site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1140 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 4, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Do you guys like tortured Roman Empire analogies? No? Neverthelesss...

Trump = Julian the Apostate.

Let's start with a super oversimplified refresher. Rome was founded in 753 BC. They worshipped a variety of pagan gods and this state of affairs lasted for over a millenium. Throughout this time, a bunch of Eastern cults came and went. But it was Christianity that gradually spread until it started to threaten the Roman religion. At first the Christians were heavilty persecuted. But their influence grew and, in 313 AD, the emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, giving Christians legal status within the Empire.

Finally, all religions could live in peace, right? Wrong. Religious freedom last for less than 70 years. In 380 AD, Nicene Christianity made the state religion. Now pagans were the ones that were persecuted.

Christianity conquered Paganism. Zoom out far enough and the result looks inevitable. But there was one little hiccup along the way: Julian the Apostate, emperor of Rome from 360–363 AD.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and he believed it necessary to restore the Empire's ancient Roman values and traditions in order to save it from dissolution. He purged the top-heavy state bureaucracy, openly promoted pagans to high political offices, and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the expense of Christianity. His efforts to build a Third Temple in Jerusalem were probably intended to harm Christianity rather than please Jews. Julian also expelled Christians from the military and forbade them from teaching and learning classical texts. Though his reign saw a brief resurgence of paganism in public and political life, his policies ultimately had no lasting effect on its continuing decline.

Sound familiar?

To make it even more on the nose, Julian ultimately died while fighting a military campaign against Persia.

Julian was just a tiny blip in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But that doesn't mean he wasn't ultimately right about almost everything. Christianity really was poisonous to the Roman regime. There just wasn't anything that Julian could do about it. Demographics are destiny. So while Julian could use state power to temporarily role back the clock, the Christians kept multiplying while the people who remembered the old gods died of old age.

Rome was in a dysgenic death spiral long before Christianity substantively expanded. Their upper classes had a low TFR and low marriage rate. Free workers were in constant competition with vast hordes of immigrants who worked as slaves to enrich a small elite. Thankfully nothing like this is happening today. (As a random and strange fun fact, Luigi Mangione of all people wrote an article about Roman Empire Christianity as a response to low Roman TFR).

Free workers were in constant competition with vast hordes of immigrants who worked as slaves to enrich a small elite. Thankfully nothing like this is happening today.

And there definitely wasn't a significant amount of energy put into the reform faction, and they never tried to throw the reform faction's leader in jail as soon as his legal immunity expired, and that question definitely had nothing to do with any resulting civil war.

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