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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23692 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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I remember getting into an hours-long argument with Yassine where he insisted that Trump told people to drink bleach, refusing to be swayed despite all evidence to the contrary, going deep into the linguistic sub-branches of every sentence across pages of Trump’s remarks to find anything that could remotely prove his point.

The vast majority of Trump criticism has been like this. I was called a sycophant for not believing Trump colluded with Russia, then it will be fake rape accusations, then some claimed paperwork error, then some policy thing. And maybe Trump has been attacked unfairly, but he also makes mistakes, can’t we agree, why can’t you agree to that? Maybe I could have agreed with Trump’s approach, but, look! — a liberal judge just struck it down, it must mean that Trump didn’t prepare hard enough, because he’s lazy and not very good at politics.

I don’t want your pity. I roll my eyes when people who are never satisfied by anything proclaim that I need to work harder to win their good praise.

I don't know anything about you as a person, so if you are not one of those people who feels reflexively obligated to defend everything Trump says or does, then I do not pity you or have contempt for you. I think of personal friends who voted for Trump on the view that he was the less bad of the options available to them, and who do not make excuses for his bad qualities.

Where I come in - sympathising with Meskhout - is when dealing with people who seem to be committed to the, for lack of a better term, Trump cult. I suppose a simple test is to ask a question like, "Can you tell me some things Trump has done that you disagree with, or that you think went badly?" Every politically sane person has some disagreements or disappointments even with their own favoured side.

I think you have an unreasonably rosey view of the average politically sane person. If you ask 1000 people on the street "Can you tell me some things [favored politician] has done that you disagree with, or that you think went badly?" 800 people are going to fail. Half because they're mindkilled partisans, and half because the well is poisoned and nobody trusts that kind of question is being asked in good faith anymore.

I suppose a simple test is to ask a question like, "Can you tell me some things Trump has done that you disagree with, or that you think went badly?" Every politically sane person has some disagreements or disappointments even with their own favoured side.

My dad's a fan of asking the devout Trumpists he knows that question.

He's also a fan of asking the anti-Trumpists he knows the inverse.

I'm a big fan of my dad, even (or perhaps especially) when I don't agree with him on a specific point.

That's a reasonable reversal. What are some of the things that Trump and his administration have done that I approve of, or that I think went well?

I suppose that's an easy one for me, because I approve of most of the anti-DEI stuff. I think that moving towards more merit-based systems of hiring in the federal bureaucracy was generally good. I believe the administration has taken some action toward funding charter schools, which I approve of. Illegal immigration on the southern border has significantly decreased in Trump's second term, and that's a good thing.

Drinking bleach leftist rant actually costs lives. Trump did butcher the science but what he was actually referring to were things like disinfecting nasal sprays which were very effective on Covid since Covid starts in your nasal system. Blasting yourself with non-toxic disinfectants gave your body significantly more time to build up antibodies to Covid where it causes real problems.

By that logic, the fact that Trump chose the word "bleach" instead of "disinfecting nasal spray" is what cost lives.

https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/mnOqITkvEK1KScAILD2noDKpF9qngCthSkSGP3U4STiWF9U387_taOigvnKGkgH2_o-WZB8OEApoouMghl_8CGmHdR8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=2045.52

He did not utter the word bleach at any point in that conference, the science guy from Homeland Security mentionned they tested multiple disinfectants, including bleach, then Trump made some noises about how cool science and UV light and disinfectants are and expressing the hope that they find a way to use it internally to kill viruses. Then later in the Q&A a journalist (Jim; Acosta maybe?) implies Trump suggested to inject bleach and the media ran with this complete and utter fabrication.

mm'kay, you are correct he did not talk about bleach specifically, but "noises about cool science" appear perplexing.

Donald Trump (29:39): A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that so that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's pretty powerful. Steve, please.

"Light inside the body" "is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside" "it gets in the lungs" I have trouble understanding what he could possibly mean, but it's not like the headlines were a total fabrication as Shades is insinuating. Like, BBC reporting here seems to stick to the facts

I never read this transcript before, so if I am feeling charitable, my interpretation is that he was rambling and made a brain-fart because he heard Bryan use the verb "inject" in a difference sense and he jumped to thinking of injections as medical procedure. But I don't think high-IQ people make that sort of, uh, connections.

