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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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The final resting place of TDS: acceptance that it was just aesthetic snobbery all along. The greatest political actor in the US since FDR, vanquished both parties, slew the Bush and the Clinton dynasties, co-opted the Kennedies, rewrote the political playbook and realigned the party system, the international treaty system and US policies more generally. One day they'll probably teach this little banger in 300-level poly-sci classes, in the same chapter as the Fireside Chats.

So gauche!

My problem with TDS is that it conflates three different things. The original meaning was hating something purely because it was done by Trump (and the assumption that people would have approved of a policy if it was enacted by their tribe). This is the true aesthetic snobbery, which probably happens more than we would like to admit. There are two other factors at play though.

1 - Genuine dislike of Trump's goals. This is certainly the case with true believers on the left. They like the bureaucracy that is getting axed. They like the world order that is being dismantled. They like the identity politics and moral panics, etc. I wouldn't say they have TDS. I'd say they don't like change.

2 - Approval of Trump's goals but dislike of his methods. I'd say the vast majority of objectors fall into this category (myself included). I do support a bunch of what Trump wants to do (at least from a very high level). But his ways of doing those things are some combination of a) incompetent or b) designed primarily for the aesthetic appeal. This makes sense from an electoral perspective, but it's not a long term strategy. Eventually the underlying reality of the world (ex: oil and gas economics) catches up. And at that point, you end up causing a crisis and delivering the government back to the very people you wanted to remove from power. You put on a flashy show, but just end up as a small detour in Cthulhu's leftward swim.

None of that is true; is the thing. He is a gross capering clown who leads a populist interregnum; he does things that are stupid and counterproductive to his own goals while still doing normal neocon things. He is Bush 3: Bush harder, just worse in every way.

The things you attribute to him are just end process that began with regan and thatcher, the rotting away of the state and of society into atomized citizens and neoliberal incentives.

I think the idea of TDS is a kind of prion some people ate that is stopping them from looking at the fat, senile lunatic they have decided is a master manipulator and realizing: Holy shit, our guy is a silver spoon moron!

He is a gross capering clown who leads a populist interregnum

LOL. Nice choice of words for someone who has been protested by a group called "No Kings".

For anyone else like me who needed to look up the root, interregnum, as in, regal, rex, king. Inter, between, so if Trump is the leader of the populist interregnum, we are definitionally between the reign of two kings (Obama in this case being one king).

I like words.

His opposition including some stupid people who can't get their narrative straight is not a particularly strong point in his favour.

Sure it is; in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is... err, there's that word again.

It so happens that if you are too stupid and malicious to consider consequences, you can do a hell of a lot as the president of the United States of America. You can do great things indeed. The greatest. It's a tremendous force, this office.

For example, you can kill a whole civilization.

You can realign everything into a crooked parody of itself. You can throw a temper tantrum and wreck international treaties, replacing them with your preferred club of third world kleptocrats. Easy-peasy. The hard part is getting into that office, but thankfully even the smart Americans have grown tired of treating things seriously, and so happily elected a random moron.

What insightful commentary. Do go on.

Trump killed a civilization with a tweet. Hysterical. Chuck Norris jokes as political analysis.

The US President making a thinly veiled threat to commit genocide is, in fact, a bad thing. Even if he's practically guaranteed to TACO and just do some airstrikes on civilian infrastructure at worst. The fact that Trump does it through Twitter does not reduce its badness since Twitter is basically an official communication channel these days.

It wasn't Twitter, it was Truth Social. Which is where Trump rants.

... that does not make it better.

Chuck Norris jokes as policy announcements.

Does it not tire you to maintain this disaffected persona chuckling at "lib" overreaction? Do you really believe that the proper treatment of POTUS's words is "unhinged and obviously non-credible bullshitting", but also that this kind of person deserves to be POTUS?

For example, you can kill a whole civilization.

