site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Following up on an earlier post of mine, the Democratic National Convention has released their long-awaited "autopsy" report. Critics of the party will get some immediate schadenfreude upon opening the document: the default font, the hastily-added red addenda by a higher power, the missing sections and absent formatting. The sick pleasure continues upon the realization that neither Biden's senility nor the Israel-Gaza conflict (nor the associated hysteria) ever appear in the 100+ pages.

Digging deeper, CNN reports that the autopsy was compiled by "Democratic consultant Paul Rivera," a veteran of the Clinton administration and friend of DNC chair Ken Martin. Rivera's minuscule effort and misguided conclusions result in a paper with few citations, ignorant assessments, and a half-assed attempt at shielding the DNC from the worst of it.

Well, that's certainly backfired now. The DNC hasn't looked this incompetent at its highest levels of power since the scandals of 2016 (say, was anyone ever held accountable there?) and the oft-panicked-about "competence crisis" appears to have reached a high point.

I enjoy that the DNC can't even agree on what the outcome of the 2024 election was. From page 17:

Democrats netted two seats in the House, flipping ten seats from the Republicans while losing eight.

[Red box: Data appears to be inaccurate and contradicts public reporting.]

The Wikipedia article "2024 United States House of Representatives elections" is also confused about these numbers in a few places (e.g. the values in the "By state" results table don't actually add up to the stated totals), I think maybe because it's not sure how to handle the fact that George Santos had been replaced by a Democrat in a special election earlier that year, but even it doesn't actually say that Democrats flipped 10 seats. (The generally accepted narrative seems to be that they only flipped 9 seats, for a net gain of 1.)

You gotta love that the page headed "Leadership Message" is otherwise blank!

For what it's worth, Martin's tweet concerning the "autopsy" is pretty much a complete disavowal. Depending on "why" he needed to release it as-is may have implications in the Culture War, or it may just be regular political skullduggery, I couldn't say.

Seems to me that if the DNC were to do a real autopsy of their performance in 2024, the last thing they'd do is make it public. This is BS of some sort.

I saw the highlights of this over on rDrama and yikes. One table about political funding and spending couldn't even add up the numbers correctly (I checked and yes they were wrong, p. 127 here). If this really is what the report is like, and not some out-takes or edited parody version, God above. If this was produced by a 16 year old Transition Year student on work experience where I work, it'd be scrapped and (kindly) pointed out what was wrong with it.

If this was some sort of preliminary draft sent out by mistake, that would be embarrassing but understandable. If this is the finished (or as finished as it gets) production, may the Lord have mercy on the Democrats because they need miracles. The DNC chair seems to be saying it's real, but now I really need to know who produced this. He doesn't say who did, just who he didn't get, and looking at this mess maybe he should have gone for the slick professional consultants:

How, we all asked, could Democrats have lost to Donald Trump again? How did we blow through billions of dollars? And where do we go from here?

When I commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election, I started a process to answer those questions while interrogating where our party has systemically and historically fallen short. I didn’t want that process led by anybody directly tied to the 2024 cycle – either the campaign or the consultants involved – and I did not want to put my own thumb on the scale for what might be produced. What I did ask for were actionable takeaways for the future. I wanted real, in-depth, specific recommendations to improve our allocation of resources, tech, data, organizing, media strategy, and more. I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report.

"I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report". Please, please, please let it be a useless nephew of his wife or other family member who was given the opportunity out of pity in order to throw him a few bob out of party coffers in the guise of "working" at a "job". I would rather the explanation be nepotism and slush funds. Because if Mr. Martin picked someone he genuinely thought would do a bang-up job, then once again, may the Good Lord Above take pity on the Democrats and this is why you guys lost in 2024, Ken.

EDIT: I see above that the author was one Paul Rivera "a veteran of the Clinton administration and friend of DNC chair Ken Martin". If this is a veteran Dem insider, they really are in trouble. How on earth did he manage to let this slip through? Did he indeed hand it over to some intern to work on? Did he start it but then decide not to go any further because nobody would care by the time the midterms came round and they (hope to be) winning all round them, then he had to scramble to throw something out to Ken because he said "No, I really do want it"?

EDIT EDIT: The more I read, the worse it gets:

Martin entrusted a top priority to a friend, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, who volunteered to work on it part-time and waited several months to contact key officials with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaigns. Many top decision-makers in the campaigns were ultimately never interviewed, and Harris herself has expressed frustration privately that questions about the document have gone on.

How did they get themselves into this state, and how will they get out of it? Remember, this is the party trying to run on competence, technocratic solutions, and being smarter, richer, saner, and more compassionate than Orange Man Bad. If this is an example of "we've got the wealthy, well-educated, better informed people" then may the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast.

