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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26592 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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I would say the blame for the 2nd Iraq war lies squarely with the US electorate who voted for GWB because they were fed up with Clinton getting BJs.

Of course, I also reject the OP's framing that one should consider the net worth of each minority and get rid of the ones who turn out negative. Presumably, most of the Motte would consider it deeply unfair if someone opined that it is fine to treat men as violent criminals, because the vast majority of violent criminals are men. Likewise, the fact that most of the people who lobby for Nethanyahu's vision of a Greater Israel are Jews does not mean that we should oppose Jews because they are Jews.

Except that GWB wasn't campaigning as an interventionist and a neocon in 2000, he was doing the opposite.

From "Stop Voting For Nincompoops" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

In 2000, the comic Melonpool showed a character pondering, “Bush or Gore… Bush or Gore… it’s like flipping a two-headed coin.” Well, how were they supposed to know? In 2000, based on history, it seemed to me that the Republicans were generally less interventionist and therefore less harmful than the Democrats, so I pondered whether to vote for Bush to prevent Gore from getting in. Yet it seemed to me that the barriers to keep out third parties were a raw power grab, and that I was therefore obliged to vote for third parties wherever possible, to penalize the Republicrats for getting grabby. And so I voted Libertarian, though I don’t consider myself one (at least not with a big “L”). I’m glad I didn’t do the “sensible” thing. Less blood on my hands.

I think the way to thread the needle is that we can eject people who are net negative, and who had to opt-in to our society. Because of the way that our governments are currently set up, being in a governments territory requires that you pay taxes and follow their laws; you can't decide that you do not wish for the government's services in exchange for not being subject to its rules (or rather, you can try, at which point armed men come from the government to put you in a small room until you agree to follow the rules once more).

Immigrants of all flavours (by definition) come from another country; they choose to proclaim that they will follow the government's rules; they are choosing to follow the rules of that government, rather than being stuck with them.

This kind of plays into the idea of noblesse oblige - if you are demanding the loyalty of a group, you owe them your loyalty in return. In the military, it's very common that the front-line troops always eat first; the officers can order them into situations where they are almost guaranteed to die, so the officers owe it to them to see that they are treated as well as possible. The same applies to governments; the government can enlist citizens to die, claim an increasing portion of their wealth, and take their freedom or their life for crimes against it. The least the government can do is put the people who are obligated to support it first; if they aren't, that becomes a problem that the people have the right to seek redress against (and if they don't have the right, the next step is often them clearing out space for someone who will give them that right).

If we followed this chain of logic:

  1. If wealthy Jewish people were involved in getting the country into the war in the middle east (by wanting intervention on behalf of a foreign nation), and they were citizens of a foreign nation, we should kick them out (preferably of an airlock, but failing that, at least out of the country).
  2. If wealthy Jewish people were involved in getting the country into the war in the middle east (by wanting intervention on behalf of a foreign nation), but were citizens of the United States, we should consider them to be in violation of the societal contract (in the same way we would a fraudster or scam artist); they should serve appropriate jail time, and be removed from any levers of power that they may be attached to, and forbidden from interacting with them again.
  3. If wealthy non-Jewish citizens of the United States were involved in getting the country into the war in the middle east (by wanting intervention on behalf of a foreign nation), we should consider them to be in violation of the societal contract (in the same way we would a fraudster or scam artist); they should serve appropriate jail time, and be removed from any levers of power that they may be attached to, and forbidden from interacting with them again.
  4. Once we are doing #1, #2, and #3 reliably, we can determine whether Jewish people are considered to be high-risk in the same way Chinese researchers are (in which case, we can decide to heavily restrict them from positions in which it is an issue, in the same way we do with Chinese researchers), or we can determine if its just a few bad apples.

Either way, we shouldn't ignore the issue; we currently screen men more heavily than women when they want to be involved with children because a large number of men who want to work with children have pedophiliac tendencies. It sucks if you're just a guy who enjoys spending time with kids, but it has proven enough of an issue that we put boundaries on it. Likewise, if you're an earnest student of Chinese origin who wants to fully embrace the greatness of the USA, it sucks that you may be barred from positions that require a security clearance; but again, we've seen that this is a large enough issue to society that collectively we have to stop it.

If wealthy Jewish socialites are disproportionately favouring other countries above the US, we may need to put additional screening on them being permitted to be government lobbyists or owning media platforms. Which again, isn't fair to the people who don't do this, and don't desire to do this - but if it's consistently a problem, we can treat it in the same way men or Chinese students are already being treated.

One thing that I want to make clear is that despite this screed, I don't actually think that the Jews are secretly or openly advocating on behalf of Israel; I think there are a lot of people who are determined to make the Jews the source of all evil, and they are looking for a justification to hunt them down. That being said, we don't have the data; it's verboten to actually go after the people who are favouring other countries above their own citizens. We need to actually start treating it as a crime so we can see if there is a "Jewish Problem" or simply a "leader problem."

Even if you have both number 2 and 3 together so that you are not applying double standards to Jews, this amounts to "someone who supports politics that I don't like should be put in jail and forcibly removed from power". "Getting the country into a war" is not special; in a democracy, people are permitted to advocate for policies that you consider harmful.

I mean, I'm perfectly happy if we decide that no, we're not going to punish people for wrongthink anywhere; if we insist on it, it should also include those at the highest echelons of power.

Male testosterone is necessary for warmaking capacity, entrepreneurial culture, and keeping totalitarianism in check. It brings many positive advantages that more than outweigh its negative ones. The problem with high crime, low IQ populations is that they do not provide very many benefits, but bring great costs.

If men got Thanos-snapped away, it’d be quite difficult for women to survive for more than a few days/weeks.

If blacks and/or Arab Muslims got Thanos-snapped away, it’d be an immediate improvement in quality of life for the rest of the world.

There were many Jews who opposed the Iraq war, and indeed the polling showed they were more likely to oppose it than the average American. But the issue remains that within the group are a wealthy and influential block who rally around being Jewish, recruit within the Jewish general population, and tie their religious identity to defending the “Jewish State”. For decades they have accused anti-Zionists of anti-semitism because of course criticizing Israel is criticizing the Jews. These bad apples have hidden themselves amongst an orchard of perfectly good apples, using them as human shields, and if current standards of warfare apply to the culture war, then it is acceptable to malign 15 innocents if it leads to successfully critiquing 1 bad actor.

Of course, I also reject the OP's framing that one should consider the net worth of each minority and get rid of the ones who turn out negative. Presumably, most of the Motte would consider it deeply unfair if someone opined that it is fine to treat men as violent criminals, because the vast majority of violent criminals are men.

Your position is enlightened, self-consistent and humane. It is also turning my country into an alien hellscape.

I'm not even being sarcastic, but this isn't working. Enlightened humanism with respect to immigration has been a slow-rolling disaster for Europe, as well as for the principles that you appeal to.

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