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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2543 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 21, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Before I waste any more of my time thinking about this, is there any evidence that the degradation of the new reflecting pool coating was caused by vandalism as opposed to run-of-the-mill incompetence?

I don’t really care about the algae. That seems like a fixable problem.

I personally think it's incompetence. And even worse, it's incompetence due to corruption.

But in an effort to be charitable: somebody certainly made "giant ‘8647’ markings on National Mall" and that's vandalism, so can't rule out the same for the pool as well.

Here's CNN reporting that the water in the pool has elevated phosphate. My understanding is that one of the more straightforward ways you'd get elevated phosphate in the water is by dumping phosphate fertilizer into the water. Given the other evidence of deliberate vandalism, I'm not sure why incompetence or corruption are supposed to be the leading hypothesis here.

I'm open to being corrected if there's some other explanation.

To take the most charitable interpretation possible, Trump should understand, based on how he's been treated over the past decade+ in politics, that everything he does will be attacked and subverted in the dirtiest way possible. As such, not successfully hardening the defenses of the pool against predictable vandalism indicates incompetence on his part.

Of course, had he done that, that would likely open him up to other attacks of incompetence or corruption or other negative qualities.

I'm entirely willing to accept that interpretation, and in fact this is my interpretation of the culture war as a whole: we no longer have a cohesive society, and so attempting to pool resources or coordinate effort or share institutions in any way cannot be expected to work. You cannot build or even maintain memorials in a society that fundamentally cannot agree on what should be memorialized. Ditto for public schools, public libraries, public justice systems...

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