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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27959 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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I have a general political theory on the current Democratic Party that no matter what gift Trump gives them they will find a way to mess it up.

ICE has had a lot of bad vibes lately. Enter the Bad Bunny Super Bowl show. I had never heard of him before Trumps rants on the Bad Bunny being in the Super Bowl. I don’t know if he was picked by the wokes or simply the NFL trying to find away to grow the game outside the US.

I think a general view of the center-left is to be nice to immigrants (empathy) even if they are closer to economic migrants than asylum/desperate. This feels like a cooking the frog too fast type moment where the message seems to be we will replace your culture and you will like it moment. The Super Bowl to me is perhaps the American Holiday most linked to Americana and they did the event completely in Spanish. The performance was trashy with some sort of sugar plantation theme (which were never in America and most of Spanish-Speaking Americans are not sugar plantation culture).

My hope is that this has gone too far and even my liberal mother will have an issue with explicit replacement.

sugar plantation sex

I was also starting to consider Americans thoughts on what is generally referred to as LATAM which is basically anything south of the Rio Grande. Most Americans probably group them into one group even though they are distinct economically and in their ethnic makeup. I don’t think the other south of the border types would be happy with their presentation when we could have found other groups with positive cultural traits if the goal was marketing to LATAM. Maybe I am missing a group but when I think of south of the border I think there are a few broad groups.

  1. Bad Bunnies Caribbean plantation culture. Cubans though seem to have classier elements.
  2. Mostly Mexico and some other Central America. A combination of conquistadors and Amerindian mostly Aztec
  3. Brazil and the Portuguese culture.
  4. Southern Cone. Least “Latino” and as much Italian as Spanish.

If the NFL goal is to grow the game I don’t see how highlighting sugar cane field sex would be viewed as a good way to reach out. Groups from these regions only have significant presence in Miami and Puerto Rico within US territories. From what I can tell southern cone twitter hates the performance.

After viewing the performance I will rate it worse than my fears. Politically I will rate it as good for my side in the category of the wokes always find a way to ruin electoral chances for the Democrats.

Edit: Empire which America is should never degrade itself especially on the big stages. It’s actually one reason the stupid amount of money we spent on the new Fed I can understand. When Milei comes to Washington (any Leader) and signs some currency swap the building he meets with Bessent or Powell needs to loudly say Empire. In Dunk and Egg show the bad Targaryen gets it right the dragon never dies even in a puppet show. The Super Bowl is one of those stages for the US.

The main thing I've learned from the half time show discourse is that a significant number of people still do not seem to fully comprehend that Puerto Rico is a part of the US and has been for over a hundred years.

Even your linked comment seems to fail at this. "Hispanic people should be more outraged than Americans". These Hispanic people are Americans because Puerto Ricans are American! They are not a different group.

This feels like a cooking the frog too fast type moment where the message seems to be we will replace your culture and you will like it moment. The Super Bowl to me is perhaps the American Holiday most linked to Americana and they did the event completely in Spanish.

My hope is that this has gone too far and even my liberal mother will have an issue with explicit replacement.

He is a famous Puerto Rican celebrity, Puerto Rico is a part of the US, he is an American celebrity. And they've been part of the country since 1898, if there's some "replacement" of Puerto Ricans it was planned long long ago since McKinley.

This is also of course the result of acquiring new territories and not fully incorporating them into the rest of the system. If the US wants an expansive empire that takes over parts of South America, Greenland and Canada, which Trump seems to constantly be posturing towards, then we're gonna end up with spanish speakers, greenlandic and danish speakers, French speakers, and etc etc other languages within our borders. If Puerto Rico is part of the replacement then you should be really really worried about the president's plans with Venezuela and Gaza

I don’t think I’ve seen a single person outside of D list celebrity twitter not understand Puerto Ricans are Americans.

We don’t care that they’re Americans - we care the show is anti white racism propaganda. Literally.

We literally think that.

We don’t think Kendrick Lamar isn’t American because he’s black. We think he’s a racist piece of shit American that’s a perfect signal of what’s wrong with black America.

They not like us … not at all.

What part of the show exactly was "anti-white"? He didn't get on stage singing about how white people suck, or how Hispanics are better than everyone else or anything like that.

In fact the main complaint I see around the Internet that seems to be upsetting people is really just that he sang in Spanish and victimhood culture has to interpret that as "they're trying to erase white people".