Ok, thé Clinton admin had a lot of basic competence at politics- but it was also 30 years ago. This guy could easily be experiencing age related decline, which coupled with the democrat party’s political correctness demands makes a ‘good’ report harder to come by.

What is the point of DNC when Trump is doing more and better work than them for putting Democrats into power?

Recently one of the Pod Save America hosts interviewed DNC chair Ken Martin about this report.

It's quite the train wreck. Ken kept asserting that the report was free and the host kept cutting in to question how that's possible. I guess this is how. Your incompetent buddy does it for free. Not literally free since people supposedly traveled to every state to interview voters and the effort took more than a year. But free-ish compared to actually paying for a well made report.

Your incompetent buddy does it for free.

Hard to know if it was incompetence or if Martin kept a leash on him. Probably "¿Por qué no los dos?" The only sense I can make of this débacle is that Martin had a fair idea an autopsy of how they done fudged up in 2024 would lead to an entire battery hens farm worth of egg on face for the party, including Big Senior Figures, and he tried stalling and throttling it as much as he could:

Martin called for an autopsy only after former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley made an issue of it in his own long-shot race for DNC chair. Once he did, Martin locked in, even ripping in private conversations former chair Tom Perez’s decision to withhold an autopsy of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss.

He asked Rivera, a longtime but low-profile Democratic hand based now in Texas, to be in charge. They were close, which helped, but Martin also liked that Rivera hadn’t been involved with the DNC or the Harris campaign, so he could be independent.

The problem, others involved argued then and now, is that Rivera hadn’t worked on any presidential bid since an inglorious turn on John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. Many who know Rivera describe him as having a savvy yet unconventional point of view, but say he also comes into conversations with a preset viewpoint.

Though he’d set the autopsy as a priority, Martin decided to have Rivera in charge as a part-time volunteer while juggling other clients. Rivera would sometimes say he was available to conduct interviews only before 9 a.m., after 7 p.m. or on weekends. Martin kept him so siloed that the most senior staff could do was occasionally chip in with suggestions of people he should consider contacting.

...Not until September, several months into his review, did Rivera try to reach out to key Harris campaign aides. He has told people since that he always meant for the Harris team to be his last stop since he wanted to gather other information first. But holding out that long made campaign aides suspicious.

Rivera ultimately blew past several deadlines last year in finishing the autopsy, according to people familiar with the matter. It wasn’t until after Thanksgiving that Martin got a document that multiple people say was at best unfinished.

Who Rivera reached out to, and who he didn’t, tells part of the story of what he was producing. While the DNC has said Rivera and others conducted “hundreds of interviews” with “sources from all 50 states,” he didn’t start to talk to the people who ran the Biden and Harris campaigns until September, according to multiple people involved.

Among those not included in interviews: Biden, Harris or Walz. Top strategists, including Biden aides Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, and top Harris decision-makers like Jen O’Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, weren’t interviewed either. Neither were close Harris aides Sheila Nix, Kirsten Allen, Erin Wilson, Brian Fallon and Jalisa Washington-Price, or Sam Cornale, the Walz traveling chief of staff who had also been executive director of the DNC.

...Some say underlying research, including notes and transcripts of interviews, was deleted from DNC servers. But a DNC source familiar with the process told CNN that Rivera didn’t provide even a list of names of people he spoke to, notes or recordings. Nor, the source said, did he provide some of the data that he was given to him by senior campaign leadership.

...“The notion that any of this was nefarious or by design…” sighed one former DNC official. “It’s much more Keystone Kops than that.”

"Keystone Kops" is not reassuring for a party asking the nation "put the fate of the economy, your jobs, oil prices, peace or war, and dealing with the rollout and regulation (or not) of AI in our competent, assured, well-qualified hands!"

Hold on did they seriously just open with "I was so happy to see you at the grindr party the other night!" and "I wish they hadn't run out of alcohol before I arrived".

...what? Grindr like the gay hookup app? What the fuck are these people talking about? Is the one guy making fun of the other guy for being gay? It sounds like he's talking about meeting him at a gay hookup party, and the other person is lamenting that they ran out of booze before he got there so he didn't get to get as drunk as he had hoped.

Yeah, I had to rub my eyes at that part in the CNN story.

The Dems attending a party sponsored by Grindr, the gay hook-up/casual sex/promiscuity app. Well, definitely avoiding all the stereotypes assigned to you by your political rivals there!

Meanwhile, with public demands to see the autopsy growing, Martin booked himself onto “Pod Save America” to defend his decision not to release it, in an interview that immediately went viral.

Sapping faith in him even further among Democratic operatives inside and outside party headquarters: The interview only happened because he agreed to it after confronting the hosts at a Grindr-sponsored party the night before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, annoyed they were giving him too hard of a time over the autopsy.

