site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24758 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It looks like the recent expose on child care center fraud has led to actual action in response: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/30/hhs-freezes-childcare-payments-minnesota/87965467007/

My question is: If a 23 year old guerilla journalist (who was not particularly rigorous in his methods) was able to blow this up, then why didn't legacy media go after this low hanging fruit? I have my own ideas (mostly ideological capture of the media) but I'd like to consider alternative explanations so I'd be interested in hearing your ideas about the failures of traditional journalism here and/or the decision by HHS to cut off funding generally.

Additionally, given that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Defense are the lion's share of the federal budget, and much of the recent fraud has been Medicare/Medicaid fraud to the tune of billions, how much will this affect attempts at welfare reform? From both sides, both the people pushing UBI and the people trying to eliminate or reduce welfare generally.

Chris Bray has an interesting take

If you click on that last link, you’ll see a local TV news journalist going to one of the same daycare centers that Nick Shirley went to, and doing it long before. But you’ll also see a bunch of obvious differences in framing that turn out to be extremely important. Nick Shirley just said there are no children here; the mainstream journalist did a questions are being raised story, a “some claim” thing, noting the presence of regulatory violations. He even says out loud that he didn’t see any children at the supposed daycare center, but he can’t quite bring himself to stick the landing. He needs a government official to say that there are no children there. He needs an official narrative to advance. Watch for yourself if you want to see the difference.

There’s almost no difference between the facts aired by a Minneapolis TV station in January and the facts aired by Nick Shirley in December, but the tone and the framing are from a different universe. Mainstream journalists have been saying for years that some say there is fraud in Somali social services in Minneapolis. Controversy is swirling. Questions are being raised. Officials are looking into. Their instinctive focus is on narrative, on what is being said. They pull back. Nick Shirley races forward, and lavishes attention on the agitated response. Legacy media haven’t ignored the story; they’ve tiptoed up to its edges a thousand times.

See also the remarkable example of County Highway, which recently produced a long, detailed, deeply reported, and thoroughly grounded story on Somali social services fraud in Minneapolis, with eagle-eyed political context. Sample from a long story of what County Highway put into print well before the Nick Shirley video:

The state’s entire view of its role in society would soon change in ways that made the frauds far easier to execute. In 2016, Minnesota introduced a $35-million program that provided direct funding to state-based nonprofits working on issues of racial equity. Over the next few years, the state embraced an easily abused model of service delivery through private-sector clients, even as evidence mounted that these programs were beacons for fraudsters.

In 2018, a whistleblower claimed that over $100 million in payments through the state’s childcare assistance program had been fraudulent. The way the scam worked was dismayingly simple: Daycares and other childcare providers, which require a license to operate in Minnesota, would obtain names and identifying information for children eligible for state-subsidized care and then bill the government for services they hadn’t actually rendered. Mark Koran, a Republican state senator and former tax official who has worked closely on the fraud issue for nearly a decade and who I met in Saint Paul, said that millions of dollars in such proceeds were taken to East Africa in cash. In 2017, Twin Cities travelers declared $100 million in physical cash transfers out of the country to airport customs agents.

But this story produced something like a fraction of one percent of the attention that Nick Shirley got with a dramatic video, which is an…interesting thing to notice.

Swiss cheese: Information has to flow through a long series of gates that don’t overlap, overcoming the faked-up reactions and distractions, overcoming the absence of patience among consumers of information, overcoming official uninterest and calculated distortion, and probably a dozen other gates that we can think of if we put our heads together.

Note that the first point here collides with the second point: All the people saying that Nick Shirley suddenly just made up a fake story to get clicks or advance his evil far-right agenda run head-on into the problem of a decade of the same topic being discussed.

Nick Shirley wasn’t the first, or anything near it. But he was the one who broke through, for reasons that can be discovered and elaborated. That’s something to think about as we consider all the things that need to be dragged into the light in a sick political culture.

Mark Koran, a Republican state senator and former tax official who has worked closely on the fraud issue for nearly a decade and who I met in Saint Paul, said that millions of dollars in such proceeds were taken to East Africa in cash.

Mark Koran identifies cash being funneled to radical Islamists? Nominative determinism strikes again!

For the local news reporter, I think the problem there is being employee of the network. If he (or they) come right out and say in a public broadcast "this is fraud", then they leave themselves wide open to being sued (see Trump and the BBC, where I do think the Beeb did put its thumb on the scale).

So unless they have good reason to believe the state is looking into this and next week they'll be reporting on the cops showing up to arrest the operators, they have to be careful and festoon the story with "it is said", "some claim", "officials are investigating".

Shirley and those like him, who are in essence one-man-bands who can fall back on "I'm a private citizen", are freer to make such accusations.

Doesn't take away from the Minnesota state government apparently sitting on its hands for years while an entire range of scams went on, but the journalists can only do so much. Now, indeed, it is a question "did they do as much as they could? were they, too, worried about being called racist?" but sometimes the media is hobbled.