Which as I've said before if we see this as some sort of conspiracy then it both goes way back to the days of McKinley and you should be freaking the fuck out about Trump's very explicit plans to make millions of Spanish, Arabic and French speakers part of the US through his expansionist goals else maybe in 2050 you'll get some American Gazan popstar singing in Arabic at the super bowl.

He sang in Spanish at the fucking Super Bowl for 15 minutes. I know we don’t officially have a language, but it’s English - which also happens to be the world’s language.

It was also devoid of white peoke completely - the last 15 years of media has been nothing but mixed couples, dopey white guys, full on minority women, rah rah everything but what actually built and continues the flow of the country.

It’s not a conspiracy - the media has turned to this because it’s wholly populated by one political side, that of the progressive.

It’s been 15 years of white degradation and it mostly stems from white progressives, and that’s broadcasted to us and normalizes it.

On top of that, minorities are just more racist than white Americans and view themselves as our betters - even tho they can not thrive without us.

Brazil is fine - Chili is fine … but they aren’t the peak of civilization.

It was also devoid of white peoke completely

Are we ignoring Bad Bunny himself? Or are Spanish people their own race which is somehow separate from all the other European ethnic groups?

America going from all white to 80% white to soon 50% white is an unprecedented issue - Spanish people (like Puerto Ricans and Brazilians and Chileans and Mexicans) are not white. They are not culturally similar to Europeans or white Americans or Canadians and they aren’t as successful as Japanese or Koreans.

The crime alone should be enough to riot - the intelligence levels alone should be enough to riot - the lack of assimilation should be enough to riot - the loss of culture should be enough to riot - there’s so much more !

Your question implying Puerto Rico is somehow akin to Eastern Europe is absurd. They’re island people - it’s fine! They’re Americans … it should be fine but they don’t wanna really and we don’t want them really … it’s about the whole of the issue - not like some weird hyper focus on this very one time specific thing.

Spanish people (like Puerto Ricans and Brazilians and Chileans and Mexicans) are not white

I assume you don't literally believe this, unless you genuinely don't class the Spanish royal family with their blonde daughters as white (or European, a much more useful term. White is a colour, not a race or ethnicity).

I can get why you wouldn't class a Spanish-speaking mestizo whose ancestry in mostly Amerindian as European, since they're mostly not European. But what about someone like Marco Rubio? Is his 100% European DNA not 'white', by your definition? What percentage of European ancestry is required for someone to be classified as white?

And if Spanish people are complely excluded, are there any other European ethnic groups that don't count? What about Italians, French, Poles? Are they 'white'?

Your question implying Puerto Rico is somehow akin to Eastern Europe is absurd.

I think you're referring to someone else's comment.

He sang in Spanish at the fucking Super Bowl for 15 minutes. I know we don’t officially have a language, but it’s English - which also happens to be the world’s language.

Yes he is Puerto Rican. They speak Spanish, and his songs are in Spanish. Again this is the inevitable result of taking ownership of land and people that are Spanish and not trying to incorporate them much into the rest of the country.

It was also devoid of white peoke completely -

There were white people there, including one of the most famous white musicians in the world. Unless Lady Gaga isn't white enough for you. Maybe you're one of the rare holdouts who still hate Italians.

“Show us anti-white racism”

Just to be clear on one thing Bad Bunny would be considered white by most people?
Trailer Park white. With proper amount of assimilation pressure his grandkids would just be white?

I do not contest he is an American citizen. I contest that he is an any sense part of the American nation.

He doesn’t share American values. He doesn’t share American traditions. He sings in Spanish.

I wouldn’t trust that he’d fight for America if push came to shove. And if the American experiment failed, he be happy to live in PR.

Right!

This. For Trump's new coalition to work, he needs to keep at least a substantial minority of well-assimilated Hispanics onboard. This should be easy - we are talking about a demographic which are default hostile to negrolatry, left-endorsed sexual deviance, and overeducated stick-up-arse-ness; and strongly in favour of big-arse trucks and other symbols of blue-collar affluence.

"Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" is the worst possible message for this group.