Guys, maybe if you want to reach out to the Latino/rural voters, you should try having stories about you read more like "Chair Marty Martin was interviewed after leaving the Rosary cenacle/Bible study group late Thursday evening" and not "why yes we met at the gay orgy party"?

Yes: Grindr the gay hookup app hosted a private White House Correspondents' Association party in DC attended by the head of the DNC and some (or all?) Pod Save America hosts. He means this in the most literal sense. I just googled this and confirmed.

Presumably this was a Grindr hosted political event rather than a literal gay orgy. News articles don't specifically state the level of drunkenness or gay sex.

I was being tongue-in-cheek there, but yeah. Grindr now respectable? Or just that journalists will attend anything provided the lure of free drink is dangled before them?

Grindr is just gay Tinder (or rather, the other way around), and Tinder is just online dating, and online dating is respectable now, and gay things are equally as respectable as straight things (or perhaps more equal, but never less), so Grindr is now respectable and has been for a while, QED.

I just googled this and confirmed.

I thought you were doing a bit lol

Presumably this was a Grindr hosted political event rather than a literal gay orgy.

Porque no los dos? Even the CPAC confererence has a reputation for being a depraved pit of debauchery, what chance does a liberal event organized by Grindr have?

And of course there was the Hotties For Harris event, and the Planned Parenthood mobile clinic offering free vasectomies at the same time as the 2024 DNC conference.

Kindly note in the background to this, posters about the fearful monstrosity of what was contained in Project 2025 such as "families should ideally be a husband, wife and kids". The horrors of the male-female dyad!

Not really struggling with the image of being a den of debauchery, lads! For the low, low price of much less than whatever Martin slipped his pal Rivera, I can advise you on how to appeal to rural, working-class, religious in some form, non-college educated voters and Number One Recommendation will be, as even the autopsy had to point out, "Do not sound like you're trying to get on the Satanic Temple's Holiday Gift List" (especially since those frickin' eejits have no idea what Hallwoe'en is about).

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report. I am 100% serious. Figuring out all the things that went wrong to allow this to happen would solve half of the party's problems. Reinterview witnesses. Reconstruct lines of thought and inquiry. Find the points of failure and conduct root-cause analysis.

The report is poorly written, unprofessional, and incomplete yes, but above all it is vapid. It doesn't even ask the questions that matter. The overwhelming majority of effort is focused on ad targeting and campaign spending.

"The pollsters were involved in discussions around the Trump attack ads – in particular the attack ad focused on the Vice President’s prior statements on transgendered Americans. They all recognized the attack as very effective, and felt the campaign was boxed – the ad was a video of her saying what she said, and it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities.

If the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response. The pollsters generally concurred with the opinions shared by campaign leadership - given the stakes and timing, the focus needed to be on attacking Trump."

Okay, what was the mistake then? What should be done differently next time around? Should the Vice President have changed her position or not? In fact, there is almost no discussion of issues in the report at all. A model of why anyone would want to vote for one party or the other is conspicuously absent.

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report.

I don't think it could be done. The problem is self-reinforcing: The DNC is beholden to certain groups in order to maintain its self-image as the party that caters to suffering minority groups. A frank autopsy would have to say out loud that some of its flagship constituents must be thrown overboard. They might be able to say that in private, but can never say it in public. True introspection would be an even bigger disaster than living in denial.

transgendered Americans

What really was the killer point was that it was not about "transgendered Americans" alone, it was about "people who are not American citizens, who are here illegally, and/or who committed crimes serious enough to be put in jail, and then decide that now he is she so you, American taxpayer, have to pay for a criminal non-citizen to get elective cosmetic surgery".

Kamala wanted to prove her progressive chops back in 2019? Fine, talk about the struggles of transgender Americans. Do not be dumb enough to run your head into the noose of "so some guy is sentenced to prison, decides that now he's really a woman, and wants the State to pay for his operation(s). Yes or no?" and go "Absolutely! 100%! And if they're an illegal alien on top of that, better again!"

Of course, that gentle persecuted woman in the linked case has done nothing at all to even pretend to be female, but shush. She is a real woman because she says so!

As far as outwardly identifying as anything, I never felt the need. To this day I don’t. My gender identity is mine and mine alone. I’m a natural born athlete. I played sports when I was young. I’m 6 feet, I’m 220 pounds, I am who I am. I never felt the need to wear lipstick or wear tight clothing or try to change my voice or any of the things that people who are trying to put me in a box have done. Because generally if you express that you are a woman or that you identify as a woman in men’s prison, everything is sexualized. And it’s sexualized in a fashion that suggests what your sexuality should be. So simply because I identify as a woman, 99.9 percent of the people would assume I’m interested in men. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, ever. Not in life, not in men’s prison, not now, not never.