This. A suit for libel can destroy your news organization. The bigger the org, the more you are gambling.

Also, it is next to impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that fraud is happening as an individual reporter.

  • "No, this is merely our office address, the actual daycare is elsewhere"
  • "No, we will not tell you where due to security concerns"
  • "No, you can not enroll your own kid, but I will gladly put you on the waiting list and call you if a spot opens up."

Basically, if you can not compel cooperation, you have no way of meeting that level of proof. Even if you knew that a given child was supposed to go to a daycare, observing their flat and confirming that it does not go to a daycare for a week will not prove a thing, because you see, that was just the one week where the daycare was closed, bad luck.

For a government official, things would look very different.

  • "I know from the documentation you submitted that this is supposed to be the site of the daycare"
  • "Oh, they went on a field trip today. Great for them, just give me their location. Keep in mind that I also know the home addresses of all the kids."
  • "Oh, all of the kids called in sick today? That is unfortunate. What are their symptoms? We will just have our official government doctors check in on the kids at home, free of charge."
  • "We just surveilled the entrance of your daycare center for a month and found that no kids ever entered. Have anything to say about that?"

But if the government is willing to sweep everything under the rug (because the truth would help the detested MAGA racists), then you are out of luck.

"No, you can not enroll your own kid, but I will gladly put you on the waiting list and call you if a spot opens up."

Which can indeed be a legitimate excuse, because in our own place we have a waiting list as long as your arm and if we had twice the capacity, we could fill it.

This expose sounds like it's risky and high effort for a traditional journalism outfit to carry out. That probably explains more than ideology does. In contrast youtuber citizen journalists with poor rigour are... well the people you'd expect to pull high-risk high-reward high-effort exposes. Especially twenty three year old males.

From both sides, both the people pushing UBI and the people trying to eliminate or reduce welfare generally.

You do know that these are the same side, right? The utility of UBI is that it can efficiently replace other welfare. A complete lack of means testing means far less ideologically captured bureaucratic overhead and negligible fraud. You can scam a system that promises funds to autism centers by lying about which children have autism, you can scam unemployment by getting paid under the table. you can't scam a system that just gives everyone money at a regular schedule. Plus. There's no benefit cliffs or perverse incentives

You do know that these are the same side, right?

You'd think that, and it would be completely logical, but the "replace" side of the UBI issue is less prominent than the "add" side around here. One of the primary drivers of cancelling the trials has been the direct cost of the transfers (as opposed to administration costs, etc.), and the cited benefits boil down to more money.

If you invent fake people you can.

Truly fake people are a very difficult and therefore very rare scam to pull on the combined apparatus of the tax, welfare, and banking system. I can't promise zero fraud because nobody can, but UBI is still much harder to defraud than any other welfare system.

UBI is also impossible financially. Social security's minimum payments right now are about $21k/year. So just for the walking around money part 5.5-6 trillion. But social security is mostly supporting people who get free medical care and have already figured out housing and substantial assets to draw upon. Healthcare adds another $5 trillion in needed value to the outlays, and housing is another 1.6 trillion. Sum that up and we have total outlays of about 13 trillion for the UBI, approximately double the current total budget.

i think there is always a risk of a lot of fraud with these kind of programs but i suspect often the amount is limited. i remember there was Rick Scott who was an officer in a company that was carrying out Medicaid fraud. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) However, I think maybe in this case because the people involved come from a culture that has a higher tolerance for fraud we are going to see very blatant fraud taking place. Also, because its done by foreigners people are going to be extremely unhappy.

Local news did cover it so your entire premise is flawed.

They lead with “safety violations.” It wasn’t until you get into the report that fraud was a concern.

True but news articles versus the visceral video of somebody actually going there and showing how ludicrously paper-thin the fraud is. Maybe I expect too much of the world but when I see 'major fraud' I assume spreadsheet editing and some sophistication instead of something paper-thin and sloppy that implies either willful ignorance or massive corruption.

As always, the answer is written in the scriptures. Conservatism is an audiovisual culture. The fact that Somalis in Minnesota were milking billions of dollars out of the government was knowable by reading and research. Some people did know it. Some people tried to spread the word (with some success). Knowing the truth of the proposition, "Somalis in Minnesota are milking billions of dollars out of the government," is much less powerful than seeing what these milking factories actually look like in person. No amount of text-based reporting on spreadsheets can elicit the same sense of deep cultural offense as seeing what presents outwardly as a normal American buisiness degenerate into hooded figures barking in Star Wars language in response to the slightest inquiry. The New York Times would never report that.

As always, let's divert blame onto those kicking up about the scandal with "they only knew about it now because they are too stupid to be able to read, while we smart liberals can read and knew about it years ago, so these fools are wrong in everything they say".

Scandal? Well yes scandal, but look! a squirrel! The amount of "it never happened, okay it happened but it was going on for years and we knew about it, so shut up shut up shut up" I'm seeing online is disheartening.