I agree with @Opt-out that this could have ended up with the NFL and the pro-Hispanic left beclowning themselves, particularly if Trump had shut up and let the MSM brag about how Bad Bunny was successfully shoving Spanish-speaking culture down the NFL-watching normies throats. But MAGA doubled down and beclowned themselves even harder - starting immediately after the announcement with various MAGA accounts including Trump poasting about how Bad Bunny (a natural-born US citizen with US citizen ancestors going back a century) was not American. Bad Bunny and the NFL managed to turn down the politics to the point where Trump and Kid Rock look like the people politicising the Super Bowl, not to mention demonstrating the US right's low culture rating by putting on a mediocre alternative show. It helps that (although Bad Bunny has been outspokenly anti-Trump off the stage) the inherent politics of his act is pro-Puerto Rican independence, which has no partisan valence in mainstream America, rather than being generic-left or pro-immigration. To people who understand the difference, it was very obviously a Puerto Rican show and not a generically Hispanic show.

"Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" is the worst possible message for this group.

This is actually an open question and likely a fine balancing act. The thing about the various sorts of latinos, is they hate each other as much, and often more than, they hate whites. I went to a significantly latino HS in the burbs and there were multiple cases of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans doing real violence to each other, not just fighting but stabbings and a truck homicide right after I graduated.

Is such a play far too nuanced for anyone to actually make? Likely yes, but the reality is there. Just like the play of latinos against blacks is CLEARLY there, and usually decides elections in Dem primaries in a lot of major northern cities now.

the inherent politics of his act is pro-Puerto Rican independence

doesn't' this kind of undercut the whole, he's just as American as everyone else bit from earlier in your post? I think we had a portion of our country declare independence before and I don't quite remember what happened after but I get the impression it wasn't popular amongst the rest of the country.

Yeah, but nobody ever remembers the halftime show. It doesn’t matter.

I don’t remember ALL the times my dad was an asshole - but he’s an asshole.

Except the one Janet Jackson did.

the inherent politics of his act is pro-Puerto Rican independence

Trump could do the funniest thing by coming out in favor of puerto rican independence

Trump removed support for Puerto Rican statehood from the Republican party platform, which is a step in that direction.

Bad Bunny (a natural-born US citizen with US citizen ancestors going back a century) was not American.

Well yeah that's how that works. Just because you're an American citizen on paper doesn't mean that you are American. What does it mean to be American? Apple pie and baseball? Free speech and the American flag? Reasonable minds disagree. But Bad Bunny, clearly, feels himself to be operating in some other category, which was the whole point of his show. It's not clear he considers himself American except for rhetorical purposes. That's why when he says "God Bless America" he brings out the flag of every Latin American nation, with Puerto Rico right next to the American flag. Maybe you can redefine "American" then, redefine it to mean whatever you want, but the leftover "USian" category then exists as an object without a name, and we all know what we're talking about. It's not clear Bad Bunny considers himself to be part of that tribe.

In general I think Puerto Rican exists in this "outsider-American" category in a way other latino ethnicities don't. The Cubans in Miami are all pretty red-blooded patriots. Mexicans either wave the Mexican flag or the American. But prominent Puerto Ricans often play this weird rhetorical game where they're not Americans like us, but they're also just as American as us how dare we. If we kicked Puerto Rico out tomorrow and changed their passport names would they still be American?

No but as long as they are part of America they aren't really anything else they've never even been a country. They definitely aren't Anglo and white but they are a regional minority. Are Québécois Canadian? Puerto Ricans are different compared to other Latin American ethnicities because their homeland is part of America.

Are Québécois Canadian?

"Canadian" as an identity was forged specifically to include the Quebecois, although one could argue that mainline "Canada" is Anglo and the Quebecois are outside of it.

If you removed Puerto Rico from America tomorrow America would barely notice. Maybe Puerto Rico itself would be deeply upset, although I imagine it would be a fairly mixed bag overall. The "Puerto Rican" identity would continue to develop, on its own lines, more or less as it already has.

Being inclusive of Puerto Ricans, which as a characteristically magnanimous white person I am more than happy to do, should not require excluding me. Since it evidently does mean that in reality, I am now shifted to kicking Puerto Rico out of the United States.

inherent politics of his act is pro-Puerto Rican independence

That's a definitionally anti-American sentiment, so "Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" sounds like an accurate summary and the intended takeaway if your statement is true.

That's a definitionally anti-American sentiment

Only if you think America owning Puerto Rico is good for America, which people who want an all-English speaking America presumably don't.

