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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Dayum, you managed to find a reason to use that one again! That's some dedicated hatin'!

It's almost like you drew a line in the sand, shrugged and said you weren't impressed when I pointed out the line had been trampled already, and specifically said I "should be able to point this out in a few years" when you were wrong. And now it turns out that of course this isn't the sort of prediction that anyone actually commits to, on the basis of your long-extant experience?

Yes, that's the sort of thing that's pretty memorable.

No, as someone who has complained about overuse of fascism myself, no, I do not use fascism to mean "something I don't like" and you should know better.

No, I don't know better. That's a good bit of the frustration, here.

You keep talking about how you push back against unreasonable claims of fascism, and that happens, sure. But in this conversation you KoolAid manned in to nitpick about poker tactics while the other poster is saying 10% Literally Hitler (and making up autogople meetings with generals, and yada yada noonecares).

You dive into conversations about students yelling at professors with discussions of concentration camps, throw calling homosexuality a sin into conversations with the Day Of The Rope, put "don't have free speech (as you fedpost on reddit)" alongside with literal "gulags" out of your own volition.

((and, of course, when it turned out that we didn't have free speech to fedpost on reddit, or to fedpost here, because of course there's wildly hypocritical and politically biased sanction and investigation of Red-leaning fedposting even under a Republican administration, it doesn't even seem like it matters. But, hey, you'll invite me to talk about how I can violate the rules of this website, in case I'm dumb enough to think that anything I could offer would be anywhere near as persuasive as the sword of damocles that a federal subpoena would.))

Fine, there's a range here. Where's the dividing line? Because the Blue Tribe sure as hell hasn't provided an example beyond "things we don't like", you haven't provided an.

And all of that would be fine: you're allowed to have your wrong opinions. But it's never a matter of actually defending these positions, or even defining their borders out to say what they are. It's throw out a cloud of ipse dixit, say whatever can be proven doesn't count, and jam.

Spell it the fuck out, and actually commit to a bit for long enough to risk being proven wrong.

I do happen to think Trump has fanned the flames worse than Biden or Mamdani or Nancy Pelosi or whomever you'd prefer to blame, but he's not the sole or first cause.

For someone who doesn’t care who’s the wrongest person in Wronglandia, you sure do love to insist that this guy is The Worst One ever.

(while coincidentally glossing over the obvious competition for past examples that could compete on "appeal to identify politics, cults of personality, and disregard for previous Constitutional limits"? The last couple Dem presidents that didn't have brain damage only had scandals about a tan suit and a luxurious cigar, right?)

Is this something that you're actually willing to discuss and provide concrete examples around, or should we just be taking it as gospel that, hey, there's a ton of protesters that you can see, it must be a new level of escalation.

Can we engage with the bit where supposedly sober and serious actors, the best and brightest available from the ratsphere community, are just repeating made-up hundred-kilodeaths numbers because they don't like a policy this time around, when last time they were crying themselves to sleep every night over a photo that -- whoops! -- turned out to be from the Obama admin?

Note also that this is an admission that I have updated my priors somewhat since that argument I had with @FCfromSCC way back when - I still mostly believe the things I said then, but with weaker confidence.

Thank you for at least occasionally updating on evidence.

On the other hand, the fact that Trump was reelected should have made him update his.

This punchline would be funnier if a) FCfromSSC, rather than Nybbler, had predicted Trump could never ever ever ever be reelected or b) a bullet hadn't come within inches of making very sure he didn't, or c) that judges didn't order already-cast (primary) ballots for him to not be counted.

I think the only thing we agree on is that we are both frustrated. And I'm answering here because when I throw up my hands and let it go, I later get accused of refusing to answer. But as wrong as you think I am (that's about the only thing I can discern for certain here), I am not being glib or sarcastic or dismissive here when I tell you that there is something about your j'accuse posts that are, besides being annoying, really hard for me to follow.

I don't know if it's the way you write, and I can even entertain the possibility that I'm just not smart enough to get you (I doubt this, but I'm humble enough to own that I am no longer as smart as I once thought I was). But I go through your laundry lists of accusations and feel like sincerity requires me to try to answer them point by point, and I get bogged down in a mixture of "That's completely not what I meant," "That is not what I said and I think you're straw manning me," and "What does he even mean?"

So, really and truly, I'm not sure what you want from me. I mean, besides a wholesale admission that I'm on the bad side and everything I've said for the last five years is wrong. I'm afraid I am not willing to oblige you there. I dunno, some people attack me and at least I know what they are accusing me of, even if it's wrong. Some people attack me and they're just crazy, so I can roll my eyes and move on. You attack me in a very effortful way and I don't even know where to begin rebutting because it's all "You said this and here's a long paragraph about what other people did and isn't this funny and here's something you said four years ago."

I realize this leaves us back where we started.