Faramir: Mithrandir! They broke through our defenses! They've taken the bridge and the west bank. Battalions of Orcs are crossing the river.

Irolas: It is as the Lord Denethor predicted. Long has he forseen this doom.

Gandalf: Forseen and done nothing!

While not fair to book Denethor, It is very apropos for the liberal defense here.

As always, Hanania is retarded. Probably 95% of progressive culture is now short form videos, and the exact same dynamic has played out countless times for them as well. No amount of text-based reporting on the countless deaths, rapes, and sex-trafficked children along the border elicited a millionth of the fury as a suggestive image of a Border Patrol agent "whipping" a migrant from horseback. It's been the case since at least Kony 2012.

And before that, the Daily Show stood at the center of progressive culture for about a decade.

The single defining moment for progressives for the last decade was probably George Floyd.

Not that I remember signing up for any cult where Hanania is scripture, but there is a canonical counter-counterpoint where modern US progressivism (and in particular wokeness) is just the result of temperamental (/genetically obligate) conservatives being raised in (and thus becoming conservative of) liberal culture.

That doesn't make any sense. The temperamental conservatives raised in liberal culture became the """classical""" liberal free-speech warriors. The whole point for them was that wokeness was radical detraction from the liberal status quo of the 90's and 00's.

Does "temperamental conservative" mean "even-keeled localist" or "moralistic scold"?

My first impression is that it would be "someone wanting to keep things the way they are". A definition that boils down to "being a scold" doesn't sound particularly useful.

I tend to agree with you. But I imagine Hanania would prefer to define it in the Puritanical sense so that he can connect conservative and progressive sexual mores. This lets him make his message "the problem with the left is that they took on the worst aspects of the right" or something like that, which is both a counterintuitive take and advances his overall goals - in other words, a very typical Hanania move. (Or at least that's my perception.)

In his defense, I do think that "scolds" are an important part of (or at least a viable means towards) "keeping things the way they are." This arguably also explains at least in part the rise of "wokescolds," as concerted threats to "woke" culture appeared.

I always thought the sex trafficking was fake and just conservative propaganda. But then the NYTIMES reported on it in LA. I still think it’s mostly fake.

Our major cities seem to be partially third world countries with gated communities of highly productive give people.

Yep. Except it’s been that way since the dawn of time. People react more to what they see as opposed to what is written. Modern media makes it easier to see.

From "The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

In the ancestral environment, there were no moving pictures; what you saw with your own eyes was true. A momentary glimpse of a single word can prime us and make compatible thoughts more available, with demonstrated strong influence on probability estimates. How much havoc do you think a two-hour movie can wreak on your judgment? It will be hard enough to undo the damage by deliberate concentration—why invite the vampire into your house? In Chess or Go, every wasted move is a loss; in rationality, any non-evidential influence is (on average) entropic.

Do movie-viewers succeed in unbelieving what they see? So far as I can tell, few movie viewers act as if they have directly observed Earth’s future. People who watched the Terminator movies didn’t hide in fallout shelters on August 29, 1997. But those who commit the fallacy seem to act as if they had seen the movie events occurring on some other planet; not Earth, but somewhere similar to Earth.

You say, “Suppose we build a very smart AI,” and they say, “But didn’t that lead to nuclear war in The Terminator?” As far as I can tell, it’s identical reasoning, down to the tone of voice, of someone who might say: “But didn’t that lead to nuclear war on Alpha Centauri?” or “Didn’t that lead to the fall of the Italian city-state of Piccolo in the fourteenth century?” The movie is not believed, but it is cognitively available. It is treated, not as a prophecy, but as an illustrative historical case. Will history repeat itself? Who knows?

This is what makes entertainers dangerous. I hear friends repeat and absorb arguments from stand-up comedians all the time and it pisses me off; being entertaining is not the same as being correct, and entertainers, be they writers, artists, comedians, directors... do not have access to a source of cosmic wisdom that makes them more likely to be right about anything than anyone. In fact, many of them live very atypical, non-representative lives that I would not be surprised made them more often wrong than the modal person of similar intelligence.

From AntiDem's Ask.FM:

Shit like this is why Socrates wanted to boot all the poets out of his perfect society. Poets can make the worst, stupidest, and most horrible ideas sound beautiful (and since they tend to be artistic instead of intellectual, they are prone to doing so, especially when those ideas are utopian in nature). Their ability to do this makes them inherently dangerous - they represent a constant risk of destabilizing your society by making people believe in unworkable utopian nonsense. Socrates was not some uncultured brute, but he understood the danger so well that he believed that it was better to have a society without poets at all than to take a risk like that.

Smart guy, that Socrates.

People react more to what they see as opposed to what is written.

Honestly, I think they react more to anything resembling what they want to see versus what is actually in front of them. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

Seeing is believing. Reading a news report, you can ignore it, or skim over the headline, or go "yeah well this outlet is biased" or "it can't be that bad".