We are in the slightly odd position that Bad Bunny and the people objecting to him agree that Puerto Rico is not America, while the people who booked him, most normie Americans who have thought about the issue, and most normie Puerto Ricans think it is. "Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" is a vote-losing message to send, and the NFL and MSM covering the Super Bowl could easily have ended up embarrassing themselves by endorsing it, but MAGA shouted louder and ended up owning said losing message.

You claim that most normie Americans think of PR as American. Do you have any evidence for that claim? I highly doubt it.

Most normie Americans who have thought about the issue - the denominator already excludes the vast majority. Unfortunately you can't poll "Americans who have thought about Puerto Rico".

Stated differently you made up a claim

Puerto Ricans aren’t culturally Americans. Hell they have their own teams in the Olympics if memory serves.

This clapback is confusing passport with culture.

They're cultural homeland is entirely contained within America. They aren't immigrants Do you think Québécois are Canadian? They are culturally, linguistically and religiously different from Anglo Canadians as well.

And they have power in Canada. Puerto Rico is a conquered controlled land. It would be more akin to Ireland under British rule compared to modern French Canadian.

As Puerto Ricans are a part of the USA, their culture is also American culture. They are a subset.

Likewise, the IRA were British.

What is this "Britain" country that you speak of?

"Wild and weird... A homeless hulk, a derelict unsteered."

oof

International sporting events are generally weird: the UK competes as a single "Team GB" (and I assume implicitly Northern Ireland and overseas territories) in the Olympics, but as separate "countries" (England, Scotland, Wales) in the World Cup.

American Samoa has a far weirder political status than Puerto Rico. The US Virgin Islands also have their own Olympic team (and drive on the left).

Yeah, I have issues with the (lack of) Puerto Rican assimilation, but casually disrespecting it and treating it as a foreign country looks to me like a clear case of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot. I expect that the next time Democrats get a strong trifecta and are looking for ways to lock it in - this could easily be as soon as 2029 - Puerto Rican statehood will be a high priority, and that could easily be the killshot of the Seventh Party System.

Why should they assimilate? They are a people largely living on their homeland.

No they’re not, Puerto Rico has consistently seen crazy-high levels of migration to the mainland.

Non sequitur?

They are not 'largely living in their homeland' as an ethnic group, and this isn't uncommon for ethnic groups native to the poorer parts of American territory.

They're in US territory and I don't think we ought to give them up, so they should assimilate. Ideally we would acquire even more territory and make the people there assimilate too.

Or we could do the empire thing for real, and regularize the status of the various territories/associations (Guam, Marshall Islands, Puerto Rico, USVI, Greenland, etc). Personally I think the US would be bad at empire so I don't really suggest this.

Sorry Bad Bunny is not American. He has zero American values. He does not speak English. A technicality of a treaty giving you citizenship does not make you American.

Though as Puerto Rican he has no duty to assimilate since it was acquired land.

Maybe America shouldn't have annexed Puerto Rico then? You could deport him to his homeland but his homeland has been part of American for more than 100 years.

A technicality of a treaty giving you citizenship does not make you American.

Legally, it does.

What other definition do you propose? I know one when I see one? I think most people would have problems telling apart a Canadian who has worked in the US for a decade from a US citizen.

And what are the American values, which were shared by quasi-aristocratic Chevaliers, unruly Borderers, strict Puritans, French Southerners, German and Irish immigrants, Texan Hispanics, descendants of slaves, and so forth? I mean, besides "don't have dances with copulation movements in them"?

What other definition do you propose? I know one when I see one?

That's more or less how definitions work. Or don't work. There are very few categories that don't strain at the edges. I can play word games asking, well, what is a chair? Is a tree stump a chair? Is a hammock a chair? Is the ground a chair? Sure, no, whatever, we all know what we're talking about. We know it when we see it. See also the endless water cooler banter about whether a taco is a sandwich.

If "American" is just "paper citizen" then I guess apple pie and baseball can't be American, a warm slice of pie can't participate in abstract political arrangements. I think you can call me a sophist now. We know what we're talking about, we know it when we see it.

Bad Bunny seems very low on the list of people I consider American. I’ve deportee cases I agree with doing who are more American. One in particular I can think of who (1) filled out asylum paper; which during Biden was considered the proper process (2) said he had a job as a roofer (3) took care of his family

I definitely think we need higher standards for citizenship, but he’s trying to follow legal processes and is working to raise future Americans. Decent chance he would even bleed in a foxhole with me.

He does not speak English

He does speak English.

Sorry Bad Bunny is not American

He literally is, sorry.

He has zero American values.

If American values was necessary, then the anti capitalist and anti constitution views of the modern Republican party would be immediately disqualifying.

What would be wrong in your view with stripping American citizenship from millions of people?

Considering we didn't strip American citizenship for the literal traitors of the civil war I would say one reason is that we just set a very very high bar for this already. In fact people to this day continue to openly support the traitors and we don't suppress them.

That doesn't really answer the question as I asked it but answers a different question entirely

I gave you a reason, we have a preexisting insanely high bar for stripping citizenship. What reasons do you have to tear down chesterston fence and break the precedent?

chesterton's fence refers to a fence we don't know why was put up somewhere and has existed as a tradition for a long time

we do know when and why the pre-existing fence was constructed; in order to cement recent large-scale immigration of commies and other leftists in the aftermath of WW2

it's not some long-held tradition from the days of yore constructed for mysterious purposes

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huh? most Confederate soldiers were initially disenfranchised and prohibited from holding public office during a period known as "Reconstruction" where the Union occupied the rebelling states (also, universal male suffrage was still a recent phenomenon)

in history, the US regularly stripped citizenship for naturalized citizens as a matter of course for certain behaviors, e.g., anarchist and commie silliness

it's only until very recently (like post 1960) we decided our costco-membership-style citizenship was sacrosanct and could be removed only in the most extreme circumstances

In fact people to this day continue to openly support the traitors and we don't suppress them.

you mean our greatx4 or x5 grandfathers? the civil war has a different taste to it when you're actually American because you likely have ancestors who were those traitors and at least fought in the civil war

When I look up my family names on the Civil War Registry, there are hundreds of people related to me on both sides of the war (including people in my direct lineage whose graves I've visited). How about you?

And yes, we do lots of things to suppress and socially ostracize people who "openly support the traitors" from making it very difficult to get bank accounts for their organizations to getting them fired from their jobs. If you doubt that, throw some stars and bars on your car and let me know how that works out for you.

We should bring back bloodletting too. Nothing like a good leech to help balance the humors.

Sorry, he is. From the State Department website:

Puerto Rico comes within the definition of "United States" given in section 101(a)(38) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). A person born in Puerto Rico acquires U.S. citizenship in the same way as one born in any of the 50 States.

Puerto Ricans weren't granted citizenship by treaty but through the Jones Act in 1917. You can make the argument that gaining citizenship by statute isn't the same as being entitled to citizenship under the Constitution, but by that logic you'd have to concede that John McCain and Ted Cruz aren't Americans either. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was under US jurisdiction at the time but not an incorporated territory, and Cruz was born in Canada, a foreign country. Both rely on statutes outlining the circumstances under which children of US citizens born abroad can claim US citizenship.

You are reducing American Citizenship down to the equivalent of a Costco membership.

If America isn’t a people by race then we must be a people by creed. An idea. But BB rejected all that.

What’s left is just like a membership card to Costco.

I do agree we have at a minimum a few million people today where America is neither blood nor creed. I have friends in this bucket.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t think thru the argument before going legalistic. A legal argument of being American reduces American to a Costco Membership.

No, I'm reducing American citizenship to the terms outlined in the Constitution and US law, which is the only definition that matters. What you're trying to do is introduce additional criteria that doesn't come from anywhere accept your own imagination to define American as that which conforms to your own biases of what Americans are supposed to be. Well, two can play at that game; for that matter, 200 million can play at that game, and you don't have any authority to make that determination over them. The only authority that matters in this case is that of the US government, and that is who I'll defer to on definitions of who counts as an American. You can't just invent your own definitions for things that are already well-defined because the implications make you uncomfortable.

you don't have any authority to make that determination over them

Fair, and at risk of saying not much, I'd say that it's, uh, complicated. For example, I have good friends who were born and raised Canadian citizens and who later acquired US citizenship, too.1 For several of them, (not brushing with any broader of a brush), they're basically understood to be (and would describe themselves as) "Canadian, but also with US citizenship". Are they "American"? Uh... kinda yeah? Also maybe kinda no? If you just asked them if they were "American", I think they'd say, "I'm Canadian, but I have US citizenship." Does that matter? I don't particularly take a position either way.

Different individuals among them may have different senses of it, too. Some, for example, really are effectively Canadian at heart. One guy I know discovered that one of his ancestors also had US citizenship, and found that the paperwork to go the route of attaining citizenship that way was easier for him than going through spousal immigration in order to move here with his wife.2 If it had been just as easy to do it the other way, would he have bothered? I don't know; it's a counterfactual, and lots of things can come into play over time. But he might have been perfectly happy being "Canadian citizen and US Permanent Resident" indefinitely. Does this matter? I don't know. I can vaguely see both sides.

For what it's worth, my best Puerto Rican friend would say, "I'm Puerto Rican, and oh by the way, we have American citizenship." Does that matter? Hell, I don't know.

You're obviously right that the only non-squishy way to draw lines is via citizenship, but my observation is that a lot of folks view the real world as inherently squishy.

1 - I also know at least one guy born/raised in the US. He and his wife moved to Canada for work for several years. He got Canadian citizenship, she didn't. They would explicitly say that the reason he got Canadian citizenship was just because it made dealing with a certain Canadian law regarding his line of work easier. They've lived back in the US for quite a few years now. I don't think either of them would say they're "Canadian". If you just asked them, they'd probably say that he was "American", full stop. If you went on to ask him about his time in Canada, he'd add, "...and yeah, I did get Canadian citizenship."

2 - For this particular couple, they actually moved to Canada first when they got married; she went through whatever process to be able to move up there and be married to him. I don't know if she acquired Canadian citizenship at any point. Later, when they decided they wanted to live in the US (for a particular work reason), they discovered this business about his ancestor. Where they're living and what citizenship he has is just sort of an incidental and paperwork thing to them.

As I mention below, bright line rules are easy to state but are over and under inclusive. Just because a standard has fuzziness doesn’t mean it’s worse than a bright line rule which isn’t fuzzy but doesn’t get at the nature of what people are asking.

I think there might be two tests I would use.

The vacation test: if you are abroad and a non government person asks “what are you” do you respond American or something else (eg Puerto Rican)

The second is if the U.S. was in a hotly contested war would you strongly take up its defense?

I think the combo of the two are helpful.

A country isn’t words on paper. If they were then many countries would be America.
We can debate whether America can reject someone who wants to be America. But I think a bare minimum for considering yourself an American is whether to the best of your ability and knowledge work to improve and protect America.

For someone like Trump we may debate whether his view of America is correct. But he did bleed for America. He did risks spending the rest of his life in jail for America. He’s clearly a patriot though we can disagree on whether he methods are wrong. Do I think BB would do that for America - no.

You have aptly described the definition of legal citizenship. I am not using American as “legal citizen”. I don’t believe bad bunny even describes himself as an American.

That's... a stretch, because that would disqualify about 90% of Americans.

There's nothing more American than looting the commons for your own benefit; socializing the losses and privatizing the gains. Bad Bunny is doing the most American of things; being paid to celebrate himself and perform a victory dance on a defeated people, and to make them pay for the privilege. Improve? Protect? He's getting that bread, if American society was getting worse he'd move somewhere else after getting his bag.

This is the most American of things. Men are free, and when free, this is what significant amounts of them do.

Do we live in different countries? Or are you under 25? 90% of Americans do not loot the commons. Nobody does. That’s a post 2016 commons breaking down. It’s not the America I grew up in. This is literally what we are fighting for to prevent America from going down that path.

The reason freedom worked in America is due to Americans being able to work for the collective good and not be solely self-centered. If everyone robbed from each other the entire experiment would have never worked.

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This is the most American of things. Men are free, and when free, this is what significant amounts of them do.

This is certainly a view one can hold. By all means, maintain the same perspective when it is you getting got.

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No, I'm reducing American citizenship to the terms outlined in the Constitution and US law, which is the only definition that matters.

You're the one who brought up citizenship, which is irrelevant. OP was not talking about citizenship but affinity.

He's saying that he's not culturally American in any meaningful sense: "He has zero American values. He does not speak English."

He's a very bad American; "American" is not a value judgment. Hillary Clinton, Jay Jones, and Tyler Robinson are all Americans. Roman Polanski is an American and neither resides here nor was born here. Jeffrey Epstein and Charlie Manson were Americans.

I understand your point, but I don't know how you can conclude that Roman Polanski is American. He only lived in the US for about five years.

Ah, my mistake. Half-remembering the story I thought he got citizenship.

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!


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