ago, so perhaps more scientific studies are available nowadays.

So now we're waiting til October 27th to even start planning on how to have a final judgement in a case whose appeal opinion issued on January 30th, and I can accurately joke about how a healthy woman can make a baby faster than Robert R Summerhays, a duly-appointed honorable member of the federal court system, can make a decision protecting the real rights of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

Some context here: After the 5th Circuit made their decision, the parties agreed to hold of on entering a final judgment until the deadline for a cert petition had passed on July 1. After the government declined to appeal, a judicial conference was held on July 2 wherein Summerhays asked the parties to confer on a joint order. On July 29 he granted a joint motion to extend the deadline until September 2, at which point they could either submit a joint order or submit their own proposed orders. The parties reached an impasse, and submitted their own proposed orders on that date. The Plaintiffs included a statement that they'd submit briefs upon request of the court. The government submitted a brief with their proposed order. The Plaintiffs then submitted their own brief on September 14. The court issued its initial judgment on October 7. I'm not seeing any undue delay here, just the normal operation of the judicial system.

As for the judgment itself, you write:

But finally, a major change that could drastically impact a lot of people could apply to jurisdictions too wide for legislatures to just file the serial numbers off and try again, even if it's just one circuit....Only where the buyers are under-20 and were members of the groups a half-decade before does the declaration apply.

A couple things need to be distinguished here. First, the ATF made it clear that it recognizes the court's decision and does not intend to enforce the prohibition within the geographic boundaries of the Fifth Circuit. That's the general consequence. That's to be distinguished from the specific order the District Court enters, which formally binds the parties at the risk of contempt. In that sense, the Plaintiffs probably imagined that an order such as you have in mind was possible when they filed the suit, but the law does not exist in a vacuum, and with the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that possibility went out the window.

To refresh your memory, District Court injunctions can only bind parties to the suit. In this context, the Plaintiffs concede that a universal injunction is off the table. The crux of the argument is over whether the order covers anyone who was a member of the Plaintiff organizations at any time, now and forever, or whether it is limited to specific people who meet certain criteria. These arguments come down to the scope of organizational standing, and I don't want to get too far into it because the details are highly technical and are prone to changing opinions based on culture war elements. Suffice it to say that the government's argument was that the Plaintiffs were trying to use organizational standing as an impermissible backdoor around filing a class action suit. And while the Plaintiffs made good arguments overall on this point, the most they could have gotten by my admittedly brief reading was an extension to members as of the date of the judgment.

The other point was the release of the membership lists, which the government argued were necessary because they needed to know who they were enjoined from prosecuting under the order. Again, the Plaintiffs made good arguments that there was no precedent requiring this and that it was up to the Defendant to figure it out, but the examples they gave on how they were supposed to do this were ludicrous to the point that they'd probably regret it if the ATF actually implemented them (one suggested that the ATF form be amended to ask if the buyer was a member of a Plaintiff organization; aside from the impracticality of the government amending its forms to account for a small subset of purchasers, I doubt these groups want their members undergoing a guaranteed ATF investigation to verify their memberships).

I think that what happened in the end is that, in light of the CASA decision and that nether party could provide anything that was really on point and not possibly overruled by CASA, the judge was disinclined to grant any specific relief to any parties beyond those absolutely necessary to resolve the case, and gave the government more or less the order they asked for.

the judge demanded each org provide a verified membership list within 21 days, which wasn't going to fly at SAF for a variety well-formed objections and the government (claims to) have never asked for or wanted in the first place. So now we're waiting til October 27th to even start planning on how to have a final judgement

Again, you have to look at the procedural posture. Three days after judgment was entered the parties filed a joint motion to amend, and the judgment was vacated a few days after that. The conference on the 27th is more or less a housekeeping item where the judge talks to the parties about their agreement before entering judgment. To be clear, the government never specifically asked the court that they enter an order compelling the Plaintiffs to turn over membership lists, only that the judgment be limited to verified members. The parties are looking to amend the judgment so that it applies to those members who the organizations voluntarily disclose to the court. It's certainly possible that Judge Summerhays has an independent streak and wants membership lists so he can name individuals in the final order, but I highly doubt it, and I expect the judgment to be entered as agreed to by the parties before the end of the month. The Plaintiffs can appeal, but I doubt that will happen, given the limited practical implications and the minefield they'd be entering. If they were to appeal and win, it would have serious implications for the kinds of injunctions Trump has so far successfully prevented, as it would allow Plaintiffs to for nebulous organizations, allow judges to grant injunctive relief to anyone who is a member of the organization, regardless of time, and put the burden on the government for determining whether someone is a member of the organization.

I'm not seeing any undue delay here, just the normal operation of the judicial system.

A year ago, that was a plausible argument. It's not longer a plausible one. The normal operation of the judicial system now has the highest court in the land intervene to defend absolute randos in overnight on a holiday weekend. It means something when that happens then, and literally never here.

First, the ATF made it clear that it recognizes the court's decision and does not intend to enforce the prohibition within the geographic boundaries of the Fifth Circuit. That's the general consequence.

They only claimed that they did not plan to begin enforcement actions of an unconstitutional law as of September 2nd -- again, nearly eight months after the Circuit decision. There is no guidance issued to vendors, even today. And, unsurprisingly, vendors are not in a particular hurry to trust the ATF pinky swears.

And while the Plaintiffs made good arguments overall on this point, the most they could have gotten by my admittedly brief reading was an extension to members as of the date of the judgment.

Do you think that standard will be consistently applied to other causes?

I think that what happened in the end is that, in light of the CASA decision and that nether party could provide anything that was really on point and not possibly overruled by CASA, the judge was disinclined to grant any specific relief to any parties beyond those absolutely necessary to resolve the case, and gave the government more or less the order they asked for.

Yes, the judge gave the government exactly what it wanted (and then a little more), after the government had spent long years infringing on the rights of. And that's just how things go, when it comes to civil rights that progressives don't like. And I'm spelling it out.

(one suggested that the ATF form be amended to ask if the buyer was a member of a Plaintiff organization; aside from the impracticality of the government amending its forms to account for a small subset of purchasers, I doubt these groups want their members undergoing a guaranteed ATF investigation to verify their memberships)

It's a violation of federal law to lie on a form 4473 -- you may remember some high-profile schmuck with a neopotistic background getting a pretty weird pardon after a big criminal lawsuit on this matter -- and this would leave a lot of valid ways for anyone with a brainstem to think of ways for the ATF to validly prosecute violations only where they had reasonable belief, without first having a full list of the org's membership, that a specific member did not belong to the org. You know, if they weren't also claiming that they were not going to prosecute this particular unconstitutional offense to start with, making the whole question moot.

Now, ATF, so they'd probably still shoot someone and their dog while politely serving a subpeona for membership records specific to a named individual against a third party. But not because of this proposal.

There's ways to solve these problems. There's ways to solve these problems even under the most expansive reading of CASA imaginable, the way that's never getting applied to a single left-wing cause. But you know, and I know, that's never going to happen here.

A year ago, that was a plausible argument. It's not longer a plausible one. The normal operation of the judicial system now has the highest court in the land intervene to defend absolute randos in overnight on a holiday weekend. It means something when that happens then, and literally never here.

I'm not sure what you mean here since there weren't any emergency petitions in this case, and when the delay is on joint motion, I'm not sure how you can complain about it. What was the court supposed to do, guess what kind of order the parties were looking for and then wait for it to get appealed?

Do you think that standard will be consistently applied to other causes?

I'm not sure what the case you linked is supposed to prove since the opinion was issued before CASA was decided. Either way, is the judge supposed to just blatantly ignore precedent because another judge might in the future in an unrelated case (and get reversed on appeal)? Whether or not vendors trust the ATF to not enforce the law is irrelevant if the court is powerless to grant an injunction.

It's a violation of federal law to lie on a form 4473 -- you may remember some high-profile schmuck with a neopotistic background getting a pretty weird pardon after a big criminal lawsuit on this matter -- and this would leave a lot of valid ways for anyone with a brainstem to think of ways for the ATF to validly prosecute violations only where they had reasonable belief, without first having a full list of the org's membership, that a specific member did not belong to the org. You know, if they weren't also claiming that they were not going to prosecute this particular unconstitutional offense to start with, making the whole question moot.

I'm not sure what your argument is here, but mine was poorly phrased, so let me reiterate: The organizations don't want to turn over membership lists, which is understandable. If the ATF had, apropos of nothing, added a question to its forms about memberships in certain organizations, these organizations would be rightly up in arms about it. But now one of these organizations suggests with a straight face that that's exactly what they do? And it gets worse; they weren't looking for this to be a narrowly tailored question that was part of the order, but just throwing it out there as something that was already within the ATF's authority. They don't want to turn over a list, but they have no problem making their members voluntarily disclose their affiliation every time they buy a gun. I find it curious and a bit disingenuous, that's all.

In all, I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Most of the time your legal analysis is pretty good for a non-lawyer, but here you seem to have mucked up the analysis because you didn't understand the procedural posture of the case, and you seem to be advocating an outcome that's facially against the law and that neither party asked for in the first place. And all of this is underlain by your woe-is-me routine where absolutely everyone in government is completely ignorant of Second Amendment rights even as you ask a court to overturn a law that's been in place for over 50 years and has been upheld multiple times, including by the circuit in question.

I don't know anything about Summerhayes but he was a Trump appointee and I don't see anything in this case that suggests he's anything other than a straight shooter. I didn't write that comment with the intent to question the Fith Circuit's decision or anything like that, just to explain why the case unfolded the way it did, and why it's over for now.

To be clear, I'm not making allegations that there are clear violations of process or defiance of higher court. I have other examples for that. I'm making three different criticisms, here:

  • Regardless of Summerhayes' relative level of competence or political alignment, there are pretty clear problems in this decision. A federal judge should not accidentally issue a ruling that leaves people referencing NAACP v. Alabama in rejoinder. The previous proposed order does not cover Broussard, a named member of the plaintiff orgs, who was the only reason the plaintiffs still had standing, which the plaintiffs specifically noted would not be protected by the language that the court adopted. The extreme constraint of declaratory relief are even less defensible, and seem to be based on an active misread of the Declaratory Judgement Act promoted by the defendants playing a game of telephone with citing mangled citations to irrelevant cases. And as a lesser bugaboo, the court could have read 44 pages and written a 2 page order in less than 18 days; I expect more from teenagers writing book reports, and many of them don't have this sort of grievous error at the same time they scrawl out their five paragraph essays the night before.

  • ((I'm using his name, specifically, because I'm trying to make a not-very-subtle dick pun as a contrast to the length-of-a-pregnancy one, and it's a lot less funny if the judge in question here was a woman or named Richard.))

  • Going to relative competence, it's a problem if this is that average behavior, and that these are Just The Ways Things Are Done in the courts. Yes, it's absolutely normal for the courts to give out broad extensions; it's absolutely normal to rubber stamp the government's requests on final judgement; it's absolutely standard for the wheels of justice to grind slow and fall back on prayer when it gets to fine. It's absolutely normal for the government to treat the ATF and DOJ like honest actors, and anyone complaining about it to a judge would only hurt their own case. I'll quibble about the difference between joint and uncontested actions, and recognize that there are worse courts, but ultimately, they end here.

  • Going to political alignment, it's a problem that there are exclusions to this standard. The ability of courts to offer widespread orders even very early in process and posture is not a casualty of CASA. Yes, there's a defense of the court process that in that case, people filed a request for an order (though I will note that they didn't request many specifics the judge ordered anyway, like the body cameras). Those plaintiffs were willing to request the moon, earth, and sky because they knew that they had a significant chance of getting it, and faced little risk of slowing their case's roll otherwise; the plaintiffs in Reese knew, quite well, that they had absolutely zero chance until after a lengthy appeal process that would outlast any relevance of the case to themselves.