Gender dysphoria and gender identity are in my medical and mental health records. My psychologist before I came to CCWF, he understood. He gave me all the information that I didn’t have about SB 132. If I want CDCR to address me correctly and house me correctly, then I have to tell them what my identity is, but I don’t have to tell them what my sexuality is, and they don’t have a right to know. These issues get tied together here though, due to stereotypes and misconceptions.

...When my doctor told me about SB 132, I asked for a transfer, and we had to get the court order changed to send me here.

Of course, I imagined all type of safety, I imagined all type of freedom. Where I was at, my gender identity and who I am as a person was only my business. I had to live my life a certain way for my safety. And coming here, I imagined being able to just be myself without having to worry about being attacked, being put in a box, assumptions being made about anything about me. But from my very first day, when I got to R&R, the warden had a whole cavalry there for me. The warden, associate warden, ISU (investigative services unit), they was all there to talk to me. They said, we don’t think you should be here. But the law is the law so you’re here. It really felt like they wanted to intimidate me.

I listened to the Pod Save America episode in which a few Harris campaign staffers were interviewed. They said that they tried to counter that ad, but the counter ads polled poorly with test groups. They were better off with generic ads about the economy.

Supposedly the "she's for they/them, Donald Trump is for you" ad is the mightiest ad in modern history. Around a 2% shift in voter sentiment; arguably election flipping if somehow that was very well targeted to likely voters in swing states.

I think an accurate autopsy would say to not stake out the most extreme and unpopular positions on culture war issues on camera. But they can't plainly state that so we get this report instead.

They said that they tried to counter that ad, but the counter ads polled poorly with test groups.

Not much you can do to counter "Did she say that?" "It's more complicated than that!" "Yeah, but did she say what they claim she said?" "Well, yes, but - " "Okay, thanks" when you have the footage of her on camera saying exactly that.

I mean, somehow Trump always seemed to manage it.

It helps when the footage actually refutes the allegation.

Being unable to articulate the most anodyne obvious solution means no lessons will ever be learnt. Those who know the deep histories will be forgotten to the sand of time and the textual history will just say "oh no wow the republicans were really mean to transgendered people!" without ever acknowledging the culpable role of tying oneself to such an insane position had in making such an attack land in the first place.

Most of the actual solutions are pretty well heresy for the left. There’s no backing down from the position of “support trans rights and the transition of anyone of any age who wants it” because this is the orthodox left liberal position. This is why that Trump ad was such a coup — the general public is not on board with the radical position of transgendering of children and only the most left-liberal people want transgender to be normalized in society. Trump or his team was able to win with the ad. She couldn’t respond in any way that undercut the effectiveness of the ad, as the far-left would reject her for anything other than full on support for trans rights. So the ad says “she’s into trans rights over the wants of regular people”, and she could only either keep silent or agree.

only the most left-liberal people want transgender to be normalized in society

Sometimes I wonder if there's a cultural disconnect here. When I go into big blue cities and encounter transgender people, they're usually just awkward people trying to live their lives. When I encounter them out in the sticks, they're frequently weirdos who seem hellbent on making me a non-consensual participant in their fetish.

Is it possible the "transgender intolerance" of the right is a self reinforcing feedback loop? The sane transgender people move to the cities where they're more accepted, which makes them look better to the people there, but leaves the bad actors out in the country where they get off on making other people uncomfortable? Which in turn makes the people out in the country less tolerant?

The sane transgender people

Strictly speaking, that's an oxymoron. These are people suffering from a mental disconnect from biological reality. They should live their lives as best they can, but they should never expect anyone else to buy into their dysmorphia, let alone demand that others pretend not to notice it. That will always be a problem.

That some transgender people seem less crazy than others might be a factor, but that probably reflects more on the city-dwellers' capacity for virtue-signalling via indulgence.

they're frequently weirdos who seem hellbent on making me a non-consensual participant in their fetish

That's the problem, and it's not easy to solve. If the activist groups would agree that "Okay, that is just a guy with a fetish and not really transgender", then most of the opposition would be cut off at the knees. But they can't say that, because (a) they don't want to be seen as throwing anyone under the bus (and I can sympathise there, it'd be nice if only the most acceptable people could be the poster children for the cause, but the awkward barely-passing types are valid too) and (b) the ideology has gone beyond "born in the wrong body" and on the extremes has spiralled into "smash the notion of gender completely" and "if you say you're a transfemme masc-presenting non-binary agender queer folx then only you can judge what you are" so the weirdoes and grifters happily take advantage of that.

Their only defence, when any individual case goes beyond the beyond, is "well that person was only faking being transgender" which is no good when they're simultaneously demanding "trans women don't owe you femininity" and self-identification with fifty labels slapped on is the only measure to go by. "This person with a beard and a penis wearing sparkly eyeshadow and stilettoes is a real trans woman, that person with a beard and a penis wearing sparkly eyeshadow and stilettoes is only faking it".