Seeing with your own lying eyes an empty daycare centre where there are supposed to be a hundred kids is a lot more difficult to ignore or explain away.

My question is: If a 23 year old guerilla journalist (who was not particularly rigorous in his methods) was able to blow this up, then why didn't legacy media go after this low hanging fruit? I have my own ideas (mostly ideological capture of the media)

I would say that at a minimum, this is a big factor. Here are a couple of thought experiments:

(1) Suppose you are a junior reporter at the New York Times or CNN and you break this story. How do you think your colleagues will perceive you and/or react?

(2) Suppose you're a citizen journalist who " produces a similar video involving church based daycares in suburban Dallas," How do you think the journalism community would react?

As far as the first question goes, there's not much need to speculate -- just check out the NPR hit-piece on Nick Shirley:

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/nx-s1-5662600/nick-shirley-minnesota-daycare-fraud

On the second question, it's very likely that you get accolades, job offers, offers of financial support from Leftist-controlled NGOs, etc.

Well, let's look at a case in Mississippi that hits me in the fandom. A former professional wrestler (and son of a famous 1980s wrestler) is going to trial next week for welfare fraud.

Pro wrestling is one of the better-documented fandoms on the Internet. Documentation of events spans back decades. Wrestlers who've moved on to other industries, from yoga to real estate still get some level of coverage. I would expect if there is any citizen journalism to be had, it would be a fanboy following their curiosity.

I've seen plenty of commentary stemming from the news media. I've never seen or heard of citizen-led journalism, or fan journalism that led up to force the case's hand. You'd think that Blues prosecuting Reds on their own turf would fit Case 2 - but it didn't happen. It seems that the state did its job before citizens had to - Reds prosecuting Reds. There's a joke in Blue corners that "Republicans will campaign that government doesn't work, and when they're elected - act in a way to prove it (by being incompetent and corrupt)." This is certainly a counterfactual I'll bring up in future conversations.

I don't think this is indicative of any larger social trends. Sometimes competent government oversight just happens. Sometimes journalism is just downstream of institutions. Maybe one day we'll see Case 2 rear its head. Stranger things have happened.

On the second question, it's very likely that you get accolades, job offers, offers of financial support from Leftist-controlled NGOs, etc.

There'd literally be a movie about it within 10 years.

Suppose you are a junior reporter at the New York Times or CNN and you break this story. How do you think your colleagues will perceive you and/or react?

Utterly shocked that you travelled to Minneapolis prior to social media letting you know there was a potential story.

My question is: If a 23 year old guerilla journalist (who was not particularly rigorous in his methods) was able to blow this up, then why didn't legacy media go after this low hanging fruit? I have my own ideas (mostly ideological capture of the media)

Part of it is that it took time to develop the sort of alternative, right-wing media that would actually cover news like this and popularize it. I'm guessing most of us had never heard of Nick Shirley before this (did any of you?). I only heard about it because other, more established channels picked up on it and pushed his video. This eventually percolated all the way up to the Vice President and national media. But without those other, larger, right wing channels, the whole thing would have been quietly swept under the rug. Maybe there's a time when Fox News might have covered it but they just seem pretty useless in general, now.

If a 23 year old guerilla journalist (who was not particularly rigorous in his methods) was able to blow this up, then why didn't legacy media go after this low hanging fruit?

It took about six seconds of googling to find a NYT article from the end of November, a month before the viral video was released. I think your premise is wrong.

To answer the question "why is it blowing up now?": as Hanania has noted on a number of occasions, conservatives by and large don't read. Neutral tone (or even hostile) print journalism isn't going to catch their attention the way video is, even (especially) if the latter is sloppy. For the administration, it's a useful distraction from their own parade of fraud and corruption scandals and an excuse to do what they want to do anyway. Plus the president is a social media addict.

Conservatives by and large don't read Hanania, that's true. The only times I see him quoted are liberals and the very right-wing who are eager about "see, the so-called right wing aren't, you guys need to come over to us!"

To answer the question "why is it blowing up now?": as Hanania has noted on a number of occasions, conservatives by and large don't read. Neutral tone (or even hostile) print journalism isn't going to catch their attention the way video is, even (especially) if the latter is sloppy.

I like that people are considering a viable take, given that the last Conservatives Are Mad Current Thing before this one revolved around a highbrow-toned article in Compact Magazine. Goldfish seem to have better memories than a lot of posters.

You mean the thing that got a couple people on Twitter mad and had virtually no wider play in conworld? Which was discussed (and read) significantly more by liberals?

I feel pretty good about the thesis of cons don't read + right-wingers are okay with corruption as long as it isn't specifically welfare fraud.

  • -10

"Don't believe your lying eyes"

I am believing my lying eyes. Problem is, people here keep telling me not to, because what I see paints a very unflattering picture of them and their allies.