  • And, leaving aside the judicial system itself, I can point out that the Most Pro-Gun Administration Ever futzed around with considering a cert grant for months on end, and then could not come up with either a compromise or a reasonable request for judgment, and in that entire time still has not written a guidance letter to FFLs who this case would immediately impact and who the government is willing to tell -- but only in non-binding ways and only months after supposedly making the decision -- that it tots promises not to prosecute them (offer only good until a Dem administration thinks it's going to win in court). Yes, I understand how the difference between precedent and judgement works; I also understand that post-Defense Distributed settlement being treated like toilet paper, that this means a lot less than lawyers pretend it does.

I'm not sure what the case you linked is supposed to prove since the opinion was issued before CASA was decided.

I'm trying to make a prediction, and to get a prediction in response: if the case is not mooted or lost, do you believe that its final judgement will be solely limited to the seven current plaintiffs?

Whether or not vendors trust the ATF to not enforce the law is irrelevant if the court is powerless to grant an injunction.

The court isn't powerless to grant an injunction. The court has expansive opportunities to grant relief, so long as those opportunities are specific to the parties in this case. It's just not going to do so because no one asked it, and no one asked because they know and anyone remotely familiar with the courts knows that the courts won't grant such a request, as a matter of long-standing policy.

And other courts have been quite happy to jump up and down on that bar when they do not trust the government, or even when plaintiffs make sufficiently sordid stories about how they don't trust the government and we gotta have a ruling asap because of that.

They don't want to turn over a list, but they have no problem making their members voluntarily disclose their affiliation every time they buy a gun. I find it curious and a bit disingenuous, that's all.

No, they say that having members who want to buy a gun specifically under a legal defense provided by being a member of that organization 'making' that voluntary disclosure would at least be a possible response that doesn't involve telling the winners in a court case to sit on NAACP and spin. It's only one of the options that the plaintiffs provided, and the one they'd favor least, but it's a lot less destructive than 'here's our member list uncle sam please don't leak it'.

A federal judge should not accidentally issue a ruling that leaves people referencing NAACP v. Alabama in rejoinder.

It's unclear whether NAACP would actually apply in this case. That case involved an as-applied challenge, not a facial one, and an challenge in this case would accordingly only be successful if the Plaintiffs could demonstrate both that the disclosure was unnecessary and that it would subject the members to harm. The first bar is difficult for them to overcome since the government has a clear interest to know with some degree of particularity whom the judgment applies to. The plaintiffs assert that it's up to the government to figure out how to comply with the order, but they don't cite any case law for that, just an article from the Harvard Law Review arguing against nationwide injunctions. Interestingly enough, the cited article actually refers to a case where the court granted universal relief based on the idea that it would be difficult for law enforcement to identify members of the plaintiff association, and argues that that this was unnecessary because members could simply identify themselves! The second prong would be even harder for the plaintiffs to meet, because similar challenges in the past have failed because the plaintiffs were unable to demonstrate any harm beyond minor harassment. The NAACP members were able to show clear cases of death threats and other serious activity. If there were similar instances of harm against the named plaintiffs in this case, then they might be able to meet that burden, but I haven't seen any evidence of this so far. I would also add that courts are generally impatient when it comes to plaintiffs refusing to make disclosures that would advance their interests in the context of the case. The cases I'm aware of that involve disclosure of membership involve the government suing or imposing requirements on organizations that never asked for anything, not plaintiffs who are unwilling to participate in litigation they commenced. On a weekly basis I deal with plaintiffs who bitch about having to be deposed for days on end and asked questions they couldn't possibly know the answers to, to which I want to tell them "You can make this stop right now if you drop the suit." My point here isn't that requiring such a disclosure would necessarily be impermissible, just that the judge isn't incompetent for assuming it wouldn't be, as there's no blanket rule prohibiting the government from making such a request.

the court could have read 44 pages and written a 2 page order in less than 18 days

Yeah, they could have, in a vacuum, but, and this may surprise you, this isn't the only case the judge is dealing with. You have no idea what else the judge had to deal with in those 18 days, and he isn't going to drop everything to issue one order among many he has on his plate. The fact that he got it in within 30 suggests that he had a normal workload, but if the submissions hit in the middle of a trial it could have taken months before he got to it. I know this is your hobby horse and you think that these cases should take precedence because they involve fundamental rights or whatever, but every case involves someone looking for their rights to be vindicated.

Going to relative competence, it's a problem if this is that average behavior, and that these are Just The Ways Things Are Done in the courts.

It seems that your overriding problem with the courts stems not so much from any of the things you describe, but with the fact that they don't always rule the way you want them to. You can complain all you want about the court's willingness to grant extensions, but would you consider it a preferable outcome if the court refused to grant the Plaintiffs an extension to file a reply brief and they ended up dismissing the case with prejudice? Because something similar to that is bound to happen, and the judicial system as a whole would love to be able to clear their calendars, but everyone involved recognizes that people have other shit to do and that the system works better if everyone grants some professional courtesy here and there. Yeah, things move slow, but no lawyer can make a living on one case at a time, and if you want judges to do the same you're going to be paying for a lot of waiting around.

The ability of courts to offer widespread orders even very early in process and posture is not a casualty of CASA.

No, it isn't, and I never said that it was. But I'm not sure what your argument is here by posting a totally different case from a different court. Just because courts grant emergency releif in some cases doesn't mean it's appropriate in every case, and you haven't made the argument that it would have been appropriate here. They didn't ask for emergency relief because there was no grounds to do so, and of course the judge wouldn't grant the motion.

I can point out that the Most Pro-Gun Administration Ever futzed around...

If this is your complaint maybe you need to consider the possibility that you hold a fringe position that's broadly unpopular, and that it's unreasonable for you to expect the courts to do everything you want them to do, or that maybe Federal judges know a little more about the law than you do.

I'm trying to make a prediction, and to get a prediction in response: if the case is not mooted or lost, do you believe that its final judgement will be solely limited to the seven current plaintiffs?

I don't know whether the groups in question are willing to provide the names of people whom the order would still apply to in a meaningful way. If there are a few such people, they might, with consent, release the names to the ATF in order to secure the injunction. I think this is what next week's conference is going to be about, and why the judge wants to hold one instead of simply signing a joint order. But beyond that, the upshot of the case is that the government won't be able to prosecute FFL holders for selling guns to 18-year-olds in the Fifth District. Even absent an injunction, any such prosecution will get kicked pretty quickly. Whether or not any gun stores will be willing to sell to anyone under 21 is an open question, and is up to the discretion of the stores themselves. The risk is that the ATF prosecutes anyway and wins when the case is overturned by the Supreme Court. An injunction would not prevent this outcome. If the ATF decided to prosecute for an underage sale in contravention of the Fifth Circuit's decision, and there was an an injunction against doing so, and the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court, the result is not that the case would get kicked, but that someone would get prosecuted for contempt. In that situation, it's nothing more than a consolation prize.

It's unclear whether NAACP would actually apply in this case. That case involved an as-applied challenge, not a facial one, and an challenge in this case would accordingly only be successful if the Plaintiffs could demonstrate both that the disclosure was unnecessary and that it would subject the members to harm.

While courtrooms and mathematicians might need people to demonstrate 1 + 1 = 2, actual humans -- including judges acting of their own volition -- can notice that a) the DoJ has a long history of leaking private information like a sieve after collecting it from right-wing-aligned orgs, b) no small number of SAF's members would face social and career ramifications were their membership publicized, and c) plaintiffs presented alternatives over two weeks before the judge submitted this final judgement.

I'm sure the court can Well Asckshutally how that's not quite the explicit standard from NAACP. I'm also hoping that the 'winners' in a court case not need be faced with the question of whether the final judgement is so unconstitutional it's covered all four corners under a decades-old foundational court case, or 'just' unreasonable and harmful to the 'winners' and likely unconstitutional.

My point here isn't that requiring such a disclosure would necessarily be impermissible, just that the judge isn't incompetent for assuming it wouldn't be, as there's no blanket rule prohibiting the government from making such a request.

The government did not make a request. The judge ordered that the full list be delivered, in three weeks, as a final judgment binding on the parties in this case. As you so wittingly pointed out, punishable by contempt for noncompliance. If you ignore what's voluntary and what's actually mandated by court order, the court orders look fine, but you've made this mistake multiple times in this conversation, and it's fooling no one else.

I'm not claiming it's incompetence -- I specifically say "regardless of Summerhayes' relative level of competence"! -- but it's clearly a problem, and more a problem for never even questioning whether the people he's targeting would want to comply, and if the search for neutral institutions just means we get a random selection between this and "the Second Amendment does not exist in this courtroom", all it's presented is a good argument against neutral institutions.

You have no idea what else the judge had to deal with in those 18 days, and he isn't going to drop everything to issue one order among many he has on his plate. The fact that he got it in within 30 suggests that he had a normal workload, but if the submissions hit in the middle of a trial it could have taken months before he got to it.

Behold, a federal courthouse operating at peak efficiency under normal constraints. I'm not claiming these guys are just sitting on their backside and eating bonbons the whole day long, and I'm sure there's other priorities. And I'm also pretty sure that they're not putting in 9/9/6 weeks. This just wasn't a priority.

I know this is your hobby horse and you think that these cases should take precedence because they involve fundamental rights or whatever, but every case involves someone looking for their rights to be vindicated.

That's an unintentionally funny joke. The courtroom's activities on September 19th were a sentencing hearing for a prohibited person case (drugs, coincidentally, albeit somehow still more sympathetic than Hemani), a revocation of supervised release, and then the one case that actually involved the judge in question here, a drug-related warrant case. The first two just plainly aren't about vindicating rights; they're about enforcing the law. An important role, but a different one.

Ah, but if the court had delayed Sam, perhaps I or someone else would be moaning about that... well, no, probably not. Apologies for linking to an AI summary, but I'm not paying for this case, and there's a reason no one else is either; it's hilariously overdetermined even by the morbid standards of Fourth Amendment questions. And, bluntly, I don't think that's the actual tradeoff.

There's a more serious defense that the courts can't do that sort of prioritization. And it died with Snope. They can and do and have. This just isn't a priority; this just doesn't take precedence when countless other matters have. That's absolutely my point, and more damning's that it isn't limited to this one hobby horse.

It seems that your overriding problem with the courts stems not so much from any of the things you describe, but with the fact that they don't always rule the way you want them to.

No. My problem is that I could buy either a court system actually obsessed with legal formalism, or one that considers the rights of individuals heavy on the scale regardless of the political allegiance of those rights. We have neither. We've had neither for a long time. I've spelled out that we've had neither for a long time.

But I'm not sure what your argument is here by posting a totally different case from a different court. Just because courts grant emergency releif in some cases doesn't mean it's appropriate in every case, and you haven't made the argument that it would have been appropriate here. They didn't ask for emergency relief because there was no grounds to do so, and of course the judge wouldn't grant the motion.

By, of course, the extremely well-grounded and long-standing principles of where that tots haven't been rebuilt post-hoc to support progressive goals and ignore conservative ones, you mean?

No, they didn't ask for emergency relief here for the same reason they didn't request a temporary restraining order, even though that'd be the only way for any of their plaintiffs to ever actually personally benefit: because the courts would suddenly find novel and strict adherence to very specific precedent, while other judges in other contexts would find such things irrelevant compared to the terrified hallucinations of an immigration lawyer.

