This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face when the last President blanket pardoned his own son for more than a decade of crimes.
He even did it preemptively, pardoning him for actions he could have taken in the future, all the way to the end of the Presidential term.
That same son made millions on bogus board positions in Ukraine which were obviously bribes. Ukraine which blew up into a war during that President's term, and where billions of dollars have been thrown down a black hole.
So, there's a really high bar for corrupt political movements.
Single digit millions. The highest serious estimate I have seen is that the whole "Biden crime family" operation netted $10-20 million. Two orders of magnitude less than the Trump family's buckraking. Also an order of magnitude less than Clinton family buckraking or the various financial scandals of the Hastert-DeLay paedoCongress, so I don't think you can claim that the Bidens were unusually corrupt by the standards of pre-Trump American politics.
I think the problem is that so many types of grift have been conflated.
Trump financially exploiting his own supporters (crypto, SPACs, trump media, trump sons promoting bullshit products and companies, trump steak type stuff). The left and never-trump republicans spoke about this far, far too much. Nobody cares when a fool is parted from his money by the leader he worships.
The usual bribes for friends and family members, as happened with eg Biden and as happens with Trump and his sons joining the boards of various startups that want some funding or regulatory allowance or serve a particular foreign interest or whatever.
The Saudi/Gulf money. Strong connections to the GOP for many decades. The Bush family were close. The Kushner fund. I don’t think there’s anything particularly new here.
The Trump self-promotion. Random third world countries touting future TRUMP hotels, TRUMP casinos and so on. This is venal but it ties into Trump’s brand, which has always been multi asset and fully integrated. The president making casino deals while he’s on diplomatic business, and rolling the two into one arrangement is on brand and expected, his supporters don’t care and there was every expectation he would do this before being elected.
Specific, “third world” style direct extraction of public funds with no fig leaf. This is where, for example, an African oil minister directly siphons a cut of every oil deal into a personal Swiss bank account. Or where the Lebanese ex central bank chief allegedly took a tiny cut of every transaction they did and had it diverted to a personal account for decades. Trump has arguably engaged in this with eg the current 1.78bn slush fund ‘deal’, and there are smaller but numerous previous examples.
The problem is that if you’ve spent years whining about 1-4, reporting 5 carries less weight.
If the crypto and SPACs were just about ripping off Trump's own supporters, I would agree with your point re. 1. But with all of 1, 3 and 4 the problem is not that Trump is getting paid, it is that some of the people paying Trump are smart enough to know what they are doing, and we can assume that they are getting something in return. But we don't know what is being sold, and in some cases (especially the crypto) we don't even know who it is being sold to.
One example where we do know is that Trump changed his views on the Tiktok ban around the time Tiktok investor Jeff Yass invested in the Truth Social SPAC. That moves the SPAC from scamming his own supporters to accepting bribes from a proxy for a Communist dictatorship.
Nobody thinks the Saudis deal with Jared Kushner is purely commercial. The question is whether this is a tip for his work on something which benefits both Saudi and US interests (presumably the Abraham accords), or whether it is a bribe for some piece of as-yet secret work which benefits Saudi interests and hurts US interests. Even if it is a tip, the dollar amount is so much larger than the customary and reasonable gift given in that kind of situation that it would be improper under conventional business or political ethics. When Eric Trump announces the groundbreaking on Trump Hotel Durkadurkastan, we don't know if it is a purely commercial transaction, a tip, or a bribe. (But we do know that the Durkadurkastanis see this as a distinction without a difference).
In addition, all five of your points involve dollar amounts which were 1-2 orders of magnitude higher under Trump than under previous corrupt presidents. For me, this is absolutely critical, although I agree that the average swing voter is innumerate and doesn't care. I don't think the Saudis paid Jared Kushner a few hundred million dollars* for a small favour, whereas people were willing to pay Hunter Biden a few hundred thousand dollars just to set up some meetings.
* My estimate of the NPV of the management fees on the $2 billion investment over the life of the fund, assuming the standard 2-and-20 fee.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Pardoning his son was easily the most despicable act in Biden's presidency. But it was not a Tuesday. There is no long and proud tradition of Democratic presidents handing out preemptive pardons like candy.
With Trump, a pardon of some fraudster in exchange to cash (or investment in his shitcoins, which amounts to the same thing) is mostly a Tuesday.