Filter bubbles are real. You're very happy to skim a For You feed and only see what you want to see, which is that, surprise surprise, Outgroup is a blob of stupidity. I've curated my spaces for quality - which is actually infinitely easier to do on the right. It would be gauche to boast about my friends, but as far as I can tell, the people making the argument that there are no smart people on the right (which, by the way, is something you have the burden of proof on) just don't get invited to good parties. Of course, there are stupid people in the coalition, and some are even as embarrassing as the ones on the left, but that's all political coalitions larger than a groupchat, you can live with reality or you can get into little huffs about it.

That article covered "meals, housing and autism therapy fraud cases" being prosecuted. The video here was about childcare fraud going unprosecuted.

conservatives by and large don't read.

Good thing that problem only afflicts Them, not Us!

Good thing that problem only afflicts Them, not Us!

Rather unfortunately, actually. The general illiteracy of even relatively high status conservatives is a major part of the right-wing crank problem. The US could use a serious conservative movement rather than the current crop of grifters and conspiracy theorists.

The Somali fraud is well diversified.

The Minnesota fraud is something that was starting to be reported in legacy media and investigated by both state and federal, which the video even admits; all it did is get the administration going. The administration's staffers all seem terminally On Twitter, so a video blowing up on Twitter gets stuff done - I can't imagine it's more complicated than that.

And maybe this would be good for the right, but outside of this recent win from Shirley, they're more interested in commenting on things than going out and doing things.

It's Somali fraud. They do it with any social services, they do it in every state. Take a look at some of the obvious fronts being uncovered in Ohio and Washington.

It's not Minnesota fraud, it's Somali welfare fraud.

Did the 23-year-old’s videos actually provide enough proof of fraud that it led to this defunding, or did they provide just plausible enough evidence to give the administration an excuse to do what they already wanted to do anyway?

It seems to me that Trump and his administration have a few goals that this defunding meets: 1) shrink government spending (at least in some areas), 2) emphasize criminal actions by immigrants, and 3) hurt Trump’s enemies. This nicely does all three. It decreases welfare spending, shows Somalian immigrants in a very negative light, and makes Tim Walz look like an enabler of massive fraud. I think it’s probable that at least one of the daycare centers in those videos will turn out to be completely legitimate when all the facts come to light, and it’s possible that the same will hold true for all of them.

Yes he did provide enough proof provided your prior beliefs are well-calibrated. If you are "anti-racist" then he didn't nearly provide enough proof. If your priors are well-adjusted he provided enough proof for systematic, mass fraud to a high enough confidence for this reaction and subsequent investigations.

The people complaining he wasn't rigorous enough won't even care that his methods were effective in bringing public attention and reform to an important issue.

Whether the evidence is sufficient is entirely dependent on whether you think Somalis are Bad People and deserve to have the Feds descend on them and investigate all their wheelings and dealings with an eye towards making heads roll. Of someone goes out next week and produces a similar video involving church based daycares in suburban Dallas, I'm skeptical that the Trump administration would respond with similar vigor, and I suspect we'd hear about how Christians were being railroaded for political purposes.

  • -11

You can't produce a similar video about church based daycares in the Texas suburbs, because 1) Texas provides very little childcare funding, it's simply not a priority to subsidize moms to work(help for low income mothers through state-funded private charity does exist, and I suspect some of it probably is misdirected- but you'd need to prove it through boring accounting auditing of the center which provides diapers to low income families, not showing up unannounced, and pregnancy resource centers are already a maximum progressive target so if it was anywhere near as widespread as seems to be happening in Somali communities there'd already be a media expose) and 2) church based daycares in Texas have an intentionally much laxer licensing regime. Comparing the licensing documents to physical evidence onsite is simply not doable in the same way.

Indeed, we do occasionally see some culture warsing ire over pregnancy resource centers(which mostly exist to give free items to low income mothers), but the progressive position is that it's unconstitutional because they are Christian and opposed to abortion and the conservative position is that progressives being upset about it proves that they want to maximize abortion and not actually help women. Very little arguments over what group is being railroaded.

Can you point to anything in the history of Somalia that indicates they are good people? Because they deserve their reputation.

Black Hawk Down was tame in comparison to reality. So why would your prior be anything but: Somalia is a country whose quality reflects its people?

In the same way that the Dutch are tall people, sure.

"Dat's Raciss" is the easy, stop-gap answer. I hate to bring up Rotherham in this context, but that was exactly what stymied investigation in part: when eventually the pieces started coming together that no, this wasn't just a few, isolated cases of underclass girls gone wild, people in charge put blockages in the way because "oh no, investigating this would seem to blame the Muslim community and that would be racist/racists would use it as a weapon".

"But they wouldn't do it to Christians" - well, if Christian church groups are engaging in this kind of fraud, they damn well should do it to them.

Also, there seems to be a general fraud problem going back years in Minnesota, if allegations of $9 billion going down the Swanee are correct. Governor Tim says it's only $1 billion but that may just be "cases known about for this specific scam":

Minnesota has been under the spotlight for years for Medicaid fraud, including a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors said it was the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam and that defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.