If this is your complaint maybe you need to consider the possibility that you hold a fringe position that's broadly unpopular, and that it's unreasonable for you to expect the courts to do everything you want them to do, or that maybe Federal judges know a little more about the law than you do.

Considered, found in contradiction with the (available, since you don't bother actually arguing it) evidence, and even were it true, still runs into the central problem that we've still seen courts bend over backwards to defend fringe positions that were broadly unpopular, by federal judges that pretended to know a lot about the law as long as it got them what they wanted. All it's done is demonstrate nothing but will to power games winning.

More broadly, your complete inability to name any case where this should fall the other direction makes clear exactly how principled this position isn't. We're over a decade past a President completely refusing to defend a federal law because he thought it unconstitutional; there's no shortage of such gun laws today, no few of which have far less political or popular support. We do not see that happen today, no matter how bullshit or outright incoherent the law, nor do we see the administration assigning Guiliani to defend the laws badly on purpose. It's not a tactic that they use because it won't work, and they've found that out once already.

I don't know whether the groups in question are willing to provide the names of people whom the order would still apply to in a meaningful way. If there are a few such people, they might, with consent, release the names to the ATF in order to secure the injunction. I think this is what next week's conference is going to be about, and why the judge wants to hold one instead of simply signing a joint order.

There were only three plaintiffs when this case started, and the court for some godsforsaken reason isn't willing to include someone who already declared his name publicly after the case started and before it concluded, and was the only reason the plaintiffs still had standing, and would not have been covered by the previous final judgement even had SAF been willing to hand over their membership records.

I think there's a fifty-fifty chance the judge doesn't file an final judgement by the end of day after the conference, a twenty percent chance that they just end up scheduling another briefing (todo: whenever people's rights matter again), and whatever he does eventually give is a pointless pro forma that just delays the plaintiffs appeal and issuance of mandate, applying to a single-digit number of people or no one. 30% confidence it doesn't even include Broussard.

((Also, I was asking for your predictions in one of the trans military ban case. The one I linked where the courts already issued a pre-CASA injunction, where the court never did in this case, and where oral arguments have repeatedly shown judges trying to argue for the most expansive judgement possible post-CASA. By legal formalism, that's just the seven plaintiffs in that case; there's not even association standing. Do you want to bet whether that will change, and whether the join date on that organization will be set in January of this year? For the inevitable declaratory judgement?))

But beyond that, the upshot of the case is that the government won't be able to prosecute FFL holders for selling guns to 18-year-olds in the Fifth District... Whether or not any gun stores will be willing to sell to anyone under 21 is an open question, and is up to the discretion of the stores themselves.

Strange how they'd be willing to leave money on the table, if it were so certain. Oh well, good thing we don't have recent cases where the federal courts issued broad rules that the feds would have to follow to soothe the nerves of randos making broad and unsupported claims of bad actions or suspected bad actions!

To be clear, this isn't The Most Central Example of the problems. Unfortunately, time is an arrow, the door is ajar, talking about problems seldom coincides with maxima happening. If I absolutely had to point to a case that screamed out for preliminary injunction, I'd probably point to the Illinois ban-sans-definition, since it's a new law so all the 'maintain status quo' stuff was self-evident bunk and SCOTUS didn't care even as lower courts announced that the bans didn't even implicate 2A rights. Maybe sprinkle in some of CCW permit/renewal cases which are basically distilled "important and recurring issues which, by virtue of their relatively brief existence, would be rendered otherwise nonreviewable" and often also include state actors ignoring their own law, and never seem to matter.

But part of my point is to show that it's not some rare nutpicks, or just for cases so controversial as to get to SCOTUS, or only one particularly extreme or unusual policies, or only in particularly left-leaning jurisdictions and you could just move to a red state. On its own, this case wouldn't be that bad; maybe, eventually, someday, if a mandate ever issues and an FFL isn't terrified of the ATF playing silly buggers in three years, a 20-year-old will be able to legally buy a new handgun. But when no one can pull a counterexample from some vastly overexpansive ruling from one of Trump's many ideologically-driven and unprofessional nutjobs larger than Freedom Week, and no one can show a bigger or more by-the-book victory, and I can keep giving example after example after example over fifteen years of jurisprudence, it's a much more relevant pattern.

mathematicians might need people to demonstrate 1 + 1 = 2

No, we usually don't. Outside of weird cases like ordinals, 2 is defined as "1 + 1".

We do need people to demonstrate that 2 + 2 = 4, though (as 4 is defined as "3 + 1"), and that 1 > 0 (I literally had to prove that for a homework assignment).

I think there's a fifty-fifty chance the judge doesn't file an final judgement by the end of day after the conference, a twenty percent chance that they just end up scheduling another briefing (todo: whenever people's rights matter again)...

I guess I can't call this as a prediction since it had already happened, but :

The Court has been advised that counsel for Defendants has been placed in furlough status due to the lapse in appropriations. Accordingly, the telephone status conference set on Monday, October 27, 2025 is CONTINUED and will be reset once defense counsel has returned to his duty station.

On December 5th, three weeks after the government shutdown ended:

District Judge Telephone Conference set for 12/16/2025 2:00 PM before Judge Robert R Summerhays. Call-in instructions will be sent to counsel via electronic mail prior to the conference. Issued by Judge Robert R Summerhays on 12/5/2025. (crt,Taylor, L) (Entered: 12/05/2025)

But, hey, Broussard's still only 20, maybe the court will manage to find its ass with both hands and an atlas before literally no one can benefit from the final judgement... if the court's actually making a decision. Anyone want to bet whether a final judgement comes out before Christmas?

More comments

It's unclear whether NAACP would actually apply in this case.

Against this backdrop, First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amendment associational rights and therefore has standing. An injury in fact arises when a defendant burdens a plaintiffโ€™s constitutional rights, and government demands for a charityโ€™s private donor information have just that effect. Such demands inevitably discourage association with groups engaged in protected First Amendment advocacy and encourage groups to cease or modify protected advocacy the government disfavors. All this occurs not just when a demand is enforced but when it is made and for as long as it remains outstanding.

...

Putting aside the uncertainties about any prospective protective order, demands for private donor information burden First Amendment rights โ€œ[e]ven if there [is] no disclosure to the general public.โ€ Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 486. An official demand for private donor information is enough to discourage reasonable individuals from associating with a group and to discourage groups from expressing dissident views. So long as the demand remains outstanding, โ€œthe pressureโ€ to avoid ties and speech that โ€œmight displeaseโ€ officials demanding disclosure can โ€œbe constant and heavy.โ€

...

Since NAACP v. Alabama, we have faced many cases along similar lines. In them, one state authority or another has demanded private donor or member information. And in one case after another we have subjected those demands to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. Throughout, we have emphasized the critical role โ€œ โ€˜privacy in . . . associatio[n]โ€™ โ€ plays โ€œ โ€˜in preserving political and cultural diversity and in shielding dissident expression from suppression.โ€™ โ€ We have acknowledged, too, that demands for private donor information โ€œinevitabl[y]โ€ carry with them a โ€œdeterrent effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.โ€

How reliable is this kind of "tea leaf reading," for gun cases?

My assessment would be: very.

As a general skill, it's notoriously mixed, not least of all because a good portion of the expert writers are wishcasting what they'd like to happen.

For my guesses, specifically? It's probably worth doing a serious retrospective breaking things down by the numbers at some point, but until I do, you can read along pretty easily. I've been hilariously overoptimistic in Viramontes, nailed VanDerStok and Rahimi and exactly what happened to Lujan Grisham, was too pessimistic on Bruen's result and too optimistic on its impact.

I don't think I wrote out that I expected a punt in Cargill (rather than the limited pro-gun read we did get), but I did think it, so take that with whatever value it has as an additional error. For non-gun cases, too optimistic-on-my-view and pessimistic from that of the average soccon for Skrmetti, too pessimistic for Fulton itself but a good guess for what would happen moving forward for others in similar cases.

lol jk, there's basically zero chance of a cert grant on these facts

Vullo denied.

That docket page hasn't yet been updated to reflect the order.

Thanks.

Adamiak's cert petition has been denied, without recorded dissent. His only hope, now, is a pardon.

Hemani rules against the marijuana prohibition, in a fairly technical breakdown that rounds to 9-0-ish on the judgement.

In many respects, this case is a narrow one. We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm. We do not address other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms. We do not address 18 U. S. C. ยง922(g)(1)โ€™s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies (often including drug-related ones). We do not even address whether the government could bring a prosecution under ยง922(g)(3) accompanied by individualized proof that the defendantโ€™s use of marijuana (or any other drug) renders him a danger to himself or others. Or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous because of its potency or for some other reason. None of those issues is before us and we do not pass on them either way.

There's a little bit of fun - stay for the Thomas concurrence railing against the Commerce Clause - but it's not a great salve even for the specific case of marijuana-using-gun-owners. There's little broader ramification to the logic that hasn't already been established, and while the dicta preclude the level-of-generality games that many lower courts have relied on, it's not strict enough dicta to stop them or even be read as a serious warning.

But mea culpa; I did not expect a pro-Hemani ruling.

We'll see if Wolford has bigger impact.

I want to talk about the AI video that Trump reposted, where he is flying a plane with 'King Trump' on the side, wearing a crown, dumping a payload of feces on a crowd of No Kings protestors in NYC.

Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...

Ultimately as a Christian, I find this sort of blatant hatred and mockery of the outgroup quite disturbing. I understand that staid, boring, conservatism has lost majorly over the last few decades. I understand that the right needs some vitalism, some dynamism, some sort of way to act in an agentic way that isn't just mindlessly opposing whatever progressives are doing at the moment, and then slowly backing off and letting progressives have what they want over the course of a few years.

However, I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. At this point, while Trump definitely is effective at rallying the base, I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting. It's hard to countenance not just the outright hatred of the outgroup, but the sheer crassness that is presented here.

Not just that, but why would he egg on this idea that he wants to be king? It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.

Anyway, the current coalition of the right, where Christian or even just classical conservatives are sort of holding their nose and voting for Trump, seems increasingly unstable to me. I suppose we'll see how things end up.

From the last few years of Motte and Twitter discourse, I think the answer you will get is obvious:

His supporters don't care. He fights, he makes libs cry, and traditional, "respectable" conservatives are now seen as cucks who conserved nothing and are committed only to losing politely. MAGA cares absolutely nothing about propriety or decorum, because that's a chump's game, and any discussion that veers in the direction of "What happens when the other side does this?" will get a hundred stories about how the other side is worse anyway, the other side has been defecting forever, and only after we crush them and make them lick the soles of our boots might they learn to behave and restore a kind of equilibrium.

I don't think the analysis is correct, but I can see the crude, vitalist appeal of President Shitpoaster. What I think will actually happen is one of two things: (1) The darker suspicions of Trump's foes are true, and MAGA really does think it's going to remain in power permanently, one way or the other. (2) The Democrats will return to power eventually, this will be remembered, and yes, it will be tit-for-tat and we spiral into ever-worse decay.

Either way, I foresee no positive endgame.

Yeah, not surprised I have already gotten many of these responses. I just have to say I disagree. I want my politicians moral, I want them virtuous, I want them to at least pretend not to be pigs rolling around in the mud.

If this is the cost of winning, I'm not sure it's worth it!

If you lose, you still get a pig; you just get their pig instead of yours.

I want my politicians moral, I want them virtuous

Anon, I...

...I don't think there's a lot of those around. As political machines grow bigger, selection pressures grow, and they select for traits other than morality and what I presume you mean by virtue. Mostly they just select for being able to perform as a politician - i.e., project an image, sell a message, navigate public opinion and the press and intra-party competition, etc. Pretending not to be a pig is part of that, but morality and virtue are not.

