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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6338 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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I’m still trying to figure out how this is their fault, given the Republican trifecta;

Republicans voted to keep it open but Democrats didn’t. It takes 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. You already know that because you admit it takes two parties to negotiate.

It only takes 51 votes to remove the filibuster. It's a fig leaf that the senate uses to avoid blame, nothing more. I blamed the democrats for being useless when they could have removed it before, and I'm happy blaming the republicans for refusing to remove it now.

Removing the filibuster is getting fairly popular with anyone of intellect. A lot of people are realizing we have too many checks and balances and congress does nothing.

congress does nothing.

*taps constitutional conservative sign*

This is a feature of congress, not a bug. The point of the structure of the Senate (equal state representation instead of proportional, longer terms, advise and consent duties to executive branch appointments, most special of which are SCOTUS judges, etc.) is that it is supposed to be the "collegial institution" that slows down the structurally populist, high variance legislative whipsawing of the House. The filibuster necessitating close to a super majority to override is a continuation of that.

Americans' problem isn't with Congress per se, it's mostly with the creeping Federal bureaucracy, regulatory apparatus (which has a positive feedback loop with general PMC culture), and the imperial presidency. The growth of Leviathan since WW2 is the problem. I don't want to see Congress becoming fundamentally more active. I'd like to see them pare back the powers of the executive branch (which they can do but most members are a bit too tied at the hip to any given sitting President.)

Then, I'd like to see a hard RETVRN to Federalism that places states as the primary "actors." California can experiment with its polyamory socialist redistributionism while West Virginia fucks around with legalizing machine guns.

Right now, this is extremely murky in actual application because of 1) The 14th amendment and 2) The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the several amendments passed on it in the intervening decades. We'd probably be looking at a SCOTUS decision so far reaching that this SCOTUS - which is conservative any way you slice it, the argument is only to what degree - wouldn't take such a case.

That's the deeper "Straussian" view of the gridlock.

It ain't the filibuster.

From a foreigner's perspective, all of that Imperial presidency stuff is happening because voters want things that congress isn’t providing.

I would estimate that 20% of the population max are principled states’ rights maximalists. The other 80% want ‘good things for me and my brothers and sisters in the rest of America’ and they want to be able to move around without risking those things. They can’t agree on those things which is why we have all our modern drama but that’s by the by.

If you dam a river and the throughput of your dam is insufficient for the pressure of the river, that dam’s going to end up underwater.

because voters want things that congress isn’t providing.

This is true. The larger point I was driving at is that voters shouldn't have to be in the position of relying on congress to provide things. Mostly, it should be done through semi-formal social networks (i.e. I hate the idea of government funded somali daycare fraud child care facilities. I'd rather see stable extended families and high trust local communities help shoulder the burden of child rearing). But this is illegal in many cases (beyond just childcare).

A lot of socially oriented programs can be described as "In order to help you, we've made you dependent upon the government. You're no longer allowed to help yourself and if you don't vote us, you and your family will suffer the consequences."

The larger point I was driving at is that voters shouldn't have to be in the position of relying on congress to provide things. Mostly, it should be done through semi-formal social networks.

...which work very well until the semi-formal social network decides that it doesn't like your face, or whom you marry, or the vocabulary you kept using two days after it was declared problematic because you were too busy working to keep up with the ever-changing list of naughty no-no words....

You're right, my recommended alternative wasn't totally airtight and perfect. I am so sorry for having voiced my tiny brain solution.

Do you have a solution? Or are you saying that the current state of affairs of relying on state employees / state subsidies to look after your children (or, you know, just do nothing and collect the checks) is better? How about when that state mandates slamming a vaccine into yourself and your child as a hard requirement?

You're right, my recommended alternative wasn't totally airtight and perfect. I am so sorry for having voiced my tiny brain solution.

Your recommended alternative has been tried, and it had the shortcomings I specified.

Do you have a solution?

Yes. Congress gets off its collective arse and provides the assistance people need, even to people whose neighbours think deserve to starve in a ditch.

[A]re you saying that the current state of affairs of relying on state employees / state subsidies to look after your children ... is better?

I'm saying that before you tear down the fence, you should have some idea of why it was put up.

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