In 2022, during President Joe Biden’s administration, 47 people were charged. The number of defendants has grown to 78 throughout the ongoing investigation.

So far, 57 people have been convicted, either because they pleaded guilty or lost at trial.

Most of the defendants are of Somali descent.

Numerous other fraud cases are being investigated, including new allegations focused on child care centers.

In news interviews and press releases over the summer, prosecutor Joe Thompson estimated the total loss from all fraud cases could exceed $1 billion. Earlier this month, a federal prosecutor alleged that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.

...Among those running schemes to get funds for child nutrition, housing services and autism programs, 82 of the 92 defendants are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration “will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.”

...Walz has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud but allowed that the $1 billion estimate could be accurate. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

As an aside, is there anything Kamala touched for her presidential campaign that hasn't come back to bite her? Timmy boy here was her hand-picked choice because he was biddable, and now here's the track record of This Could Have Been Your VP come out to haunt him.

Timmy boy here was her hand-picked choice because he was biddable, and now here's the track record of This Could Have Been Your VP come out to haunt him.

If nothing else, I can agree with you on that one. If the FBI finds significant prosecutable fraud, it will be nothing short of an embarrassment for the entire Democratic Party that the governor wasn't aware that millions or even billions was being stolen from right under his nose. He'd done a pretty good job of catching other Somali fraudsters but there's still no excuse for not catching these ones earlier. The only thing worse would be if it wasn't Somalis (necessarily) but people in DHS itself, people he worked with and trusted who were doing the stealing. It would look especially bad if he publicly praised those who were the masterminds of the crime for getting people off the welfare rolls, when what they were really doing is funneling money that should have gone to the poor to wealthy celebrities, pro athletes, and pet projects. It would look even worse if he claimed he had no idea what was going on and then text messages came out that at least insinuated that he probably had an inkling. And it wouldn't do him any favors if his response to this was to sue the reporter who broke the story for defamation and ask the court to hold her in contempt if she doesn't reveal her sources, creating the distinct possibility that the person who uncovered the scandal would also be the first person to go to jail. Yeah, that would make him look really bad. So bad that I don't know how anyone could vote Democrat after that. Then again, Phil Bryant keeps getting appointed to Trump Administration committees like the FEMA Review Council and the National Assessment of Education Progress, so maybe it wouldn't turn out so bad for him or the party.

The defense of “only 1b” is quite the shitty defense

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

Billions for fraud, but not a cent for deportation.

"This scam was only $1b. The other scams, well, we have to wait for the figures".

dependent on whether you think Somalis are Bad People

I'm not sure how to define "Bad People," but here's an analogy: In the United States, driving at 75 miles per hour on the highway is against the law, but normally it's not thought of as an immoral act. If you get away with it, none of your neighbors will think any less of you over it.

For people from certain subcultures, engaging in massive fraud against the government is perceived the same way. It sucks if you get caught, but otherwise it's nothing to be ashamed of.

If "Bad People" includes "people who don't see anything fundamentally wrong with engaging in massive fraud against the government," then yeah, generally speaking Somali-Americans are Bad People. (Hopefully the next generation will see things differently, and prosecutions and jail time will hopefully change their views.)

Pretty clearly someone in this situation is a brazen fraudster -- either this Youtuber Nick Shirley or the Somalis he was investigating. Given my prior probability assessment that Somalis are "Bad People" as you put it, I am pretty sure it's the Somali day care center operators.

In the United States, driving at 75 miles per hour on the highway is against the law, but normally it's not thought of as an immoral act.

There exists no shortage of 75mph speed limit signs in my neck of the woods. Not usually inside cities, but plenty on interstates in rural areas. Texas even has a few spots with 85mph signs.

There exists no shortage of 75mph speed limit signs in my neck of the woods. Not usually inside cities, but plenty on interstates in rural areas. Texas even has a few spots with 85mph signs.

Yeah, I kinda misspoke based my regional mindset. I should have said "driving 15-20 miles per hour above the speed limit"

This seems like an East/West divide. Having lived in Montana during the reasonable and prudent era, my reaction was well you are kind of an ass for only going 75, bit it's legal, just stay in the right lane please.

Yeah, most Western interstates are 75, but I felt a bit concerned about some of the undivided county roads in Texas that were also 75.

Now be getting passed on those undivided country roads while going above the limit.... Texas, man.

Those subcultures evidently include the president. He has no problem pardoning fraudsters like Joe Milton, George Santos, and others, relieving them of even the obligation to pay the money back. And when he inevitably pardons the DiBiase brothers a few months from now, exactly zero people will be surprised. But I doubt Nick Shirley or anyone else cares about this, because they're less concerned about fraud than they are the fact that Somalis may be the ones doing it.

  • -15

because they're less concerned about fraud than they are the fact that Somalis may be the ones doing it.