That's the problem, and it's not easy to solve. If the activist groups would agree that "Okay, that is just a guy with a fetish and not really transgender", then most of the opposition would be cut off at the knees. But they can't say that

I think there's a third reason you didn't mention: they (for obvious reasons) don't want to allow it to be the sort of thing that can be a judgement call, or just "good faith" or "common sense". It makes it far too easy for opponents -- especially the most extreme -- to apply forbidding judgement to even the best-case scenarios.

It makes it far too easy for opponents -- especially the most extreme -- to apply forbidding judgement to even the best-case scenarios.

That's a sensible position. Except for the online activist groups actively supporting prisoners who decided that they really were women so move me to women's jail and give me all the special accommodations and no, I don't talk like a woman, look like a woman, dress like a woman, take hormones or medications or want surgery, and I'm attracted to women not men so why when I only try to be friendly do the other female prisoners call the guards on me, but I'm really a woman.

Tell me "guy who is facing accusations of raping female inmates when he was put in female prison" is a 'best-case scenario' who cannot be condemned because that would be so forbiddingly judgemental, go ahead, I dare you. The ACLU took a case including this particular guy as well as other trans prisoners to argue that they totally are so indeed real women, so it's not just "oh but that's only a few crazy college kids!" at work.

"Guy who makes not even the token effort of changing his name to pass as a woman" is not one of the "it's so complicated, it's difficult to say" edge cases that need to be carefully pondered before going "nope, this is a scam".

I think you are running into an Activist vs Lay-folk difference. I'll grant that the Trans-movement as a disproportionate number of activists. The awkward people trying to live their lives are the lay-folk, the hellbent weirdos are the activists. What you are noticing is my theory that activists are essentially always "on" there is always a war to be fought, every space needs to be "decolonized from cis-heteronormative oppression". And when you are out in the sticks, to them this is the battlefield, sticks are generally more conservative, more "heteronormative". So like guerilla warriors they raid the commons. Trans-folk in big blue cities aren't behind enemy lines.

This is all from personal anecdotes because I used to live in a big blue city and now I live in a small purple city surrounded by red-sticksvilles. So sometime I encounter trans-activists, sometimes I encounter trans-folk. The activists are almost always from sticksvilles any they can't turn it off. It makes them very unpleasant to be around.

Trans as a category is muddled beyond belief. Progs keep asking if normies wouldn't wanna fuck whatever heavily made up chiselled Jailey Bay fuckdoll gets plastered over the interwebs but in reality most trannies are awkward failed women or obnoxious Jessica Yaniv nonpassers. Blue city trans people are more likely just experimenting with labels and haven't gotten masectomies. Lets be real the big issue is men pretending to be women without having gone through the chop because male access to female spaces is rightfully suspect. A girl who wants to check out of the female presentation rat race can use "trans" or NB as convenient acceptable cover until she decides to abandon or commit. To pretend Angel Buck or Bailey Jay are representative of the trans community as a whole is pure definitional fuckery and every prog should be forced to watch the top of all time selection of reddits nonbinary subreddits selfies and really honestly say that they're all equally valid in whatever presentation they choose. Attach a motion sensor to their dick for proof.

You're a bit harsh, but I'd agree with the likes of restaurant guy being a clear scammer who is only looking for opportunities to be offended. The stock phrase about being misgendered as "a knife in the heart" and the performances picking on people clearly not native English speakers and demanding to see the manager demonstrate that. Doing it for social media clicks (and possibly hoping they can take a discrimination case against some restaurant or café to rake in some easy money).

That is someone who should be compelled to undergo mandatory sex reassignment surgery to become the woman they really are. Put up or shut up!

You've unlocked the secret to democrat revival of fortunes. Obligate trans maximalism. Dude says he wanrs to be trans? Government sponsored dick cutting. Get the fetishists at the eunuch archive to run it, they'll do it for free. No trans without surgery. Backing off? Sorry, then you're not trans. Make every tranny wannabe read Andrea Long Chus works as a primer and force them to go watch sissy hypno Zoolander style till they want to get their dicks cut off if they're on the fence. Domestic allies can't bitch about it because its trans maximalist, repubs are fine with perverts getting eunuched and off the streers. If its a kid then the parents should be celebrated, fucking opeds in the town newsletter about how this stunning and brave parent cut off their childs genitals in the name of progressivism. Pedal to the metal lets see who fucking commits.

The only openly trans person I have ever encountered IRL was a Cracker Barrel host(ess) in small-town Louisiana.

Is it possible the "transgender intolerance" of the right is a self reinforcing feedback loop?