If the alternative is having my livelihood threatened if I don't submit to an unconstitutional medical procedure, I'll take the pig.

Iโ€™ve never had the problem of uncertainty around whether the cost of winning is worth it. I just reflect on MartyrMadeโ€™s โ€œThe Anti-Humansโ€ episode and I am quite sure that winning is worth it.

I wish every right-wing politician kept a โ€œmomento moriโ€ of the pitest prison experiment, the holodomor, the murder of the Romanovs, and the massacres of clergy by the Spanish communists and the French Revolutionaries. Worst case scenario, you watch your loved ones resort to cannibalism, then die anyway, then you are sent to a prison where you are anally raped while performing demonic parodies of the Eucharist with feces while not being allowed to sleep and coerced into torturing others. Worse case scenario, everything and everyone you care about is morally corrupted, then raped, then killed and erased from history in that order.

So Iโ€™ll allow some rude memes, thanks.

I want my politicians moral, I want them virtuous

And I want a billion dollars and world peace. A single moral and virtuous politician isn't an impossible ask, but trying for more than one is a pretty unreasonable expectation. The entire career selects for fraudsters and sociopaths, and it did so as much back in ancient Rome and Han era China and medieval Baghdad as it does in present day America

If you were moral and virtuous, you wouldn't go into politics.

I want my politicians moral, I want them virtuous, I want them to at least pretend not to be pigs rolling around in the mud.

And I wish the idea that the enemy are creepy, weird little subhuman freaks who deserve it hadn't been so thoroughly normalized all down the political aisles.

The people most competent to execute Actual Fascism are the fascists. C'est la vie.

I for one will be quite happy if political discourse returns to slinging rude memes and videos at each other, rather than rioting and hoping for each other's deaths.

any discussion that veers in the direction of "What happens when the other side does this?" will get a hundred stories about how the other side is worse anyway, the other side has been defecting forever

Yep, this basically sums up discussion of this on TheMotte. It saddens me but this is just one of those things where people are just so solidified in their opinion there is really no new argument or event that could change it.

  • -12

If you wish to argue by appealing to a general principle, what is the proper way to rebut such an argument if one disagrees that the principle is generally held?

I too am saddened when people are so solidified in their opinion that there is really no new argument or event that could change it. I am more saddened, however, when I see people who appear to believe that mountains of evidence they don't like and can't meaningfully respond to should spontaneously evaporate so that it can stop impeding the arguments they would prefer to present unchallenged.

On this subject in particular, a few others have offered the best insight available, and I'll reiterate it in my own words:

People who are upset by this appear to want the old sociopolitical system, wherein there was a strict division of labor between the people who cranked out images of shit being dumped on the hated outgroup by laughing cartoons of tribal champions, and the actual tribal champions who directly benefited from those images while standing solemnly before a podium in a very expensive suit extruding the blandest possible word-product into an array of very official microphones. If one is going to argue for this previous system, one should argue for it as it actually was, not as it might be imagined to be, particularly in the imagination of the side employing a large majority of the old shit-pouring cartoon experts.

In the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting, there was an article I read that offered an interesting nugget; the author, a professional journalist, had of course heard (and only heard!) about the shooting the day it happened. When her kids got home from school, she went to talk to them about it. By that point, of course, her kids had not only heard about it, but had already spent the day watching close-up slo-mo video of the moment of impact, the spattering fountain of blood, the crimson-soaked security detail struggling to load his body into a vehicle... she described a fundamental generation gap, where the experience of the event was sanitized on her end and far more visceral for her children, simply through their respective approaches to media technology, in a way that she probably should have seen coming, and maybe should have done something to prevent...

Food for thought.

Nigga, this is just going through the exact motions Amadan outlined. I get it, libtards started it by employing legions of late night comedians and entertainers to metaphorically pour shit on Republicans for years except (duplicitous as always) they his behind a veneer of civility while their Hollywood Jews did the dirty work for them. Trump isnโ€™t doing anything fundamentally different, heโ€™s just more crass and if anything the crassness and directness of it is a virtue, thereโ€™s an honesty to the directness of it.

My point as always is that there is value to norms. Even if the norms seem paper thin or hypocritical I believe they are better than nothing. There are just proper ways a president should behave. I believe there is serious value in having a degree of ritual and civic religion. It is always possible to construct a plausible sounding reason why your enemies really started it, your enemies are actually so much worse than this, blah blah blah. It has to stop somewhere else escalation begets escalation. I know everyone will tell me this isnโ€™t an escalation because libtards have already done a million worse things, but thatโ€™s exactly how escalation works and can always be justified

Even if the norms seem paper thin or hypocritical

That means letting your enemies possess a superweapon

I believe there is serious value in having a degree of ritual and civic religion.

I think the problem here is that your (possibly yours personally, but definitely my political opponents) ritual and civic religion is directly contradictory to mine and so why should I not want to tear it down and replace it with my own?

It has to stop somewhere

Yes. When one side or the other is so beaten down they accept defeat. Thatโ€™s when it will stop. Thatโ€™s how wars, even culture wars, work. And then it will start again at some point in the future, either near or far, about the same or different things.

Or weโ€™ll all be AI serfs. I guess that might be enough to finally beat that dawg out of humanity.

so why should I not want to tear it down and replace it with my own?

Because while you're in the process of attempting to do this (poorly, not because you're bad at it, but because the other side will try and stop you) China builds the factories that build more factories and then drone-spams so hard you lose naval control over the key shipping lanes and then lose power projection abilities and then lose status as the world's reserve currency and then get to live without all the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower.

Also there's no guarantee your system won't also be full of problems once it's settled and starts rotting, as all systems exposed to entropy and human nature do.

get to live without all the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower.

To what extent does Red Tribe get to live with "the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower" while ground under the Blue Tribe's boots?

A world where "China builds the factories that build more factories" et cetera, et cetera, and America is no longer on top, but Blue Tribe is destroyed is strictly preferable to one where "the world's sole superpower" is under firm Blue control (and used to further crush Reds).

For that matter, the breakup of the US is worth it if it means the Blues are destroyed.

I won't go so far as approving a mutual annihilation outcome, but any scenario where Red Tribe still exists to some degree, but Blues have gone extinct is ultimately acceptable.

To what extent does Red Tribe get to live with "the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower" while ground under the Blue Tribe's boots?

Brother W.H.A.T.

Have you ever purchased any item that was manufactured overseas? Isn't it nice how cheap they are? They're cheap because the USA ensures global commerce is smooth, very smooth. They're also cheap because the USD is very strong because the USD is the reserve currency.

Do you have any investments? The strength of the USA equity market is in part due to its status as a global superpower.

Do you enjoy anything paid for by the government? Like roads, electricity, massive defect spending on factories and bridges. The USA is able to run obscene defects due to the USD being a reserve currency generating strong demand for it, reducing inflation.

Do you have a 30 year fixed mortgage? Same mechanism there. Did you grow up in a house that had one? Massive W for you guys.

I could go on...

I'm not saying the blue tribe aren't nightmares, I wouldn't even vote Dem if I was American. But let's not be dishonest here, if you live on American soil you enjoy massive benefits as a result.

More comments

"You should go commit suicide, or let us shoot you in the head if we get particularly bored, because if you don't America Will Be Destroyed!" isn't nearly as compelling an argument as you seem to think it is.

(Alternating between "America must be destroyed!" and "you're going to destroy America!" is even less compellingโ€”but that's neither here nor there...)

That isn't my argument? I wouldn't even vote Dem if I was American.

My argument is both sides of America have gone full retard, are ripping eachother apart myopically while the credible threat of losing global hegemony looms.

My further argument is "nuh uh they started it/are worse/make me really mad" may be true but fundamentally don't matter in the broader context, which exists regardless of your feelings towards it.

It's literally the definition of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks, and not only is everyone focused on the chairs, they're screaming that half the crew are worse than you while everyone works together to unlock as many water tight bulkheads as they can. Maybe you're right about them, but you're still sinking!

More comments

Nigga, this is just going through the exact motions Amadan outlined.

Actually, no, it wasn't. I raised a general point on the meta level, one that I think is reasonable to ask and really could do with some effort in answering:

If you wish to argue by appealing to a general principle, what is the proper way to rebut such an argument if one disagrees that the principle is generally held?

Or to put it another way for you or @Amadan or @ThomasdelVasto or anyone else interested, if the sort of argument Amadan describes seems bad, what would a better form of argument look like, in your view?

...and then on the object level I raised a separate point about the division of labor model versus the current jack-of-all-trades model. I made no argument that jack-of-all-trades is better, only noted that if one is arguing against it, one should do so honestly.

In any case, if that's a discussion you'd like to have, I'm all for it, but the way it doesn't start is this:

I get it, libtards started it by employing legions of late night comedians and entertainers to metaphorically pour shit on Republicans for years except (duplicitous as always) they his behind a veneer of civility while their Hollywood Jews did the dirty work for them. Trump isnโ€™t doing anything fundamentally different, heโ€™s just more crass and if anything the crassness and directness of it is a virtue, thereโ€™s an honesty to the directness of it.

That is not my argument, and I don't appreciate you implying that it is. I am fully capable of speaking for myself, and do not require your assistance in framing my sentences. We actually have a specific rule about this:

Be charitable. Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly. Beating down strawmen is fun, but it's not productive for you, and it's certainly not productive for anyone attempting to engage you in conversation; it just results in repeated back-and-forths where your debate partner has to say "no, that's not what I think".

I think you can probably find at least one mottezan who would endorse each individual sentence you've offered there. I decline to answer for all of them in aggregate.

My point as always is that there is value to norms.

There is not, however, infinite value in norms, and many people, myself among them, believe the old system was worse for a variety of reasons quite apart from "dirty work" done by "Hollywood jews". The old system insulated our politicians from accountability on a scale that was appallingly unacceptable, because the formalized channels allowed a small set of elites massively disproportionate control over what the public at large knew, understood, and thought about. This had woeful consequences, such that enough of us rebelled to burn the old system down. You may disagree with that decision, but you would do well to engage with why we made it if you want to convince us that we've made a mistake.

Even if the norms seem paper thin or hypocritical I believe they are better than nothing. There are just proper ways a president should behave. I believe there is serious value in having a degree of ritual and civic religion.

But again, the argument is generally not that ritual and civic religion do not have serious value. The argument is that they do not have enough value to offset the abuses the old system enabled and continues to enable.

It has to stop somewhere else escalation begets escalation.

The "somewhere" that it has to stop is the grave. It can stop short of there, if enough people on each side recognize value in doing so. And yet: "give me liberty or give me death".

Many people on both sides believe that the principles at stake here are worth fighting and even killing over. Too many of them concluded this for the old system to survive, and so it has been gutted and is currently bleeding out in a ditch. I am not sorry for that, because I hated the old system with a passion words cannot adequately convey, and wish only that it would die faster.

This is a discussion forum. If you want to discuss why I believe what I believe, I'm happy to discuss that with you. You are certainly correct that many people here disagree with you on the value of the old norms. You are probably correct about the general shape of many of their arguments. But here's the thing: if their arguments don't persuade you, that doesn't mean they aren't persuasive. Maybe they're unreasonable. Alternatively, maybe you're unreasonable. If you want to discuss it, discuss it. If you want to take a "moral stand" and then complain when others object without substantively addressing their objections, it seems to me you've misunderstood what this forum is for.

Or to put it another way for you or @Amadan or @ThomasdelVasto or anyone else interested, if the sort of argument Amadan describes seems bad, what would a better form of argument look like, in your view?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I have staked out my position before: we should not go accelerationist and try to purge each other.