The exact same way you are. You're not addressing the fraud, you're going on about "stop blaming Somalis! stop being racist!" If this was an allegation against a network of Christian day cares in Texas, would you be stepping up to defend them on the grounds "stop being sectarian about Southern Baptists!" or would you be gloating over "everyone knows those so-called Christians are hypocrites and liars, more worried about persecuting the gays and trans than doing good"?

Those subcultures evidently include the president.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that this is true, it doesn't really affect my argument at all:

We are evaluating evidence which seems on its surface to be pretty strong but is possibly unreliable or even fake. Thus, we need to start with the underlying claim, i.e. the claim that a lot of Somali-Americans are engaged in massive fraud against the government.

As you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The corollary is that mundane claims require mundane evidence. The claim that lots of Somali-Americans are engaged in massive fraud against the government is NOT an extraordinary claim. By analogy, if someone showed me a video which purported to show an Alabama redneck driving down the highway at 85 miles per hour, I would think that the video is probably accurate.

He has no problem pardoning fraudsters like Joe Milton

It's difficult to see how this is relevant to my argument. It looks to me like you are just trying to change the subject with some whataboutism.

But to answer your point, yeah, if someone claimed to me that Trump, Biden, or any other recent president had abused his power by pardoning someone who really didn't deserve it in order to get some kind of political advantage, I would not require extraordinary evidence.

So yeah, presidents abusing their pardon power is analogous to Somalis engaging in social services fraud.

Maybe Patronage networks are fundamentally effective in politics. And the GOP having their unconditionally loyal people because you saved them is a good thing if are alt-right like myself.

Personally I am far more concerned with illegal immigration that corruption is just a tax to be paid now. I’m fine with having our network of thieves that are loyal if they get things done. The old way does not seem to work and in my opinion the left already defected on having a high trust society.

I am fairly happy if someone like Fuentes doesn’t have to worry about being canceled and can do his thing knowing we have slush funds to take care of him if he needs it.

Maybe Patronage networks are fundamentally effective in politics. And the GOP having their unconditionally loyal people because you saved them is a good thing if are alt-right like myself.

Trevor Milton [1] committed upwards of $20 billion worth of securities fraud (all the Somalis in America aren’t worth one Mormon), and [2] hired the U.S. attorney general’s brother as his lawyer in order to secure a pardon.

By the above logic, his pardon is still terrible, because Milton hasn’t ever done anything for the cause, and is unlikely to ever be able to do much of anything significant for the cause, as he has no real resources, either financial or in terms of social capital. Trump is way, way too cheap of a date.

When SPACs became popular, it was a matter of time before some fraudster used one to cash in on taking a bogus company public while avoiding the due diligence process required during standard IPOs. Who was the first person to do the aforementioned is the trivia question to which Milton is the answer.

Are you less concerned about the fraud then the possibility that people might be racist?

No. I think that the president's racism and the racism of most of his supporters is beyond a mere possibility at this point. I'm concerned that, guilty or not, in a free society we shouldn't be targeting criminal investigations based on race, especially when we've already shown a willingness to excuse the exact same behavior when it's done by someone we like.

  • -19

Somalians are objectively terrible people to add to the body politic. They are low IQ, extremely tribal with strong in group bias, happy to engage in piracy, and don’t have a history of any success. You call it racism to oppose adding Somalians to our body politic (or attempts to remove them). If so, then you’ll find a lot of people are racist.

This is pure whattaboutism. The topic of discussion is Somali welfare fraud. The President has nothing to do with it. If the President was a clone of Adolf Hitler he would still have nothing to do with it. There is no level of racism in the heart of the President of the United States that would change the ethical calculus to make welfare fraud okay.

I'd agree with you of the foreign born population were under 10% instead of over 15%, and if those foreigners were of compatible people instead of Muslims and Hindus. The Italians and Irish were bad enough, and they still haven't naturalized enough over a hundred years later.

America is for Americans, and if that's racist then racism is good. I don't want Muslims in my home, I don't want Hindus in my home, I don't want to be inundated with foreigners because of slavery or white guilt or whatever excuse you care to proffer.

Enough. No more. By any means necessary.

Never mind how you propose to build a free society out of Muslims. I don't think there are many examples, and I don't see any reason to think it possible.

More comments

I can see the discomfort around this particular case since it feels far enough out on a tree branch and blatant enough that it might actually move the Overton Window back to allowing for explicit judgement of immigrants on race/country of origin.

Also a decent chunk of the discomfort/reaction here seems to be along the lines of shock at how blatant, stupid and low-grade this fraud is. An organized sophisticated fraudster is one thing, but this feels like essentially willful ignorance in the favor of people who don't even present a real bull case for why they're in the country.

More comments

You said "no", but the following text looks a lot like "yes".

If a racist motive leads to uncovering genuine fraud, should that fraud then be ignored or tolerated so as not to embolden racists?

How many 0's worth of underaged British girls should we tolerate being gang-raped to avoid the appearance of saying that Pakistanis are gang-rapists?

especially when we've already shown a willingness to excuse the exact same behavior when it's done by someone we like.