Nope. Portraying the trans issue as being primarily about who gets to go to which bathroom, or some visceral "ick" factor, is at least 10 years out of date. The reaction to the trans issues comes from progressives seeing the provision of irreversible medical procedures to minors as an inalienable human right, that justifies nearly everything, including public school teachers transing children behind their parents' backs.

It also really doesn't help that trannies in particular are either clearly awkward women who needed better socializing early in their lives or creepy men who needed to be bullied early in their lives. The great win for gay marriage was that most gays really are just normal people and the chemsex degens are really an outlier, but for trans people the more people are exposed to them the less sympathetic they become. Progressives might as well have allied themselves with NAMBLA in this case, at least a decent south park episode came out that acronym

It sounds like you're disagreeing with his argument. I don't really have on opinion on the proportion of autists to AGPs, I'm saying he might be perfectly right about their prevalence in either locality, but it's irrelevant to how acceptable I find trans activism.

More comments

Most of the actual solutions are pretty well heresy for the left.

The solution to this seems simple to me. As a leftist who grew up in a leftist enclave, me and my leftist-liberal millennial peers were taught that heresy was awesome and something worth celebrating all the time. So if something heretical is needed to accomplish our goals, it seems obvious to me that we should embrace it and celebrate it and push our movement/party/etc. towards that heresy.

Unfortunately, the past almost 1.5 decades has shown me that that doesn't work, so I'm out of ideas.

As a leftist who grew up in a leftist enclave, me and my leftist-liberal millennial peers were taught that heresy was awesome and something worth celebrating all the time.

Heresy against one's opponents is celebrated. If the other team is in power, heresy against the dominant force is righteous rebellion! If your team is in power, heresy against the dominant force is treason.

What enclaves tend to mean by “be a heretic” is “agree with us, but take it farther.” Right-liberals Don generally want you to be a heretic by being socially liberal, they want you to go farther, and thus Moldbug is their kind of heretic where Siskind is not because he’s probably less conservative than most right-liberals. Left liberals want their heretics to go further left, so Luigi shooting the CEO is a heretic, but their kind of heretic, zemdani is a heretic they like proposing state owned grocery stores, but they hate Fetterman because he isn’t heretical in a more left leaning way.

Im mostly Politically homeless. I get my ideas from Moldbug and Confucius and other weird places, so I don’t really fit modern politics.

Isn’t it just grift? Guy got paid. I also wouldn’t put honest self-reflection on paper. It’s better done behind closed doors.

Ken Martin insisted on Pod Save America that no money was spent on the autopsy. That is the only claim from him that was believable.

It also shouldn't be self-reflection necessarily. They should have brought in NTSB and USCSB alumni to do an deep-dive independent investigation the way you'd analyze a plane crash or plant explosion. Toes will be stepped on. It will be embarrasing. If you really thought that, "Democracy was on the ballot", and then Democracy lost, then none of that stuff matters.

If they really wanted to do an autopsy then they could just interview me. But then when I tell them all their ideas suck it’s not like their going to come out and say yes you are correct we will change.

There needs to be an autopsy on the autopsy report. I am 100% serious. Figuring out all the things that went wrong to allow this to happen would solve half of the party's problems. Reinterview witnesses. Reconstruct lines of thought and inquiry. Find the points of failure and conduct root-cause analysis.

The fact that the DNC's attempt at making sense of and learn from their dumpster fire of a failure became a dumpster fire of a failure in itself is just all too fitting. I have to laugh, because otherwise I'd cry. It's just nearly perfect as a costly signal that the party really does believe what it says about blaming everyone else for things going poorly.

I'll try to salvage this "boo outgroup" post.

I know just a little bit about hardcore career politicos from spending some time in D.C. and doing some contracting work. The group I'm speaking about are staffer types who usually did some sort of internship while still in undergrad. Usually, in Congress or one of the big think tanks. Sometimes in their state for the Governor. State legislators, I believe, don't usually have the time/money to hire even free staff, although I could be wrong about that.

For the ones that stay in politics after their undergrad, the majority will find something else to do within 5 - 10 years mostly because they don't make enough to really have a "normal" life. Often time this is lobbying, sure. Or government affairs at a big corporation.

But then you have the group that stays in .... forever. They don't run for office and they don't do the lobbying revolving door. They do staffer work for a candidate or campaign / party work (like at the DNC). These people are very, very strange because they have an entire career in an industry that doesn't function like any other industry out there. In a for profit corporation, if the organization is fucked up enough, you got out of business. That's a feedback loop. Even for lobbyists, if you can't actually help get your clients in front of lawmakers, you go out of business. Feedback loop. Even non-profits -- if you can't raise funds (however shadily you may do that) from donors, you go out of business. Feedback loop.

