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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5251 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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Is presidential corruption still culture war?

You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.

As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:

Within 60 days of the Effective Date, the United States shall provide the U.S. Department of the Treasury with all necessary forms and documentation to direct a payment of $1,776,000,000 to an account for the sole use by the Anti-Weaponization Fun ("Designated Account"). The corpus of the Anti-Weaponization Fund's funding does not represent the value of any claim by Plaintiffs, but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants' claims.

Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!

ETA:

ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removable at-will by the President.

Eventually the Dems will be back in power and all of these people (and especially the Trump family, and lol if they think a pardon will save them) are going to be the subject of extreme, unrestricted nuclear lawfare, whether or not it’s justified. A few smart lawyers and associates will sneak out with some profit, but the problem with democratically elected corruption is that it only works if you either stay in power, or come from a third world country (so you can just flee to Switzerland or Monaco or Singapore with your gains). The Trump sons are extremely stupid so don’t seem to recognize this, and Kushner is keeping his distance beyond the foreign policy stuff (and he already has the Saudis’ money locked up). Once Trump is gone and can’t run again Republican loyalty to Trump will be very short-lived, establishment reps have no reason to bat for him, and the populist wing of the Massie / Carlson type is turning on him or already has, and it’s only a year and a half in. Who is going to defend him once he’s out of power? Lindsey Graham? They can’t even flee because any country would gladly extradite them for favor with a future admin.

So I think the TDS around this is kind of stupid. If you want to see the Trump family face consequences for this venality, I’m pretty sure you’ll get your wish. In the meantime, maybe SCOTUS can at least do one or two useful things.

Eventually the Dems will be back in power and all of these people (and especially the Trump family, and lol if they think a pardon will save them) are going to be the subject of extreme, unrestricted nuclear lawfare, whether or not it’s justified.

Thus, if they are going to get the penalty, they may as well commit the offense.

In the US justice system, a generally fair justice system where convictions of innocents are rare (something like 5% at worse, and those are skewed towards people with extremely bad luck in evidence stacked against them), the difference between doing the crime and not can be massive.

That doesn't mean lawfare doesn't happen, you can harass innocents over bullshit charges of course. But actual severe penalties are pretty much entirely resigned to the guilty. If you're doing the time, you did the crime.

Convictions of innocents being rare doesn't imply the system is fair, because you have to take base rates into account. It may be that they are rare because few innocents are targeted, but of the ones who are targeted, the conviction rate is high.

I don’t know why people would assume Dems will be in power again under the adversarial format.

  1. Dems haven’t nominated a legitimate candidate for POTUS since I guess Hillary. The current crop are not good candidates. Dems are highly unpopular.

  2. I don’t have any faith we can transition power again and probably should be looking for options not to. You can’t turn the country over to Mamdanis or Karen Bass. They are foreign agents. Complete aliens to me.

Win in 2028 because of next incompetent Dem candidate. If it comes to it do the coup.

I still don’t understand why people say Trump can’t run again. He can just nominate his sons or Vance and essentially still be in power. He’s going to be at the White House daily under any of those administrations. He’s not leaving.

Uh, I think you should recalibrate.

If the current Democrat oeuvre is illegitimate, whatever that means, then you shouldn’t have to worry about transferring power to them. Conversely, if they’re getting ahold of the country, are they really so unpopular, especially when the government structure favors Republicans?

Also, suggesting a coup because you don’t have faith in your ability to give up power is…one hell of an own goal.

If a movement existed that was running for office on re-enslaving blacks, and it looked like this movement had a good chance of winning the election, how do you think black people should respond to that? How would you respond to that, yourself?

Democracy is not a universal solution. It is entirely possible to vote your way out of having a functional country. This is not, I think, a hazard that you can "trust the experts" to assess risk on your behalf.

Blue Tribe is evidently in favor of a variety of government actions to which I believe large-scale lawless violence is a reasonable response. Maybe I am unusual in making such an assessment, but if I am not, we are well into the deep end with no clear path back to solid ground.

It may be useful to consider Trump as a coordination mechanism, rather than a solution in and of himself. What is the proper response to Blues weaponizing the IRS against Reds' ability to organize politically? If I offered you a trade where a president of your choice got to disburse 1.776 billion dollars, and in exchange I get to use the IRS to attack your tribe's ability to coordinate politically for the indefinite future, is that a trade you would accept?

Again, and again, and again, Trump is the moderate, gentle voice of piece. This is as good as it's going to be, and it's never going to be this good again.

the current Democrat oeuvre is illegitimate, whatever that means

It's not the word I'd choose but given the 2020 and 2024 elections, neither candidate was chosen under what I would call normal circumstances. For that matter 2016 was memorably biased by the DNC but probably not in a way that substantially mattered.

if they’re getting ahold of the country, are they really so unpopular

Absolutely! That's the horror of the two-party system and substantial polarization.

Even in 2020 Dems as a party were net-unfavorable, but slightly less unfavorable than Republicans. My understanding is favorability has not improved, but the gap may have increased a bit.

I don’t care about popularity. I only believe in Democracy in western nations. Demographically we are more like LATAM now. That region is better off with military dictatorships with a revolving door of Rubios in charge. The left is like LATAM left now with Mamdani types.

Curious as to why you put Mamdani in the ranks of the Latam left.

And demographically, the USA is still something like 60 percent white, yes?

Reactionary predictions on elections like these have had a terrible track record in 2016, to some degree in 2020, and then very much in 2024. The US public has swapped the party in the White House with near metronomic frequency. If anything, the populist age has only made that tendency even more pronounced. The only thing that would stop this is the end of democracy in the US.

Even during the decades of single-party house/congress control, the Presidency was swapping sides pretty regularly.

He’s not leaving.

The man is 80 years old, he's leaving at some point.

There is a good chance he lives close to 100. He’s never drank etc. Also he stays fairly active like Buffet or Munger (probably solid lifestyle comps). 20 more years is not unreasonable.

The fact that Trump has happened to preside over some major high leverage situations in world history (ie AI, and also having more SCOTUS picks than average) makes me have a horrifying/fantastic thought, depending on one's point of view. What if Trump ends up being right on the "living" side of the longevity escape velocity, such that immortality is achieved such that whatever therapies are required for it are implemented on him just seconds before he would have died? We certainly live in interesting times, and that would make it interestinger still.

Dems haven’t nominated a legitimate candidate for POTUS since I guess Hillary. The current crop are not good candidates. Dems are highly unpopular.

Did you forget Biden winning in 2020?

Win in 2028 because of next incompetent Dem candidate

62% Democrat, 38% Republican and that's despite the possibility of coup and election fuckery since it requires the inauguration.

You forget he was senile?

Did you forget Biden winning in 2020?

Terrible candidate but just a weird year all around. Trump probably wins if Covid doesn't kill so many old people a year or two early, they might not be many QALY but they were sure important for Republican electoral chances.

That’s kind of like blaming South Carolina for the Civil War. Sure, they provided the most visible reason, but there was no shortage of alternatives.

COVID killed fewer than 250,000 Americans by November 2020. Unless those were all concentrated in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, they weren’t going to translate into a Trump victory. They certainly didn’t approach the 7,000,000 popular-vote difference.

The obvious second-order effect is voters blaming the current administration for a dead or dying family member. That might get you closer.

Personally, I’d credit the massive economic recession.

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