Nor do I think it is sound to insinuate that the support of the Ukraine in the war was a reaction of Ukrainians buying access to Biden through his son. A lot of countries support Ukraine, not all had a president's son on some shady board of directors.
Supporting Ukraine was totally in character for US foreign policy between 1950 and 2005. To my knowledge, Ukraine does not even have a well-funded lobby organization to bribe congressmen to vote for military aid, unlike some other country which received 10G$ a year during a conflict viewed slightly more controversially in the Western world. But AIPAC makes a bad case to argue that the Dems are the party of corruption because MAGA's support for Israel's military causes makes Biden's look modest.
It is well known that there was a bit of a swamp in DC. Big donors would probably not be willing to spend on PACs if the politicians were all unwavering loyal to their ideas and the will of the people. There is certainly a revolving door between policymakers and the industries which they regulate. Nobody believes that a politician paid as an advisor for some company is really giving advice worth his salary.
To try a slightly unhygienic metaphor, if DC was a swimming pool it would be well known that people sometimes piss in it. When Biden pardoned his son for any and all crimes, that was akin to standing on the pool's side and openly pissing into it.
But what Trump is doing is getting up to the topmost board of the diving tower, pulling down his trunks, squatting at the end and letting turd after turd drop in the pool.
Pardoning his son was one of the few human acts Biden did as president, and he shouldn't have lied about it.
All the other political pardons were despicable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Biden wasn't really the center of a political movement though, and I think Democrats were a lot more willing to call him out for things like the Hunter pardon. At most, I saw people quietly understanding of Biden breaking with principle to protect family, though I still got the sense there was general disapproval for the pardoning on the Left.
As a third party voter, I have been disgusted by both parties, but I really do think the dynamic is that Obama and Biden did X, and Trump is doing X^2, as /u/lollol put it. It creates a weird dynamic, because I'm happy to condemn them all and say that Trump is still worse in most cases (even if his actions aren't totally unprecedented), but it feels like a lot on the Right are in the position where they both need Trump and are happy that he's punishing the people that they hate, and so they're unwilling to engage in more than light critique with hedging like, "the only difference is that Trump is doing what everyone always did out in the open."
The reason you believe that Trump is doing x^2 is because of a dishonest and biased media environment. It is not because Trump is worse.
Where are the criticisms for Biden? Honestly, where are they? Where are the people denouncing the pardons? Calling for them to be overturned, or for the pardoned people to be strung up on things they haven't been pardoned for? Where, in other words, is the action? Where is the demonstration of these values applied to anyone other than Trump? Because I no longer trust anyone who applies standards to Trump due to repeated lessons teaching me otherwise.
You Are Still Crying Wolf.
I mean, the Trump crypto scandal and conflict of interest web related to it alone dwarfs literally each and every similar corruption scandal of the Biden administration put together, just on the basis of plain facts of the people and timing involved...
More options
Context Copy link
It kinda hard to take "You are crying wolf!" seriously when said wolf has finished off half of the sheep and is starting to eye the shepard.
I mean, did he not start another retarded middle eastern war, another retarded trade war, put a retard in charge of HHS, blow the deficit into the stratosphere? On top of that, he's doing his level best to raise gas prices past peak biden, and beat bidens record on inflation.
Those are all real, undeniable facts. I don't think the "biased media" is sneaking out at night and changing the price at the gas station or launching bombing raids on Iran.
You are, of course, referring to the person that abolished minimum age recommendations for trans hormone treatments and surgeries, right?
More options
Context Copy link
I wanted RFK in office, and I wanted the trade war, so if that's a wolf, then sign me up, I love wolves now. No, the wolf is the fascist strongman that has never come, not MAHA or Chinese tariffs.
The Iran war is Israelf leading the US by the nose, again, still. I would love an anti-Israel president, but not so much that I'll support and anti-white candidate.
The deficit. Ha, what a fun joke. Nobody gives a shit about the deficit, and we've barely pretended in the last ten years. Also funny that Harris would somehow be different, or better, on the deficit. That's just baked in, nobody will ever vote to stop giving away free money. That's simply the failure of Democracy. Given that, I'll take what I can get elsewhere.