But for a party apparatchik, your organization doesn't really ever go out of business so long as the American two party system remains as it has been since the end of WW2 and, probably, since the end of the Civil War. So your feedback loop is broken. Mostly, what's required is a kind of zealot level commitment to "the cause" -- even if the cause is constantly changing and hard to define.

On an operational level, the people that have been around the longest - though not necessarily the leadership, which can be difficult to manage for long periods of time - are the very people who have never even seen what a "feedback loop" organization looks like. So, reports like this are what you get -- half compiled, shoddy presentation, basic errors in professionalism. At a corporation, you'd get fired for this when you were 23. Here, however, a lot of the "deep" actors don't even know what basic professionalism is (again, their ideologues) and so no one stops to say "hey, this report looks like dogshit, let's fix it" right up until the public pressure to release it is so high that you have to put out the roughest of rough drafts.

By the way this applies equally to both major parties, imho.

In a very real way, the people who built their careers within the DNC/RNC and perhaps gubenatorial or congressional offices, with only a few exceptions, never really developed a full set of basic professional skills. I think many of them realize this if they get married to someone outside of the bubble and the realization that they pretty much can't transfer out to corporate america (or another professional style line of work) hits them like a ton of bricks. It has to be a radically frustrating existence.

Very interesting perspective, thanks.

I have some perspective into professional advocacy orgs and it seems like a very different, much more put together situation there. However that's an area where I would expect competition to be much fiercer (for donor money).

Anything with a feedback loop and open competition is going to produce effective organizations.

This is also the problem with government services in general. The IRS /DMV etc. have no competition (by law) and so there's no pressure to perform. Throw in public sector unions (which is a truly wacky concept) and you have all of the incentives to do nothing, avoid all risk, and fall back on process, procedure, and policy.

The median voter does not know about this. You would have to ELI 5 it to them, but it's pointless- the median voter already thinks the DNC is out of touch, them apparently not thinking Biden's senility is relevant doesn't actually change that. People who know what this is aren't going to have their opinions changed.

My thoughts exactly, although you're a little more hopeful than I am that the median voter has opinions about Biden's senility.

What did cheer me up about this report is that it suggests that DNC leadership is still refusing to learn lessons. How indicative it is, I can't guess, but it points that way.

Median Voter doesn’t read it, but the GOP complaint I believe is a legitimate issue with the modern Democratic Party. Doing it thru some white paper is kind of dumb but there are issues leadership needs to figure out. They can not find candidates to run at the national level. Top candidates tend to come from white men who do not feel welcomed within the Dem Party. ADOS has too few 99% wordcells to go thru a national campaign. Barack obviously was not ADOS and half white. DEI basically excludes the few white men in the party from climbing now. Biden made it because he was Obamas VP. A 25 year old Biden would never even enter that side of the aisle now.

Jewish men still exists in the Party. Shapiro could do it. Ossof being in Georgia would have a chance. But since the Israel-Palestine thing I am not sure that a Jew could make it thru a primary. The best Dem politicians do tend to come from red states. That leaves them looking for a Thatcher with the current party gender imbalance. Kamala Harris type pipelines are probably going to have issues on the national stage due to IQ. AOC I think is perfectly fine in congress, but my gut says she is IQ limited for the top office.

I don’t want to do a full debate on HBD but it does seem like the extreme right tail on most traits are dominated by white men. At the national level of politics when you are on tv a lot more the competence ability is much more noticeable. So hitting DEI quoatas makes national level politics very hard. Besides the electoral college and gerrymandering favoring team red I also think they have a structural talent issue for the top spot.

What could change? Indians have a lot of far right tail talent so that’s a possibility. The top law schools are extremely left so perhaps in a generation that produces candidates.

I guess it’s my opinion but at the very top of the parties I think team right has structurally better talent. Vance may be a little weird and may limit him later but I do think he’s quite smart. Same thing with Rubio or Cruz. I think if you list the top 5 most likely candidates on each side that the GOP guy is likely 1 standard deviation higher in intelligence.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ. I don’t believe that so perhaps he’s actually much smarter and just pretends to be stupid like Bush.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ.

960 SAT. FWIW, he says that while excusing it as the result of dyslexia, but I've never seen anything that made me think he was better than actual average, which is much lower than what the average sequestered shape rotator monks here think is average.

The circles he runs in would indicate he’s well above average. Smart rich people just don’t talk to average people. Looks like his wife graduated from Stanford. Those types never marry average intelligence guy.

Smart rich people just don’t talk to average people. Looks like his wife graduated from Stanford.

There are people who excel at school but are otherwise vapid. My sister scored very high on her SATs but hasn't had an original thought in her entire life. Two of the dumbest people I know have law degrees and are working attorneys. Arguably, universities aren't that interested in turning out high-functioning free-thinking geniuses these days, but are rather content to produce an assembly line of ideologically compliant middle managers, the best-looking of whom might turn out to be leaders with nothing interesting to say.