Iirc, "light inside the body" was an experimental ventilator that was clear, with an effort at disinfectant UV light emitters on the inside. The idea was to reduce the rate at which the vents themselves gave people infections in hospitals. Never heard anything else about them afterwards, so I guess it didn't pan out.

IMO, there are 2.5 possible interpretations of what he said:

  • He asked the scientists whether they were going to test injecting disinfectant as a treatment (and implicitly suggested that they do so); or

  • He described how the scientists already were planning to test injecting disinfectant as a treatment.

IMO, that makes the BBC headline of "Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment", where the suggestion implicitly is directed at laymen rather than at scientists, pretty close to "total fabrication".

(The second "IMO" is intentional, since there are two separate opinions here, the second contingent on the first. Wasn't there some arguing on this website a zillion years ago regarding how much a person should clarify that he is merely stating his opinion, rather than "building consensus" by pretending that his opinion is just a fact?)

He described how the scientists already were planning to test injecting disinfectant as a treatment.

Sorry about a very late reply (I check my inbox twice a month), but in the interest of truth, you should watch the whole thing or at least Bill Bryan's part starting at 23:27. He describes study of UV light and disinfectants as disinfectants are regularly used: in the context like in air or on surfaces like door handles at different temperatures and humidity. He uses the word "inject" while talking about lines appearing in a powerpoint graph, at 26:09:

Bill Bryan (26:09): So, the virus is dying at a much more rapid pace just from exposure to higher temperatures and just from exposure to humidity. If you look at the fourth line, you inject the sunlight into that, you inject UV rays into that, the same effects on line two as 70 to 75 degrees with 80% humidity on the surface and look at line four but now you inject the sun, the half-life goes from six hours to two minutes. That's how much of an impact UV rays has on the virus. The last two lines are aerosols, what does it do in the air? We have a very unique capability, I was discussing this with the president prior to coming out, he wanted me to convey it to you on how we do this. I believe we're the only lab in the country that has this capability, but if you can imagine a five gallon Home Depot bucket, we're able to take a particle, and this was design developed and designed by our folks at the NBAC. We're able to take a particle of a virus and suspend it in the air inside of this drum and hit it with various temperatures, various humidity levels, multiple different kinds of environmental conditions to include sunlight. And we're able to measure the decay of that virus while it's suspended in the air. This is how we do our aerosol testing

Cue Trump a couple of minutes later asking a question of bringing in the light and disinfectants inside the body. Yes, I agree it was more of a suggestion to the scientists by Trump, not a suggestion to citizens that they do it. Yet, here we have word-by-word quote of Trump, which is, coincidentally, apparently a suggestion to get a disinfectant inside the body. Which is not a very intelligent question to ask, it was a gigantic gaffe. Yet everyone is acting as if it is unreasonable ask to understand that is the reason why penicillin was revolutionary: it could enter the body and kill bacteria without dissolving the body. Bleach kills everything biological because it is corrosive oxidizing agent.

Yet, for some reason, it is me who is downvoted at -5, and the Motte users acting as if Trump never said anything about bleach or at most asked some "noises about cool science" are at +dozens.

UV light

That was an actual product currently in R&D, and I recall the youtube video by the research hospital working on it -- which predatex Trump's press conference mentioning it -- being triumphantly taken down as misinformation on the report of a journalist. I think from one of the big rags, too, but I don't want to slander when I'm not sure which.

Wow. This has shades of Trump's speech where he explicitly said he "condemned totally" the neo-Nazis ... only to have journalists spread the meme that he called them "very fine people". Normally he's very sloppy in his speech, but even in cases where he's uncharacteristically precise, he'll get widely misquoted anyway. So where's the incentive for him to clean up his language?

I don’t want your pity. I roll my eyes when people who are never satisfied by anything proclaim that I need to work harder to win their good praise.

Yeah, this is a really effective argument technique against people who assume good faith. If you assume good faith, you will think that evidence will change the mind of their interlocutor. Therefore, if it does not, you must be mistaken. So merely by stubbornly holding positions, they can change their opponent's mind.

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