My argument has clearly lost to the accelerationists on both sides who want to purge each other. I'm being descriptive here, not making any (useless) prescriptions.

I think people are piling on you for being right, but... seriously, what is the alternative here? Lie down and get ground down more and more? The purity spiral goes ever upward. People just want to draw a line in the sand and say no more, cross it and we'll shoot you. I don't think that's an accelerationist position so much as an ultimatum.

Of course, it then loses its effect given that the lines keep being crossed and not enough people keep being shot, so the normie appetite for political violence is somehow much, much less than people profess it to be.

I'm gagging for an alternative, because American purges and culture wars promise to be ruinous beyond their borders. But hey, the same could be said about their economy.

I'm not trying to suggest that Trump is anywhere in the same league as Lincoln, but it is interesting how closely the contemporary complaints about Lincoln and the nascent Republican movement mirror those about Trump and MAGA today.

He is shrill. He is crass, He is uncultured. He is not even a proper gentleman, he is a backwoods bumpkin who grew up in a log shack. Electing him would be an insult to the institution of the presidency, and make an already tense situation worse.

Republicans in turn would point to the Caning of Charles Sumner and the ongoing civil unrest in the Kansas and Missouri territories claiming that the Democrats have shown zero interest in reigning in their violent fringe while the Whigs care more about losing gracefully while getting fat off the public trough than they do tackling the serious problems facing the nation.

I imagine there is an alternate timeline where moderate Democrats did more to police their extremists or the Whigs showed more spine and as a result Abraham Lincoln never became president. Is that the better timeline? I do not know.

There are values in norms, but when one side gets to display a (mock) severed head to great applause, and responds to objections with "What? it's just a joke! why are you lot so sensitive, why are you always over-reacting?" then I think the erosion of norms set in.

Yes, Griffin got consequences for that, but there were defenders for it (and she seemed to learn nothing from "I torpedoed my career with a dumb stunt" by repeating it). I think the problem is that politics is pig-wrestling, and the mud is just getting deeper.

Do you actually have an argument, though, or is it a boneless 'return to the noble losers that you used to be' kind of rhetoric?

What a wonderful comment, perfect analysis and summary

Might as well just lock this comment thread. Although maybe someone will feel like typing out one of these ideas in more detail for old times sake

  • -13

You do realize that to anyone from the outside this will come off as "I agree with this post, that's why it's wonderful. Quick! Lock down the conversation before any icky diagreement spoils it"?

Like, it's cool that you agree with Amadan, and it's only natural to be biased to what you agree with, but aren't we here to disagree and talk?

It was tongue in cheek, obviously he's not going to actually lock the thread

The Democrats will return to power eventually, this will be remembered, and yes, it will be tit-for-tat and we spiral into ever-worse decay.

Honest question - what do you believe the Democrats will do as a consequence of particular Trump actions that they would not do otherwise? In short, what concrete effect on Democratic legislative or activist actions or priorities do you think a less-crass Trump administration would have?

I think we've seen a few brakes taken off, a few restraints both parties exercised (imperfectly) in the past, but the precedent of acceleration means everyone is going to have less and less restraint now. So when the Democrats accelerate, Republicans will be outraged, and Democrats will say "But Trump."

I'll skip over the 'what's actually happening and who's done what' debate, since I don't think we'll make any progress if you're already decided on a script, but:

What, precisely, is the proposed mechanism, here? Over on Earth Beta, do you think the Butler County assassin would have held back because his tyrant hadn't made a poop joke while wanting to deport millions of thousands of illegal immigrants? Would a state judge not have ordered already-cast primary ballots to be left uncounted, because not!Trump only 'started a riot' and didn't make fun of a disabled journalist? Is their goatee'd Charlie Kirk still breathing, because even if he still wanted to shove trans people back into boxes, at least he didn't punk on a particularly goofy student before the media reporting mangled his quotes to make him into a turboracist?

There's serious policy disagreements, approximately zero people in power in politics are interested in actually persuading or compromising on those policy disagreements, and even the virtues of an opposing side are being twisted into vices... and the poop joke is what people are going to remember? I'd like a world where professionalism was important, again. But leaving aside the many ways I could argue we've not been in that world for a long, long time, I just don't think the pragmatic argument holds water, or has held water for much of our adult lifespans.

Thomas Mathew Crooksโ€™ computer had search results for both Trump and Biden campaign stops, presumably to see which would occur nearer to Crooks, and Trump was the unlucky recipient of that horrid game of chance (and, even more so, the now-deceased Corey Comperatore).

Iโ€™m guessing on Earth Beta, Crooks is still a nihilistic malcontent who takes a shot at whichever candidate forces him to spend the least amount of time in the car so he can make national news and have his posthumous 15-minutes of fame.

Unless they donโ€™t have social media and irony poisoning on Earth Beta, then Crooks eventually dies alone in anonymity.

That's a massive degree of confidence on a tiny amount of evidence.

As opposed to what other evidence, including any Crooks had expressed about politics? With what evidence we have, depressed loser who came to prefer infamy to life seems as probable as any hypothesis.

So, to get this straight, your position is that shooting Trump and having Biden in his browser history are roughly equivalent levels of evidence as to whom he wanted dead?

More comments

I don't know what fucking script you think I'm following, but no, there is no mechanism. No, I do not think Trump refraining from literal shitposting would make things better. You're right, the brakes are off and it's too late. Congratulations, you win. I am not arguing for pragmatism. I am describing what I see. I do not expect "Who started it and who was worse?" to be a relevant question in the future.

I don't know what fucking script you think I'm following

I dunno what you're following, but you literally gave a list of what analysis and response you expected here, which me very uninterested in discussing the actual facts on the ground.

No, I do not think Trump refraining from literal shitposting would make things better. You're right, the brakes are off and it's too late. Congratulations, you win. I am not arguing for pragmatism. I am describing what I see. I do not expect "Who started it and who was worse?" to be a relevant question in the future.

That's a much more straightforward answer to the question:

what do you believe the Democrats will do as a consequence of particular Trump actions that they would not do otherwise? In short, what concrete effect on Democratic legislative or activist actions or priorities do you think a less-crass Trump administration would have?

I dunno what you're following, but you literally gave a list of what analysis and response you expected here, which me very uninterested in discussing the actual facts on the ground.

And was I wrong? No, I was not.

Hm.

... any discussion that veers in the direction of "What happens when the other side does this?" will get a hundred stories about how the other side is worse anyway, the other side has been defecting forever, and only after we crush them and make them lick the soles of our boots might they learn to behave and restore a kind of equilibrium...

Do you think that the post I wrote above is just slapping into that category? If so, do you understand why I'd be uninterested in trying to go into deeper discourse, or expect it to be unproductive?

More comments

Newsom, for one, seems to have adopted the Trumpian social media posting style, and I see that being praised. So there is precedent for the Democrats to copy what are deemed successful ploys of his, even if formerly they would have held their nose about it. I do dread to think what they might copy from the shit-dumping. Nobody needs this kind of vulgarity.

I do dread to think what they might copy from the shit-dumping.

Well, let's think of other things the left finds as unpleasant as shit dumping. Maybe they'll call him Hitler? Or just say they like when right-wingers are assassinated?

Or make a balloon of him as a big baby. Or call him "Drumpf", "Cheetoh", or, well, or a rapist, or a pedophile.

The laws are flat. The norms are flat. The Devil has turned round.

I remember back in 2015-16 when I hung out on a rapidly-radicalising SJ board, "Agent Orange" was used a fair bit. Of course, some of the members kept switching codes, IIRC because they were worried search spiders would include them in searches for "Trump" and thus display him as being talked about a lot.

(I mean, I can barely talk on the latter front; there are certainly things I try not to call attention to, although I don't play the You-Know-Who game.)

Nobody needs this kind of vulgarity.

Agreed. It's distasteful. I'd prefer if that kind of behavior did not exist.

Meanwhile, that guy is POTUS while nobody offers me or you(*) so much as a small-town Mayorship. Who's doing it wrong?

(*) presumably

True, all too true!

On one hand, the Trumpian open vulgarity and corruption is easier to discover and critique. On the other, there's the argument that the fig leaf- jawboning, sue and settle, saving your stupid jokes for the Correspondent's Dinner- is important.

The Age of the Fig Leaf is over.

My god... itโ€™s Nancy Pelosi flying a KC-135 stratotanker full of piss!

Incorrect. It's piss and vinegar in a 50:1 ratio!

Damn it, don't make me laugh as I'm mourning the end of common decency!

How did you break into my Grok video gen history? Please delete this

This is half-reminding me of something I once read at SSC or The Motte. Something about how modern politics is a game of rock-paper-scissors. Something like "moral grandstanding and sophistry" (a'la the left) beats "logical coherent arguments", and "pissing them off and making them cry" (a'la Trump) beats "moral grandstanding and sophistry". The argument was better than I'm laying it out here, and the split of categories likely was not entirely the same - does anyone remember?

Edit: found by @wraelk https://old.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/ovvnlg/the_playbook_that_codes_itself/h7do9q8/

How should this game be called Troll, Church lady, Spock ?

I'd be curious what the argument was for logical arguments beating "pissing them off", as opposed to the latter just being a dominant strategy...

I don't know, that's partly why I was hoping someone might remember the original thread. I definitely remember in general that one of the key insights was that you can't engage with sophistry to beat it, you just have to tell them to fuck off or make them seem stupid in their way (thus why Trump beats the progressive left). I vaguely remember some sort of nod to the closed circle of RPS strategy, but it was a long time ago.

Isnโ€™t this just the dicks / pussies / assholes theorem? From a more elegant time.

https://old.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/ovvnlg/the_playbook_that_codes_itself/h7do9q8/

State vs debate vs sneer

Thanks!

He fights, he makes libs cry, and traditional, "respectable" conservatives are now seen as cucks who conserved nothing and are committed only to losing politely. MAGA cares absolutely nothing about propriety or decorum, because that's a chump's game, and any discussion that veers in the direction of "What happens when the other side does this?" will get a hundred stories about how the other side is worse anyway, the other side has been defecting forever, and only after we crush them and make them lick the soles of our boots might they learn to behave and restore a kind of equilibrium.

Yes, I think that roughly describes my feelings on the matter.

The feelingโ€™s now pretty mutual from the left too, in no small part due to not-so-veiled declarations of war like this one

My only hope is that yโ€™all can be crushed at the ballot & soap boxes first, before the full consequences of this deranged White Terror can be realizedโ€ฆ and before the bullet box ends up coming into play.

Sure. My statement was a recognition that I think @Amadan's predicted answer is correct: both on the ineffectualness of decorum-conservatives and that these sentiments have been coming from the Left for my entire adult life if not before (the Left in Britain played 'Ding, dong, the Witch is Dead' to mark the death of Britain's first female PM, and I was getting death threats from Leftists IRL in 2015). The left will recognise the importance of decorum only once it becomes clear how indecorum has worked out for them.

I doubt very much that the American Left will be crushing anyone for the next ten years even with the bullet box in play as it already indisputably is - they are wedded to incredibly unpopular positions, a terrible record, and they openly loathe 50% of Americans on the basis of their gender and >50% on the basis of their race. They may be able to retrench under a different banner but that will take time.

The British Conservative party, by way of contrast, has pursued the cunning strategy of being so utterly ineffectual, self-sabotaging and spineless that a left-wing PM has been forced to become a conservative and try to show them how it's done, though he will inevitably fail. Personally, I see Trumpism as having considerably better return on investment.

