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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Whatever distinction you're drawing isn't supported by any of your examples.

Trump demands absolute loyalty from his servants.

Yeah, that's what it means to be a servant. Your lord is greater by you, what you have to offer is your loyalty and faith. That's literally how that works. This isn't unique to Trump -- the Clintons demanded loyalty, the Bushes demanded loyalty, the Bidens demanded loyalty, Truman demanded loyalty. How else is it supposed to work? The world runs on mob logic.

But people on the right are permitted to believe almost anything at all.

No one "permits" the right to believe anything. This is a political coalition, made up of adults, adults have separate bodies and separate wills. This is a silly framing.

Trump himself believes in almost nothing.

This sounds nice if you never listen to any of Trump's speeches where he propounds the same ideas now he was propounding thirty years ago, as if Trump is just this kind of cipher where we never know what he's thinking. Huh?

Democrats get absolutely no loyalty from their servants. Bernie Sanders can have his rally commandeered by random loud black women.

Voters and random protesters are not Democrats' servants. Bernie Sanders absolutely has loyal servants, he's been in politics for fifty years, he has staffers and allies. You are not keeping a job working for Bernie Sanders on the Hill if you are demonstrably disloyal.

Obama and Biden can be decried as war criminals for carrying out ordinary presidential duties.

I know right-wingers who call Trump a race-traitor and cuck for the same.

Biden can have his entire presidency undermined by professional staff who think they know better than him. He can have the entire blue team apparatus flagellate him for exercising the presidential pardon for his own son.

Is your argument that this never happened to Trump? That the red team apparatus has never flagellated Trump?

No one "permits" the right to believe anything. This is a political coalition, made up of adults, adults have separate bodies and separate wills. This is a silly framing.

People on the right can believe anything and still be accepted in the coalition. People on the left must toe the line on all aspects of enemy ideology or they will be ejected, is what the post means. "permits" as in can do it without facing consequences.

Yeah, that's what it means to be a servant.

I think the original description of the problem failed because I agree that it's a good and normal thing for Trump to demand loyalty from his subordinates. The thing I find unseemly about the cult of personality around Trump is that it seems to demand loyalty from many who are not supposed to be servants of the President. "My President right or wrong" is no approach to being part of an electorate, even if he is on the right partisan side.