Have you made similar objections towards "death to America" or "death to Israel" coming from Middle Easterners, including Iran? Or is this one of those "America isn't civilized, so it's fine to destroy America, but Iran, whew, that's civilized" ideas? Or is the reasoning perhaps that it's hyperbole when Iran says it but serious when Trump says it?

Well, I had higher expectations of the USA than Iran personally. Makes sense to me people would find such rhetoric coming from the POTUS more notable than similar rhetoric coming from a mob in a third world country or from a notorious extremist theocracy.

I note that at least going back to the Bush administration (and probably back into the mists of time, but I haven't checked) that there is a significant subset of people who simultaneously want to claim moral superiority and seethe at being held to any kind of standard.

  1. yes, it is hyperbole in the case of Iran. This has been covered enough. Iranians have, in fact, never had the genocide of Americans or even collapse of the American state to be their policy.
  2. Iran cannot credibly threaten death to America, or even Israel, for it has no means to inflict such death. On the other hand, the US can credibly send Iran to the Stone Age, or whatever, with near-complete impunity.
  3. I do have double standards. An ostensible vanguard of the Western Civilization cannot conduct itself like an insular theocracy it says is ruled by "crazy mullahs".
  4. This victim posturing is exactly what I've been talking about, it's unbecoming of a superpower.

Iran cannot credibly threaten death to America, or even Israel, for it has no means to inflict such death.

Which is why it was working on nuclear weapons.

Their nuclear program was completely obliterated less than a year ago.

Obviously not, since they still have the enriched uranium, a nuclear reactor, and other parts of said program.

...or because they don't want to be regime changed.

Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people. Hard to imagine a greater authority on the matter.

Besides that, rhetoric coming from a protest or some mass gathering is slightly different than rhetoric coming from world leaders. 'Glassing the place' became a common term for what many Americans said should be done to the middle east, I don't suppose you think that's the same as an official statement from a national leader? Though Trump has now narrowed that gap.

Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people.

If that counts, it should exonerate Trump too; Trump said in the same statement that he didn't want the civilization to die. It's even above in the link!

A major difference is that right now the US bombing Iranian cities and has the capacity to inflict catastrophic damage on civilian infrastructure while Iran is not bombing American cities and on their best day could inflict minor damage.

So is it ok to threaten genocidal destruction so long as you don't have the capacity to actually carry it out?

From a Banksian perspective, aspirational Fully Automated Gay Space Communism says "yes", but still has to manage "real threats" (ideally non-kinetically, but not always). I don't think we're there (yet?), so I wouldn't call that a fair expectation in 2026.

I don't know how you inferred that from what I wrote, but I want to raise two points.

Firstly, and this is unbelievably important: evil behavior from others does not excuse your own evil behavior. There's a kind of self-conscious human orc who feels the need to justify their own brutal impulses by pointing to the depravity of others, but they don't actually seek to resolve anything.

Secondly, power implies responsibility. The fact that one party can act on their threat and the other cannot is absolutely a reason to care more about the one than the other. You should not be threatening genocide, period, but you definitely shouldn't be doing it when you are currently in the process bombing the shit out of the people you're threatening to exterminate.

I don't know how you inferred that from what I wrote

You were replying to someone who asked if you raised similar complaints over Iran calling for death to America for decades with the argument that a big difference between the two is that the US is currently bombing Iran and has the capacity to inflict significant damage while Iran currently isn't and cannot. I'm not saying anything excuses anything else here, I'm just replying to the argument you made.

I'm just replying to the argument you made.

No, you're not.

  1. BigObjectPermanceShill raised objections to genocidal threats from Trump.
  2. Jiro responded with whataboutism about Iranian rhetoric.
  3. I respond to Jiro saying that the comparison is off based because the circumstances are radically different.
  4. You imply that I think threatening genocide is okay as long as you can't do it.

The problem is that nowhere in my post do I say or even imply that Iran's rhetoric is acceptable.

The problem is that nowhere in my post do I say or even imply that Iran's rhetoric is acceptable.

But you do say that it's different than Trump's genocidal threats, with Iran's capacity to act on what they said being the only difference you mention. I'm really not sure what you're going for here bro.