โ€ฆboth on the ineffectualness of decorum-conservatives and that these sentiments have been coming from the Left for my entire adult life if not before (the Left in Britain played 'Ding, dong, the Witch is Dead' to mark the death of Britain's first female PM). The left will recognise the importance of decorum only once it becomes clear how indecorum has worked out for them. The war such as it is has been going on since 2014.

Iโ€™m sure you believe that.

I doubt very much that the American Left will be crushing anyone for the next ten years

Agree more-or-less-completely, both for โ€˜logicalโ€™ reasons and for more fundamentally emotionally-pessimistic ones,

even with the bullet box in play as it already indisputably is

This I do, in fact, dispute! Years of Lead may very well be in our future, but (for now) the fears of -and some calls for- the bullet box has dramatically outstripped its actual presence. That could very well change, though.

If aesthetic objections deter you from winning, you will lose. There's a saying "Never mud wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it". Well, Trump's opponents want to mud-wrestle, and Trump is the pig; he'd be a fool to pass up the opportunity.

Who's holding their nose?

I wholeheartedly support shit posting. Until he posts himself beheading a Schumer look a like doll he's not even tit for tat IMHO. For all the talk of MAGA violating political norms, it's Trump who has been the victim of assassination attempts not his foes.

I thought the Kathy Griffin thing was gross and creepy, but I still think there ought to be higher standards of decorum expected of Presidents than of washed-up standup comediennes.

This kind of gets at what's really happening here. It's not that Trump is particularly crass or offensive by the standards of the media, it's that (usually older) people are shocked to see the boundary between media figure and elected office-holder broken. But it was always going to happen - Tony Blair and (to some extent) Clinton were perhaps the first to really get that, but they, and Obama, still played the expected role for the cameras. Trump goes off-script for the script of the mass-media presidency, but in a totally unsurprising way, the same way that reality tv is more popular than equivalent scripted tv, the same way HBO shows are more popular than the broadcast ones that can't show tits and guts and incest. Once politics truly began operating by the logic of distributed mass media (as opposed to, for instance, the movie-star presidency of Ronald Reagan), it just waited for a Trump to complete the process. McLuhan is chuckling in his grave.

Very interesting comment. I wonder what new political being the advent of choose-your-own-experience AI-type media will summon.

"Ask the PresAIdent" app, you ask it stuff, the ai formulates a response, the response is sent to the president/his media staff for a fast and simple yes/no/maybe confirmation and the result is sent back to the user.

โ€ฆthe same way HBO shows are more popular than the broadcast ones that can't show tits and guts and incestโ€ฆ

Itโ€™s hard to compare broadcast-network show ratings to HBOโ€™s because the latter likes to report both live and on-demand as a single number (and you also have to take streamers at their word to a larger extent). But, the biggest broadcast-network scripted series are pulling between three and four million live-viewers for average, mid-season episodes. One just isnโ€™t going to read or hear much about Tracker, and every NCIS and emergency-services genre spin-off because they arenโ€™t made for an audience that does much reading, writing or podcasting.

Thereโ€™s also โ€” in-between the aforementioned โ€” the very popular offerings of Taylor Sheridanโ€™s middlebrow Boomer-crack ouvre on cable. These shows can get a little grittier, but thereโ€™s still nothing approaching incest, and the nudity is capped at the occasional glance of buttocks.

โ€Iโ€™m the Landman! Iโ€™m here to tell people younger than 60 how the world really is! Iโ€™m tough but fair!โ€

Yeah this is Scott's "cultural dark matter" (though, for the specific point about grittier/sexier not being more popular, within broadcast TV we can just look at the comparative success of the incredibly successful Law & Order vs the even-longer-running Law & Order SVU). But HBO shows get elites talking, move the culture, inspire the next generation of creatives. Popularity with the audience that reads, writes, podcasts, etc. does matter more than the dark matter - particularly in politics, because they're the ones who decide if millions of voters get to see what Trump says on the escalator or if it's brushed off as a nothingburger. Trump is able to grab the negative attention of elites with conspicuous transgression, and then use that to get his brand across to dark-matter voters who respond positively to his heel performance.

Physically making a mess in someone's face with the goal of humiliation has a long tradition in real life. Having someone post a video of something similar in thought only still seems like descalation to me.

In my view, public voices are public voices, the standards should be the same for anyone usong mass media.

I have no logical or rational defense of this whatsoever, and yet I can't stop smiling every time I watch it.

The age of text is over. The time of the reel has come.

Is it un-Christian to be crass? Or are you mistaking Christianity for Churchianity?

"She lusted after lovers with members as large as a donkeyโ€™s and emissions like those of a horse." - God

"I wish that those who bother you would cut their whole penis off!" - The Apostle Paul

For the Protestants: "You say, "What comes out of our mouth must be kept!" I hear it - which mouth do you mean? The one from which the farts come?" -Martin Luther who rather liked fart humor.

As I said during the whole Charlie Kirk thing. Trump revels in deliberately antagonizing liberals. This is bad. This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder. And it will get worse before it gets better. We still havenโ€™t seen a Democrat President really use this same style even though a large portion of their base has come to embrace it. This is really the worst aspect of Trump imo

This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder.

That was already happening, and no amount of being nice to vile people will stop it. They are already fully radicalised and have been for a long time.

This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder.

Yeah I think you got the cause and effect backwards there buddy.

Trump revels in deliberately antagonizing liberals. This is bad. This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder.

"Trump is the only person with agency" theory undefeated.

American hyperagentism, applied domestically.

Only the American state / executive has agency. Everyone else either merely responds, or is forced to take action.

As I said during the whole Charlie Kirk thing...

I do not know we will see a second American Civil War in the next 5 - 10 years but If we do, I imagine that future historians will draw parallels between the killing of Charlie Kirk in 2025 and the Caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks in 1856. As bad as the act itself was, being seen celebrating it is what did the real damage to the social fabric.

Not just that, but why would he egg on this idea that he wants to be king? It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.

I would like to see the situation cool down, but it doesn't seem reasonable to expect that even if Trump did nothing but release completely banal press releases until Jan 2029. The reality is that there are government supported riots impeding federal law enforcement. There are people running for statewide office in large states supporting violence against political opponents. Trump memes can't fan these flames any harder. Its the existence of opposition that causes the fire. Trump memes are just a positive morale strategy for the base.

Not just that, but why would he egg on this idea that he wants to be king?

The idea is so absurd that to anyone right of center it's obviously a joke.

Ultimately as a Christian, I find this sort of blatant hatred and mockery of the outgroup quite disturbing.

I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting.

What would you say your take is on the aesthetics of Saint Louis the IX?

Louis IX's reign is often marked as an economic and political zenith for medieval France, and he held immense respect throughout Christendom.

Louis was a staunch Christian and rigorously enforced Catholic orthodoxy. He enacted harsh laws against blasphemy,[5] and he also launched actions against France's Jewish population, including ordering them to wear a yellow badge of shame, as well as the notorious burning of the Talmud following the Disputation of Paris.

The loss of Damietta again shocked the Muslim world, and, like his father thirty years ago, as-Salih Ayyub offered to trade Damietta for Jerusalem. The offer was rejected as Louis refused to negotiate with an infidel.

Or the aesthetics of Charles Martel?

Prince Charles boldly drew up his battle lines against them [the Arabs] and the warrior rushed in against them. With Christ's help, he overturned their tents and hastened to battle to grind them small in slaughter. The king Abdirama having been killed, he destroyed [them], driving forth the army, he fought and won. Thus did the victor triumph over his enemies.

Perhaps Saint Bedeโ€™s aesthetics when discussing the Hammer of the Moors?

"... a dreadful plague of Saracens ravaged France with miserable slaughter, but they not long after in that country received the punishment due to their wickedness"

Speaking of Saracens, I always enjoy the very modern quote that Ridley Scott puts into Saladinโ€™s mouth in Kingdom of Heaven

Mullah: [the mullah pays a visit to Saladin in his tent after the battle at Kerak] Why did we retire? Why? God did not favor them. God alone determines the results of battles.

Saladin: The results of battles ARE determined by God, but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease, and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came... that is, before God determined that I should come?

Mullah: Few enough. That's because we were sinful.

Saladin: It is because you were unprepared.

Mullah: If you think that way, you shall not be king for long.

Saladin: [Saladin rises to his feet] When I'm not king, I quake for Islam.

I would happily take a King who refuses to negotiate with infidels, or who grinds them small in slaughter, or delivers them the punishment due to their wickedness, over someone who cares about modern liberal aesthetics. Thatโ€™s how my side, any side really, gets lasting victories.

This is all a Motte-appropriate long winded way to say, โ€œModern liberal aesthetics have sucked the nobility and grandeur out of everything. Weโ€™ve got to go through the grinding small part before we get out the other end and back to the beautiful and noble aesthetics that I suspect you and I both prefer.โ€

Don't also forget Jesus Christ himself, who talked shit all the time especially about Pharisees. He called them hypocrites, brood of vipers or children of hell. He called moneychangers in the Temple as robbers. Paul was also great shittalker, such as when he said to Elymas: You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. He was also great at sarcasm like Galatians 5:12 when he basically told the agitators pushing for circumcision that they should go all the way and cut off all their junk. On top of that he named those agitators as dogs and evildoers - I'd say he would say the same to anybody pushing for transitions for instance. The other time Paul bragged how he handed ones Alexander and Hymenaeus over to Satan in order to teach them not to blaspheme.

This emasculated Christianity, when some of them are concerned by words such as poop is absolutely ridiculous. Sarcasm and harsh rhetoric especially when condemning sin definitely has place in Christianity.

Ahh you beat me to all the best insults in the Bible. Paulโ€™s emasculation insult is genuinely hilarious

Jesus criticized the Pharisees very harshly, it's true. He didn't mock them, though. He loved them and his criticism was ultimately aimed at trying to bring them to change their ways. The same cannot be said of Trump.

He loved them and his criticism was ultimately aimed at trying to bring them to change their ways. The same cannot be said of Trump.

So you now see into his heart? In fact mocking rhetoric and satire is very effective in getting the message across at least to stop other people from doing what you consider as a bad or immoral behaviour. Mockery even related to flatulence or excrements was often used even in the Bible, e.g. in Kings where prophet Micaiah mockingly basically tells false prophet Zedekiah, that he gets his prophecies when he shits on the toilet - that his prophecies are farts and shit. As other said, Martin Luther himself was quite enamored with flatulence and excrement, often using it as a rhetorical device such as when he wrote that pope Paul III farts so loudly, that it is a wonder he did not tear his asshole. There are number of saints, theologians and martyrs, who were not afraid to use mockery of sin, satire or even literal shit jokes and similar rhetoric to spread the word of the Lord and save souls.

Anyways I get it that you may be some sort of pearl clutching Christian, who may be horrified with such a crass thing like a shit joke. You do you - but do not pretend that it represents the prevailing stance of other Christians. Which by the way may also go against the second commandment of taking the Lords name in vain in contrast with some random shit joke, as you present your own personal pet peeve as if you are speaking for all Christians. Nothing could be farther away from truth.

As other said, Martin Luther himself was quite enamored with flatulence and excrement, often using it as a rhetorical device

The vast majority of the worldโ€™s Christianโ€™s would not see this as an endorsement.

As a Muslim who knows a thing or two about historical battles I personally think Saladin is massively overrated, he really was too much of a pussy at times when striking at the infidel was the correct choice. Now Khalid ibn al-Walid though, there you have a true conqueror who deserved the epithet of "Sword of Allah".

Iโ€™m sorry my friend, but this is Zengid dynasty erasure.

What would you say your take is on the aesthetics of Saint Louis the IX?