Have we?

So, I actually read all of that meandering, incoherent, emotionally manipulative PBS article you linked earlier. It has a single mention of Phil Bryant that makes nothing remotely resembling an effort to justify your take on the topic. His wiki article does mention that he was a potential target of investigation, though no charges were filed. It also notes that he purportedly reported the misuse of funds himself. That's just the man's word, but given Wikipedia's general high level of partisanship, I would consider that decent evidence in his favor.

Following the link to the original source (because, contra-Hanania, I actually read), I see that we're talking about the misuse of $77 million, and the Pulitzer-prize winning reporting on the topic. And I see that the indictments were brought by another one of Bryant's appointees.

Which is good, as far as it goes. Bryant's personal culpability over the pharma company looks like he's either an utter idiot or the indictments luckily hit right before he could sign off on real corruption. That behavior is very bad, and also very endemic to our political class in general.

The Minnesota fraud case looks to be something in the ballpark of a hundred times worse.

Are you excusing that behavior because condemning it would hamper people you like and embolden people you dislike?

How would you respond to someone blithely dismissing the entire Mississippi scandal as you just being an irrational bigoted monster who hates the Packers for no reason except that you're evil?

More comments

First of all, go ahead and produce such evidence of those circumstances and let's see if you're right.

Second of all, sincerely, I beseech you to really pause and think about your blindspot here. I refuse to believe you're dense enough not to understand a little bit more once you slow down. Do you truly, honestly not see the difference between an unassimilated ethnic group imported from the other side of the planet who then starts defrauding the institutions your taxes go to, and the same being done by people whose grandparents were born here?

But ya, if to get any changes at all you insist that we must first declare groups Bad People, guess what's going to start happening?

Of someone goes out next week and produces a similar video involving church based daycares in suburban Dallas, I'm skeptical that the Trump administration would respond with similar vigor, and I suspect we'd hear about how Christians were being railroaded for political purposes.

I'm sure there's some amount of truth to what you're suggesting, but not for the reasons you're implying. If Christian churches run by Heritage American citizens were committing similar kinds of fraud, most people wouldn't consider it as big of a deal because Heritage Americans would likely be committing such fraud at significantly lower rates (using racial crime rates as the baseline) and because we didn't intentionally import those scammers into the country for the express purpose of disrupting and replacing Heritage Americans.

Lutheran Charities helped settle war-refugee Somalians in Minnesota and their aim was charity, not to displace heritage Americans. Whether or not you, I or anyone agree on whether this was beneficial, the “express purpose” was objectively not some plot of displacement.

For my own view, the collective lack of gratitude in response to that charity is the indictment.

Again, why is proof the standard here? It shined a light they couldn’t be left unaddressed. Even if we get some legitimate institutions, there’s the bigger question perhaps even worse:

Why are we tax payers funding millions to give free daycare to immigrant populations that we didn’t even ask to import?

The amount of spotlight on “legal” handouts to “legal” immigrants that is absolutely outrageous to middle class Americans getting squeezed is the real scandal. The fraud is just an extra exclamation point on how much the governing elite hates you.

Now of course there are plenty of counter perspectives to the above paragraph, but the point is that it is a legitimate framing of a SUBSTANTIAL part of the population, and the point stands that the media has been complicit in completely ignoring it at best.

Why are we tax payers funding millions to give free daycare to immigrant populations that we didn’t even ask to import?

Who also frankly don't seem to work in any meaningful proportion which raises further question marks around they need massive childcare subsidies.

Wouldn't one business-related explanation be that local reporting in legacy media is practically dead already?

This was always one of the arguments of what would happen as the internet killed and absorbed more and more of legacy media over the last several decades. Fewer local papers means fewer local journalists. Fewer local journalists means fewer local scandals exposed.

Local journalism was never a perfect guarantee that every scandal would inevitably be exposed, but when there was a small fleet of local journalists supported by subscribers in every medium-sized town in America, I can believe it was far more likely for something like "childcare welfare fraud by Somali immigrants in Minnesota" to be looked into, once an interested local citizen sends the tip in.

I agree that this is probably at least part of it.

Well, define defend. Opinion journalism is cheap. So it’s not really a budgetary concern to drop an op-ed endorsing this, that, them, it or anything. Even if cash strapped outfits offer the aforementioned, it isn’t a refutation of the impact the internet had in gutting all the things newspapers previously used to generate revenue that paid for actual reporting.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press is now PE owned, has one-fifth the staff of even the (formerly Minneapolis, now) Minnesota Star Tribune, and in a small but memorably (to me) depressing occurrence, was using AP wire reports with Chicago datelines to cover the Chauvin trial.

I’ve not seen either paper call the videographer a racist. I’ve seen general defenses of not painting all Somalian immigrants with the same brush. And in Minnesota’s largest paper, a recent op-ed demanding that the video in question be taken seriously:

https://www.startribune.com/somali-community-minnesota-day-care-video/601554742

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