More comments

It's not okay, but it's self-evidently better. With great power comes great responsibility etc.

He actually can't kill the civilization. Islam did that already.

Islamic Persia has produced a huge amount of architecture, art, poetry and literature. They were the intellectual elite of the Caliphate. And have existed in that form since before England was a country.

So I guess all of these domestically manufactured missiles and drones that are currently raining down on the Middle East are the product of some other civilization that happens to inhabit the same geographical location?

Yes.

Can't argue with gigachad responses.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again

This is genocidal rhetoric. What do you even say at this point? We are clearly in the wrong. Trump has disgraced America more than anyone before him. The Republican Party may be over for the next decade. Perhaps endless immigration will simply be our punishment from God for allowing the bloodthirsty to occupy the government.

Chronologically speaking, it's more like allowing the openly bloodthirsty (previous Presidents probably weren't saints in that regard, but generally kept their mouths shut) to occupy the government is the punishment for allowing endless immigration.

The Republican Party may be over for the next decade.

Press X to doubt. 2 reasons:

  1. Any foolishness from the side of Republicans will be seized on by the Dems to be more foolish themselves. It'll allow them greater leeway to hang themselves politically by supporting nonsense like defacto open borders or wokeness 2.0 or whatever else they can cook up with. Then that'll alienate more people, and we'll be back to equilibrium.

  2. MAGA voters could choose to end this war at any time by aggressively protesting what Trump is doing, threatening to withhold support, etc. Trump listens to them in broad strokes, and becomes much more TACO-y when he senses the ground shifting beneath him. So far though, MAGA has not done this. It's going along with the Iran war despite the massive hypocrisy of many MAGAs of previously being isolationist. There's a few tiny cracks and some softening support here and there, but Trump's base remains relatively united behind Trump.

A lot of major conservative names have actually defected here. Here's Candace Owens calling for the 25th amendment over his comments. Tucker Carlson is calling on troops to disobey these types of orders. Theo Von has been extremely against the war in Iran (I havent yet seen any comments on this recent but specifically)

They're the 3rd, 7th and 11th most listened to podcast on Spotify in the US.

It's not just the traditional podcasters either, for example here's Alex Jones. You can find plenty of major conservatives, many who have been conservative way before Trump even was, who oppose this war.

I don't agree with you must of the time but the GOP won't be over for the next decade. I know it feels that way in the present but it isn't true. You're looking at him through the prism of seeing a sitting American president. The people that elected him elected a wrecking ball, not a suit that focus group's every third sentence. That isn't what they wanted. When people say "... but Kamala's platform was better than Trump's...," that presumes there's political will and integrity behind the candidate and their administration. People need to touch and feel tangible results in their own life to believe that the political system is working for them. Saying "fiscal spending is going to increase $200 billion for clean energy initiatives," is empty when compared to a $1,200 COVID stimulus check that shows up in people's bank accounts.

Will need some kind of truth and reconciliation process after this. Can't have another weak Democrat administration pretending it never happened.

Yes more than actual genocidal presidents.

Netanyahu is not an American president.

I know you hate the joos but I was referencing the the trail of tears

Supposing that Jackson’s actions did constitute genocide, there are 200 years of moral progress separating our era from his, which I think does make Trump’s threat of eternal civilizational destruction more shameful.

I think that's exactly what he's talking about:

... I was referencing the the trail of tears

That's "at the expense" and tail end of things that sits on a pile of injustices and atrocities where the flag of "progress" gets planted.

Right. The reason that Trump has disgraced America more than Jackson, implying that Jackson’s conduct is considered genocidal, is that we are 220 years of moral progress away from Jackson, and everyone should know that destroying an entire civilization forever is wrong. Though I find the comparison inexact for other reasons (low total loss of life by Jackson; the aggressive raids of Indians; that Indians did not actually have a valuable civilization unlike Iran; that Indians were given reservations; that Iran is filled with 90mil people; that the conduct does not provide America any benefit or expansion).

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