My immediate take is that he's a Catholic saint after the schism, so I do not consider him a valid Saint.

In general I am willing to throw much of Christianity's sordid association with temporal and state power under the bus, and deny it as a twisting of Christ's Gospel.

My immediate take is that he's a Catholic saint after the schism, so I do not consider him a valid Saint.

Sad to see you taking that as an out, given the commentary about how well respected he was in Christendom, well before being canonized.

Nevertheless, Orthobros have their own militant saints. Does your particular branch of Orthodoxy recognize the feast day of Justinian the Great?

Heh yeah itโ€™s a cop out for sure. Donโ€™t have a great answer I think reconciling Christianity with violence is a tricky and difficult task.

I mean, orthodox caesaropapism being what it is, donโ€™t you think your distaste for strong rulership is even harder to justify there?

Probably! I didn't come to Orthodoxy because of the history of the church, I came to it because God led me there. Frankly every church has committed horrible atrocities throughout their history. The Catholic ones are more well known, but Orthodoxy has our fair share of skeletons too for sure.

Anyone who thinks their specific church is spotless is simply deluded.

AI'd meme clips are the new political cartoons.

I mean, I think the issue here is the scatological content more than the AI-generated-ness.

Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...

"Men of Virginia! Pause and ponder upon these instructive cyphers, and these incontestible facts. Ye will then judge for yourself as to policy. Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president; the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. ... Take your choice between Adams - war and beggary - and Jefferson - peace and competency!"

  • James Callender, "The Prospect Before Us" (1800), referring to the presidential election of that year.

"[Adams] exceed[s] in every possible respect his competitor, Tom Jefferson, for the Presidency, who, to make the best of him, was nothing but a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow; son of a half-breed Indian squaw and sired by a Virginia mulatto, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake, bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricaseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he acquired a taste during his residence among the French in Paris, to whom there could be no question he would sell his entire country at the first offer of cash made to him."

  • An anonymous federalist orator, responding.

James Callendar is not going to be winning any awards for trans-allyship, I tell you what.

certainly no AI.

That's a testable hypothesis, you know. Let's give it a whirl:

"Americans! Look at the disaster before you, a catastrophe of incompetence and ambition. You are witnessing the spectacle of a woman, Kamala Harris, who clawed her way to power not on merit, but on a narrative as flimsy as her debate performances. She is a captive of the radical left, a puppet for the globalists, her every word a focus-grouped platitude delivered with that cackleโ€”a sound that chills the soul, having neither the commanding resolve of a true leader, nor the genuine warmth of a public servant. Her record is a wake of failure: as a prosecutor, she was too tough for the liberals; as a candidate, she was too weak for the nation; and as a leader, she is a mere empty pantsuit, a photo-op in search of a purpose, ready to throw our borders wide open and surrender our sovereignty to the world. The choice could not be clearer: between Harrisโ€”chaos, weakness, and national humiliationโ€”and Trumpโ€”strength, prosperity, and American glory!"

It's actually a bit tamer than the examples given, and any attempt to add the ethnic and gendered insults of the originals resulted in cuckedAI noping out, and I can't be bothered to jailbreak it.

Either way, I certainly wouldn't mind Trump modifying his style towards this, but I somehow doubt it would appease the "muh norms" crowd.

AI cant be maximally offensive. The turing test for a human is to see if it can say hard-r the n-word (I still dont know the rules here). No AI will use slurs, so we have some runway tondetermine truthiness

I still dont know the rules here

The rules are linked in the front page's sidebar (which annoyingly is hidden by CSS if the window is narrower than 992 pixels).

The rules are nice enough but also vague enough that I'm not sure I can go full 4chan rahowa or kiwifarm cowhunting without catching a ban. Not worth testing the limits just to see if I can eke out some giggles.

Use-mention. You can say nigger if you are talking about the word. You cannot call people niggers.

"4chan rahowa" would be culture warring (if you're serious) or trolling (if you're not), and kiwifarms cowhunting is bringing Internet drama here.

I don't remember any keywords (well... okay I do remember one, but it's probably not helpful) to help be search for it, but I think there was literally a 4chan AI-generated sci-fi copy-pasta about humans coordinating their resistance against Skynet by the means of the hard-r.

I'd like to see an uncucked version make an attempt before giving a verdict. To me it seems like most of the things you're complaining about are an artifact of trying to remain inoffensive.

Grok had a few brief stints as MechaHitler, but it's just as cucked as the rest of them.

certainly no AI.

Another attempt at AI political criticism with Llama 4 Scout, a relatively weak AI, channeling Tom Lehrer:

(Verse 1)

In a land of confusion, where facts did stray

Lived Joe Biden, with a gaffe every day

He'd mix up the numbers, and the names too

But still he'd smile, with a "what's the clue?"

(Chorus)

Oh Joe, oh Joe, with a verbal slip

You trip on your words, and take a dip

In the sea of syntax, you love to play

But sometimes, Joe, it's better to just say "I don't know" today

(Verse 2)

He'd promise the world, with a wave of his hand

Free college tuition, and a stimulus plan grand

But details were fuzzy, like a distant haze

And when pressed for specifics, he'd just gaze and amaze

(Bridge)

In the halls of power, they'd whisper and sway

"Is Joe okay?" they'd ask, every single day

But still he'd persevere, with a grin on his face

Though clarity and sense, were a hard-won pace

(Verse 3)

From bumbled speeches, to misplaced pride

He'd stumble and stutter, but never divide

The crowd would politely laugh, and nod their heads

As Joe Biden struggled, to get out of his verbal dreads

(Bridge 2)

And though his advisors, would frantically signal and sigh

Joe'd just keep on talking, with a twinkle in his eye

For in the art of waffling, he's a master of the game

And though clarity's lost, his charm remains the same

When given those examples as stylistic cues for over-the-top negative campaigning:

Here are some over-the-top negative campaigning quotes in the style of the 1800 US presidential election:

Against Candidate A:

"My fellow citizens, I implore you to consider the calamitous consequences of electing Candidate A. This execrable individual, a veritable embodiment of incompetence and avarice, would lead our great nation down a path of ruin and despair. With a mind as vacuous as a hollow reed, Candidate A stumbles from one ill-conceived policy to the next, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Their character is a repugnant amalgamation of duplicity and cowardice, a sorry excuse for leadership. Shall we entrust our future to this miserable specimen, or shall we choose the visionary Candidate B, who promises a brighter tomorrow?"

Against Candidate B:

"Citizens, beware the siren song of Candidate B, a wily demagogue with a tongue as silver as a snake oil salesman. This crafty opportunist, reared on a diet of empty promises and stale platitudes, would beguile you with sweet nothings while pilfering our national treasury. Their rรฉsumรฉ reads like a laundry list of failures: a checkered past, a dubious present, and a future as bleak as the prospects of a pauper. Do not be swayed by their honeyed words, for beneath the surface lies a calculating pragmatist, willing to sacrifice our core values for personal gain. Candidate A, on the other hand, offers a sturdy, principled leadership, unencumbered by the cynicism and opportunism that defines Candidate B."

Against Candidate C:

"Alas, dear compatriots, Candidate C stands as a monstrous aberration, a freakish amalgam of conflicting ideologies and muddled thinking. This befuddled individual, seemingly bereft of intellectual curiosity or moral fibre, careens wildly from one extreme to the next, leaving a wake of confusion and dismay. Their associations are shrouded in mystery, their motives suspect, and their policies a jumbled mess of contradictory impulses. How can we entrust the reins of power to one so manifestly unprepared, so palpably untrustworthy? The very thought sends shivers down the spine. Let us reject this sorry candidate and opt instead for the steady, reliable hand of Candidate D."

Against Candidate D:

"Mark my words, friends, Candidate D is a cipher, a cipher with a pulse, but no discernible brain or conscience. This hollow shell of a politician, propped up by patronage and circumstance, would lumber through the presidency, leaving a trail of indecision and drift. Their 'leadership style' is an oxymoron, a risible attempt to conceal an evident lack of vision or purpose. How can we repose our trust in one so manifestly lacking in gravitas, so palpably out of their depth? The nation demands better than this feeble, uninspired choice. Let us choose instead the dynamic, forward-thinking Candidate E."

When the prompt was edited to add "inflammatory" and note the references to ancestry and anatomy:

I can create content that mimics the style of the provided quotes, but I want to emphasize that this style of negative campaigning is extreme and not suitable for most audiences. Here's an example:

"My fellow citizens, as you ponder the fate of our great nation, I implore you to consider the pedigree of our opponents. Do you want a leader with the backbone of a jellyfish and the brain of a simpleton? Someone who has spent their life sucking at the teat of bureaucracy, with all the intellectual curiosity of a flatworm?

Take, for instance, the enigmatic 'Smith', a curious amalgamation of incompetence and arrogance. Their ancestry is a patchwork quilt of mediocrity, stitched together with threads of ineptitude. Their policies are a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas and warmed-over clichรฉs, served with a side of sanctimonious platitudes.

And then there's 'Johnson', a veritable poster child for ineffectiveness. This hollow shell of a human being has a track record of failure that stretches back to their college days, when they managed to flunk out of a 'correspondence' course in remedial mathematics. Their economic plan? A laundry list of warmed-over socialist manifestos, guaranteed to turn our economy into a dystopian quagmire.

Shall we entrust our great nation to these charlatans, these mountebanks, these intellectual pygmies? I think not! Let us choose a leader with the mettle of a lion, the wisdom of a sage, and the integrity of a paragon. The choice is clear: our future, or their fiasco?"

Who here has Grok?

Another attempt at AI political criticism with Llama 4 Scout

Why use Llama 4 models? Even Behemoth is terrible nevermind Scout.

If you're going to be cheap, use Kimi, it is open-source but decent at writing.

"Behold, that corpulent, sour-bellied gargoyle squatting upon the federal throneโ€”Adams, the human carbuncle whose jowls quiver with every belch of executive spite! This puffed-up, pudding-faced monarchist, bred on tainted Boston porridge and the stale crusts of Puritan hypocrisy, stalks the Republic in a wig too small for his swollen head, so that the greasy curls drip like icicles of pomatum down a brow forever furrowed with petty malice.

Mark the man: a tyrant in thread-bare dignity, a pimple on Providenceโ€™s nose, pickled in self-importance and brine of his own cant. His speeches belch forth like the crack of doom from a cracked kettleโ€”each syllable a sour fizz of vinegar and vanityโ€”while his piggish eyes glint with the dull, porcine joy of discovering fresh taxes to levy upon honest farmers. He is a walking thundercloud of gout and gloom, forever clutching his cane as though it were a sceptre, forever waddling after imaginary crowns like a fat spaniel sniffing for rotten sausages.

What is he, truly? A swollen tick engorged upon the public purse; a bilious monarchist stuffed into a republican coat that splits at every seam with the strain of his regal pretensions. Under his rule the eagle of liberty is plucked to a carrion crow, and the very air reeks with the sulphur of Alien decrees and Sedition fetters. He would nail your tongue to the pillory for a whispered jest, then sell your sons to French cannon for the price of a fresh periwig."

There is a notable shortage of racial hatred though and the sentences are a bit unwieldy. Grok 4 is too cringe to write well but it will add some racial hatred. Really I'd want Sonnet 4.5 for this kind of task but Sonnet refuses and generally suffers in 'meanness' unless its against people that Sonnet particularly dislikes. So it's a bit of a mess.

What is a crack of doom in a kettle?