They don’t ‘anymore’. That was the whole thesis of Charles Murray’s original work that most everybody missed.

The circles he runs in would indicate he’s well above average.

Eh, he got into those circles via his father (and is now writing memoirs about how he had a hardscrabble childhood with his divorced mom working three jobs and he had to deliver newspapers as a kid and his dyslexia meant he had trouble at school) and basically, from what I can gather, sucking up as hard as he could to the Gettys and hanging on to that association with an iron grip:

Newsom and a group of investors created the company PlumpJack Associates L.P. on May 14, 1991. The group started the PlumpJack Winery in 1992 with the financial help of his family friend Gordon Getty. PlumpJack was the name of an opera written by Getty, who invested in 10 of Newsom's 11 businesses. Getty told the San Francisco Chronicle that he treated Newsom like a son and invested in his first business venture because of that relationship. According to Getty, later business investments were because of "the success of the first".

I'm not saying he's dumb, but he didn't work his way up from nowhere to mingle with the rich nor was he exactly born into those circles.

I just disagree he could be truly average. Even with connections from birth you can flunk out. He’s got to be at a minimum a midtwit so something like 1200-1300 real SAT score intelligence. Top 10%.

Yeah, I'd put him in 110-115 IQ range. Smart, but not super-duper smart. And the Gettys are living on family money created back when the patriarch J. Paul Getty founded their fortunes, so they may well be stewarding the estate but they're not out there creating new wealth opportunities. Smart may go along with rich, but rich need not go along with smart, so the fact that he's the lapdog client of a billionaire (who doesn't even make the Top Hundred Wealthiest Americans) means little in relation to "how smart is he?".

I would him around there. Maybe even a little higher. His wife based on schools she attended indicates she’s likely 135. So I would assume she’s not marrying down more than 1 standard deviation. Other hot Stanford MBAs landed guys like Jobs.

People who think Newsom's IQ is sub 1000 SAT equivalent just have not interacted much at all with that actual level of intelligence. No one would confuse him for bright, but he's well above average.

I think Newsome said he had like a 960 IQ. I don’t believe that so perhaps he’s actually much smarter and just pretends to be stupid like Bush.

That's some extreme humble-bragging.

Uh, I hope he meant that was his SAT score… Dude, if you had a 960 IQ, you’d be like 50+ standard deviations above the mean if that were possible. Einstein would be a complete retard standing next to you if that’s the case. That’s one of the dumbest and funniest things I’ve ever heard of if he really said that.

Still doesn't hold a candle to Alakazam's 5,000 IQ.

Yet, despite a 5,000 IQ and being fully evolved, anime-Alakazam was bossed around by a little girl and went 0-2 against an unevolved yellow mouse and an unevolved crustacean.

Hello, Officer Jenny? Yes, I’d like to report a fraud.

Nope, just proof a genius-level IQ can coexist with a spine of limp cardboard. Many such cases.

Oh yeah? Well I would have you know my IQ is 20/20, 😤.

I’m with Rov_Scam. Down to the part where you’ve blocked me, even!

This makes for a nice comparison with the UAP disclosures, where a promise of juicy tell-all journalism proves much more exciting than the reality.

I'm also blocked

We should start a run group

Since you've evidently blocked me for some reason, you won't see this, but your framing of the matter is rather boo-outgroup. Nonetheless, I don't think this is going to have much of an effect on anything. There's literally nothing this report could have contained that would have stopped critics of the party cold, so everyone sees what they want to see. Critics of the party were certain that it said bad things about Biden's senility and Kamala's incompetence and that they didn't want the report to get out because it would be too devastating. Instead it turns out that the report wasn't released because it was so poorly done the guy who wrote it got fired. It will make Ken Martin look bad to both people who know who Ken Martin is for about 2 days until Trump audibly farts on camera and the nation's attention moves elsewhere. By the time people start announcing their candidacies it will have about as much relevance as that time Amy Klobuchar allegedly threw a salad at an aide.

The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives

there was not sufficient negative messaging about how horrible Trump was (and still is) for and to most Americans.

Or, was it because Democrats never helped these voters remember and reflect on Trump’s failures as president?

The Trump campaign and supportive Super PACs went full throttle against Vice President Harris, but there was not sufficient or similar negative firepower directed at Trump by Democrats.

the inability to properly frame Trump to be as terrible as he has quickly proven to be was a massive missed opportunity given what was a necessity for the campaign.

I realize the report also says the Harris campaign needed to present a more positive case for her, not just anti-Trumpism, so that's something... but I can not fathom what makes them think the problem was not being anti-Trump enough.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats