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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26142 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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It's not a matter of a "competent regime", it's a matter of having the media entirely on the protestor's side.

Fox News has always been broadly sympathetic to the MAGA regime, the Wapo has bent the knee in exchange for Trump going soft on Bezos' other business interests, CBS has been bought by an ally. The WSJ is also owned by an ally - that the WSJ is now mostly hostile to Trump is an unforced error on his part. And of course politically engaged Americans no longer rely entirely on the MSM - they get some or all of their news from algorithmically-curated social media feeds whose algorithms are controlled by pro-regime oligarchs (Twitter, new TikTok) or billionaires going along to get along (Facebook). The idea that MAGA faces a uniformly hostile media environment is cope.

The Trump administration is losing the propaganda war over immigration enforcement because "deport them all" was never particular popular with the median voter. There is a reason why the campaign messaging focussed on mythical pet-eating immigrants and not nannies, day labourers, military spouses with paperwork issues etc. Sending federal law enforcement into a community where they are not welcome is going to look ugly - there is a reason why it almost never happens. And "Deport otherwise law-abiding illegals, plus legal migrants whose status can be revoked on a technicality, and don't go easy on any US citizens who happen to be in the way" is at best a 50-50 proposition before it turns out to be ugly in practice.

I dunno, RFK seems like perhaps the worst possible choice for his job. Why should we believe Noem is highly competent but merely plagued by an antagonistic media? I have a hard time believing that a traditionally competent person in charge (eg Homan) would have led to the protestor deaths and public opinion shift, or at least not nearly as much.

Worst possible choice by what metric?

More stupid and incorrect than the idea that biological males can get pregnant and require menstrual support? Or pushing puberty blockers and other forms of "gender-affirming care" for minors over the parental objections?

I find it interesting that nobody on the blue team seemed to have any problems with his vaccine skepticism until 2020.

My sense of snark obliges me to note that transgender affirmation surgery of minors was the policy of the government medical establishment barely more than a year ago, and the administration before that had to knowingly lie about its own healthcare proposals to get them past the public at which point many of the promised benefits that weren't deliberate lies still failed.

'Incredibly stupid and incorrect beliefs on medical care' has been more or less the public health policy of the United States for longer than many Mottizans have been cognizant of US politics.

Getting the media on your side is part of competence. Given the existing environment, I get the appeal of throwing your hands up and saying it's impossible. But the Trump administration doesn't put in even a minimal attempt to work the mainstream media, seeing no value in it compared to building a parallel system.

Like you say though they have not tried that route. It’s by design they’ve chosen war with legacy media and to build in parallel. There are significant benefits to building alternative since MSM at best will give any tie to your opponent. Trump has successfully gotten completely loss of credibility from the msm by half the population. The weakness is this leads to a Cold War of dueling narratives and makes it nearly impossible for a Reagan Revolution style victory.

The media is not an independent actor at this point; it is part of the other side.

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