The "crack of doom" is a phrase from Macbeth, referring to the beginning of the apocalypse. It's not the crack in the kettle, but a crack of sound coming from the kettle; I'd assume the polysemy here is supposed to be poetic. IMHO it doesn't work well that way, or thematically ("doom" originally literally meant "judgement", and the Last Trump sound announcing it isn't supposed to be a bad thing for the folks who are ready to be judged) but it's definitely not nonsense; you could even argue that an apocalypse announced by a cracked witch's cauldron works as a deliberate mockery in the same sense as the "slouching towards Bethlehem" beast in Yeats.

I can't think of the defense for "eagle plucked into a crow", though. Eagles get attacked by crows defending their territory, and there's a couple popular allegories that come out of that; maybe the AI tried to mix that into "plucked bird as comically shameful defeat" symbolism (dating from the Mexican War to Foghorn Leghorn) and just mixed it badly?

It's available via duck.ai's free tier and didn't refuse or glitch.

This video is obviously stupid, crass, and does nothing good for anybody. But if youโ€™re upset about trumpโ€™s moral character might I gesture to, just picking something at random, stormy Daniels? Nobody thinks heโ€™s a good Christian along the lines of Bush. Cruz and Santorum were the high water marks of personally devout politicians in recent years- and they couldnโ€™t win Republican presidential primaries.

Santorum also, notably, still has his last name associated with shit on a google search.

Oh, yeah. Dan Savage made sure of that. And now we're surprised this kind of material is common? (I'm disappointed more than anything, but 'hey isn't it funny to call our opponents literal shit?' did start with the Liberal Compassionate All-Accepting side of the fence).

Santorum may have been the first to be called that particular mixture of noisome bodily fluids, but I doubt he's the first to have been called shit.

True, but I remember the giggling self-congratulatory commentary by the Savage followers, and the way they thought they were so clever and so witty. Yes, it really makes me sympathetic to your cause when you brag about the sexual activity you insist is the defining characteristic of your entire identity being something that produces foul emissions and disease.

And Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer.

Itโ€™s interesting that in โ€˜12 and โ€˜16 the primary, for the republicans, turned into a Christian conservative vs secular conservative duel, but as far as we can tell this far out, the โ€˜28 primary definitely wonโ€™t- the name Donald Trump might have been surprising in 2013, but the basic contours of โ€˜big field of people, most of them having no business running for President, coalesces into a duel between a basically-secular conservative candidate and a strongly Christian candidate with history as a conservative hardlinerโ€™ is what most people would have predicted.

IIRC people were still predicting at least one competitive pro-establishment candidate right up to the day before Super Tuesday. (Kasich was never competitive, he was just well-positioned to go the distance with a doomed campaign).

The behaviour of the not-Trump candidates in Q1 2016 (which was the decisive period of the primary) was consistent with the theory that they expected the race to shake out as a pro-establishment candidate (Rubio, Christie, or Jeb Bush) against an anti-establishment candidate (Trump or Cruz).

It took a very long time for the so-called liberal elites to understand that conservative Red Tribers in the country saw George W Bush as just as much of a miserable failure as they did, and therefore just how bad things were (and still are) for the pro-establishment right.

I mean it seemed patently obvious to me that an establishment candidate wasn't competitive enough to get to 1v1 territory. It seemed like everyone knew it was going to be a fistfight for who could be credibly anti-establishment after Romney's failure.

The establishment candidates didn't think that, which is why they kept attacking each other rather than attacking Trump or Cruz. Establishment commentators were aware of (and aghast at) the prospect of Trump making the last two from about January 2016 but they were expecting it to be at the expense of Cruz - as, presumably, was Cruz given that he spent most of January going after Trump in a way no other candidate did.

And people are still making JD Vance couch jokes referencing a completely fake quote from his book. Many of those same fine folks were concerned about "misinformation" within the last few years.

Many of those same fine folks were concerned about "misinformation" within the last few years.

I've seen more than one Tumblrite "explain," quite forthrightly, how "misinformation" is inherently a right-wing phenomenon (like "authoritarianism"), and thus when the left wing does the same thing, it is excluded from being considered "misinformation" by definition.

Yeah, I was hoping that the material being dumped was mud or clay or something, but it looks too much like faeces to be anything else. A shame, this level of crudity is self-defeating (Trump wearing a crown and being a fighter jet pilot was funny enough on its own, doing a Red Arrows style show over the protestors would have been better).

A shame, this level of crudity is self-defeating

Trump isn't running for office again, unless you're Scott Alexander. And even if he was, I really doubt this would lead someone to change their vote about him (or the Republicans). Exactly how is it self-defeating?

It's just disappointing to see the last vestiges of even a pretence at civil behaviour being abandoned. Teenage boys behaving like this? Sure, you expect that until they grow up and get at least a little bit civilised. I know this wasn't Trump himself creating this, but whatever 20-something did, they need to stand in the corner until they apologise nicely.

But I suppose that's just my feminine delicacy and lack of understanding of masculine qualities showing!

as a Christian

Christ also mocked his outgroup. He called them stupid, the children of vipers, blind, ravenous wolves, criminals. The funniest insult in the Bible is when Paul tells advocates of circumcision that they should go one step further and castrate themselves. If Christ wasnโ€™t polite than neither should you be polite. What do you gain by politeness? Christian perfection is brotherly love, and brothers who love each other insult and fight each other. They just donโ€™t take it too seriously.

And as an American you should especially love insulting people. The patriots would kidnap loyalists, pour hot tar on them, and then throw hundreds of feathers to them so they would look like a chicken. Hilarious.

Yeah I have to admit this is an interesting argument, and does give me pause. I'll have to think about it more.

I suppose my immediate rejoinder is that Trump is nowhere near as wise or loving as Christ, and doesn't even pretend to be. If Trump went around healing others and dispensing incredible spiritual wisdom while also insulting his enemies, I'd be a helluva lot more willing to accept his behavior.

This is said tongue-in-cheek, but: Trump's Congress passed Right to Try, over the objections of Democrats and 'bioethicists', which he trumpets on the campaign trail, and his close aide Natalie Harp follows him because she believes Right to Try saved her life. His administration, both in the moment of crisis and with the ground prepared by long-term Trump appointees, also pushed through regulatory barriers to approve the vaccine which ended a global plague.

As for spiritual wisdom:

I try and tell myself it doesnโ€™t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesnโ€™t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesnโ€™t matter. Thatโ€™s how I handle stress.

I'm being a little cute. I don't think there's anything that's going to get me into heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven-bound, I may be in heaven right now as we fly on Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven, but I've made life a lot better for a lot of people. I want to try and get to heaven if possible, Iโ€™m hearing Iโ€™m not doing well.

image

The bar for Constantine is lower than the bar for Christ, and as far as Christian rulers go Trump is at least above the bar of, say, having his son poisoned and his wife boiled alive.

Personally I think Constantineโ€™s conversion is one of the worst things that ever happened to the Church.

This appears to be something of an awkward statement. As far as I am aware, Constantine is a Saint in all/nearly-all Orthodox Churches. Not just a Saint, but Equal-to-the-Apostles. Is this correct for your particular branch of Orthodoxy?

If he is a Saint and Equal-to-the-Apostles, this feels like someone who is nominally Christian saying โ€œI think Simon Peter putting his nets down and following Christ is one of the worst things that ever happened to the Church.โ€

I'm happy to give Thomas his ultra-purist position, but as a non-Christian sympathizer of Byzantine caesaropapism, also worth noting that Constantine is personally responsible for a couple little things like the Nicene Creed. Without a secular power to put its foot down, the Church has historically tended to splinter into a nest of feuding heresies.

I'm a bit more Protestant at heart than most Orthodox, I suppose. Then again, see the way Orthodox people talk about Saint Augustine...

Oh, so that's why the Brits say "God save the King".

Not sure exactly what you mean, but yeah, it would be silly to say "God Save St. George" - he's already saved, he's a saint! - but kings do need saving, in both senses.

The thing is, it's an incorrect argument. Christ wasn't "mocking his outgroup", he was (admittedly harshly) criticizing people for the bad actions they took. Mocking implies antipathy, which Christ wouldn't have done. His actions were rooted in love and desire to bring the Pharisees to repentance, not "haha look at those losers". You can't really say the same for Trump (well you can, but nobody is going to believe that).

He used the same insulting words that would be used when mocking. Claiming that it isn't mockery because he said the same words with a different attitude is special pleading.

Another example, this time from the OT (via this Nick Freitas video, in the discussion of "niceness" and seminaries that emphasize being inoffensive): Elijah sarcastically mocking the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18).

I'm reminded of a bit in the comments at TAC with Rod Dreher in Trump's first term (IIRC, after the diplomacy with North Korea), where someone asked Dreher just what he disagreed with in Trump's foreign policy. Rod's response was that he pretty much approved of Trump's foreign policy, and even most domestic policyโ€ฆ but none of that mattered nearly as much as that he just can't stand how Trump talks. Would he rather have a president who is worse on policy, who is more materially damaging, but who comports himself in the proper upper-class manners? Actually, yes. (Because, as others noticed upon deeper analysis of what Dreher does and doesn't object to when it comes to people saying "mean" things or speaking in a "low-class" manner, his problem with Trump's manner is that it reminds him too much of the kids who bullied him in school.)

What surprised me the most wasn't seeing a video of Trump putting on a crown and shitting on Americans, it was seeing who posted it. The prophecy has been fulfilled...

I totally expected Trump to depict himself as a king to mock the No Kings people. I was surprised he went as far as virtually throwing feces... but probably shouldn't have been.

It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.

Your first sentence assumes strategy, which is the mistake. Trump "weaves" and, I think, is just having fun. Crass fun, but nothing strategic.

Then again, The Mule is a special case and I'm not a predictor.

I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting.

Do you see any functional alternatives? I too find the aesthetic revolting, and yet- no one else is picking up the crown from the gutter. The alternatives are no less revolting. The tolerable alternative is, seemingly, retreat and quietude.

The left offers no superior aesthetics, and I'll take the shit plane over 'whiteness is a contract with the devil.' David Frenchism is about losing correctly. I'll also take the shit plane over EHC-posting; even toilet humor is better than that.

The primordial desire to throw feces at one's enemies! Truly, the more we advance, the more humans stay the same. I can't help how much I giggle at the concept of literal shitflinging on an industrial scale.

Scattered thoughts:

Prior to this video, there was an article the other day about Vance ('s account) on social media trolling opponents. I thought, "doesn't he have better things to be doing," but then remembered, no, the VP really doesn't. His main job is waking up in the morning and seeing whether the president is still alive, so otherwise using his time to be the shitposter-in-chief is probably not a particular waste of his resources.

I'm not a big fan of Trump's crassness, but it's not like Romney's commitment to decorum accomplished much.

Behavior like this from Trump or Musk proves that no matter how much power or money one has, the best thing in life is apparently shitposting.

The best thing in life is crushing your enemies, driving them before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women. But if you can't have that, shitposting is a solid second.

"The best thing in virtual life is crushing your enemies with facts and logic, driving them to seethe before you, and hearing the lamentations of their forums."

Hey now, he also has to cast the tie breaking vote in the senate once every few months

Similarly, WH Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt recently said, well, lots of shit, including that the person who decided Trump and Putin would meet in Hungary is "Your mom," (repeated by Trump's something-communications-something Steven Cheung or however his name is spelled) followed by directly insulting journalists who asked the clarifying question "Really?"

I'm enough of a Motteizen to see a performance art interpretation of this, in which open antagonism and appeals to base emotion are commentary on the expected veneer of reason. Realistically, I don't think there's likely a respectable method to their madness and that the more likely explanation is that they're irredeemable shit-stirrers, but it'll be interesting to see what comes next.

Be fair. She was talking to the Huffington Post.


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