The dishonest media only cares about this shit when it's Trump in charge, then they get completely silent when Democrats are in charge. So yes, all your stuff is real, and it really gets blown out of proportion when it makes Republicans look bad, and it gets smothered when it makes Democrats look bad. That's the media bias I'm talking about, and that's the crying wolf.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am not "still" crying wolf. I didn't really start being truly, deeply worried about Trump until April 2025.
Before that, I had convinced myself that Trump 1 hadn't been that bad, that despite the weekly outrage articles from the mainstream media, he had mostly governed as any Republican would have. But I really do think Trump 2 has been different.
I mean, I commented this a year ago.
Trump 1 really wasn't that bad. A core message of Trump's 2024 primary campaign was that Trump 1 not being that bad was a mistake that only Trump 2 could fix.
FWIW, I read Trump as a wolf after his response to the 2020 election results.
The big problem is that the rest of the world has to suffer due to Trump 2. If he was only destroying his own country by now I'd long since have made peace with the fact that the US is a democracy getting the government it deserves and it is not for the rest of us to save it from itself. A bit like those nature documentarys where no matter how terrible the thing which is happening, the cardinal rule is that you don't intervene. But alas we don't have that luxury.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose we are in agreement then. The democrats do not have any moral high ground to criticize Trump, and given how eagerly every single institution in the world threw themselves behind the Democrats and against Trump, it's not just the Democrats who have eroded their own high ground. Everything, every criticism, turns into a partisan complaint, and can be dismissed as partisan complaint because there is no other ground on which to complain.
Yeah, almost as if four years of bullshit lawfare will change a man. Almost as if eroding your credibility to attack your enemies might empower those very same enemies, and remove any restraints they once had.
For me, I don't want someone to govern as a republican. I learned in July 2024 that everyone to the left of Le Pen considers themselves interchangeable, so I've taken them at their word. There is no center, there is only pro- and anti- migration. It's hard for me to care about anything outside of this, and any criticisms I have of Trump come from where he has strayed from this core issues (like in Iran).
In other words, I cannot spare this man. He fights.
It's incredible to me that you can write this with (presumably) a straight face. Really? Really? The infamously prone to squabble center, left, and far left? Consider themselves interchangeable? What? I presume you're talking about the assassination attempt but I not only don't see what specifically you'd be referring to but also fail to see how this translates to "there is only pro- and anti-migration" as if the two things are directly linked.
In the sense that there's a rounding error of liberals that are really, truly willing to oppose progressives and leftists, they're interchangeable. They squabble, absolutely, but no one to their left is an enemy.
They'll fire a Mexican construction worker for making the OK sign, while thinking odious weasel Hasan Piker is the future of the party. Racism is fine as long as it has a progressive gloss. Advocating for violence is okay as long as it has a progressive gloss. Having a full-on Nazi tattoo and saying women are responsible for getting raped is peachy if there's a D next to your name, but god forbid Elon move his arm in a silly way.
I do not think the Matthew Yglesias wing of the Democrats see Hasan Piker as the future of the party.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Please, tell me what conclusion I am meant to draw when competing parties conspire to not contest elections so that they, between them, keep out a third party.
What that looks like to me is everyone to the left of Le Pen in agreement that they're all substitutes for one another, that they're all functionally interchangeable, and that it doesn't matter if it's communist or centrist.
Yes, the fact that they're infamously prone to squabble, yet worked in perfect synchronicity when it mattered, reinforces my conclusion. If they were really different, they would have squabbled, but they're not, and they were faced with a genuine threat, so they dropped the game and played serious.
I'm talking about the French Election in 2024, which is why I mentioned Le Pen by name.
Les Republicains, i.e. the remnant of the traditional French centre-right, did not consider everyone to the left of Le Pen interchangeable. They refused to withdraw from three-cornered left-LR-RN second rounds where they were in third place, did not endorse either side in two-way left-RN runoffs, and allowed individual LR politicians to endorse FN candidates in such cases. That is how you behave if you think the left (not just the communist left, but a broad left alliance including communists) is as obnoxious as Le Pen.
Even Macron's liberal Ensemble did not withdraw from three-cornered left-ENS-RN contests where the left candidate was a communist.
I don't think that the communist left, the non-communist left, and the liberals forming a popular front against "fascists" means that they consider themselves interchangeable - it just means that they think Le Pen counts as a fascist. If Le Pen really was a fascist, then forming a popular front against her would be the right thing to do according to all three groups' stated values.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link