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It is frustrating that you're such a good writer because over years and years of reading you I've realized that all your beliefs amount to Hottentot morality in so many words. Democrats celebrate crime and brutality? Disgusting, we should do that to them, appoint our own thugs. Democrats buy votes? There is no coherent argument against buying votes! You just defend whatever Republicans do, no matter how obviously debased. You gleefully embrace the race to the bottom.
In 2023, the Peronist government of Argentina tried to buy votes with total tax relief for "the working class" and free bus rides. I've been impressed by Argentinians when they didn't take the bait and still voted Milei, who reversed the law.
There's been a lot of concern about Brazilification of the US. I think it's way past that. The US is a South American society, maybe Middle Eastern. Just wrong skin color by accident.
"Hottentot Morality" seems underspecified.
I refuse to pretend that rules or norms constrain us all equally when in fact they obviously do not. Why should I? What works that way? What positive outcome is secured by such a method? Further, if stability or peace or the current maintenance of plenty requires obvious, systematic injustice, why would you think this maintainable long-term? Why is pretending it can be sustained useful? What is gained? A pleasant aesthetic ambiance between now and the inevitable shattering crash?
Whoa now, you can't just sneak that in there, that seems pretty uncharitable! Most of the Blues remaining here certainly wouldn't agree that Democrats do anything of the sort, even when you quote examples of they themselves doing so!
Which is to say, you are willing to make this accusation to me, who is speaking the truth plainly, and decline to make it to those who have actually acted on it but are willing to lie. And even then, they burned our cities; have we burned theirs? Are we running gangs of masked men to kick people's teeth in for saying things we don't like? Are we murdering their political champions? If you're going to draw an equivalence, you really ought to back it up.
...But allow me to skip much tedious listing and harangue.
The difference that you don't seem to recognize is that I'm willing to agree that these things are, in fact, actual problems, and they are, in fact, going to lead to a bad end, provided my opposite is willing to engage with the facts in good faith. Absent that good faith, I'm not really sure what you or others expect. My side lost, and was trampled down. Can you resurrect us? If you cannot, why curse me for failing to do so? I say that the culture war is a serious problem driven by fundamentally-incompatible values across broad, coherent populations, that this locks us into an escalation spiral that is very obviously going to break things we can't fix, and I'm told that I'm being a silly-billy, that this is all a distraction or an algorithm bubble, and then the next day I'm presented with a conversation like this one, where it's awful that my side is doing the thing the other side built their entire party around doing, and has consistently claimed my side is bad for trying to stop, all the way up to five seconds ago.
If you think vote-buying is bad, explain what ought to be done about eighty-five fucking years of ceaseless vote-buying. Explain what should be done about the trillions of dollars in vote-buying that is definitely going to happen this year alone. Explain how the ideals you're espousing have even the slightest connection to the world I have to live in, or how precisely they extend even two inches beyond this specific, entirely-bespoke Russell-conjugation.
Things can be destroyed that cannot be repaired nor replaced, and recognizing this fact does not in and of itself bring them back. Pretending harder doesn't change this. Cursing people who point out that you are pretending also does not change this.
The wheel carried them down, now it carries them up. The wheel carried us up, now it carries us down. We probably have a Milei, somewhere; it's a big country. What we lack is a population willing to accept a Milei. We are too fat and comfortable, too deluded to accept that hard decisions need to be made, and so those who argue correctly that hard decisions are needed to forestall serious disaster simply lose. And so those of us who can recognize that hard decisions are needed to forestall disaster recognize, correctly, that the hard decisions can't be coordinated, and accept that the disaster is going to happen, and attempt to prepare as best we're able.
I honestly suspect that you have no idea. And yet, you frequently speak about inevitable US victory and our impending dominance of the light-cone. I think that's unlikely. I think things go badly for us and probably for a lot of other people in the not-too-distant future, as the Belle Epoque collapses.
So it goes.
The culture war is a war, and increasingly so year by year.
"When they rustle our cattle, this is bad. When we rustle their cattle, this is good. What do you mean, what's the difference? One action hurts me, the other benefits me."
"When Russians shoot Ukrainians, that's bad; When Ukrainians shoot Russians, that's good". Such Hottentot Morality.
Try: "When Russians bomb Ukrainian civilian infra, that's bad. When Ukrainians bomb Russian civilian infra, that's… actually also bad". There is a fine line between justified reciprocity and a race to the bottom. In war, it's hard. But bribing the electorate is not retaliation against the outgroup, it's just contributing to the burning of the commons. Trump is simply corrupt swine.
And frankly, you are not at war, you're all on the same side, as infinitely opulent burgers bored out of their minds, locked in their conflict mostly for entertainment, like aspects of Chaos.
In a democracy buying votes is a weapon. Specifically, the type of weapon that tends to get banned by international treaties, that's the whole reason why it's such a taboo / is seen as "burning of the commons". I don't think civilian infra is a good analogy, unless it can be show there's a direct connection of it to performance on the battlefield. It's relatively easy to take the high road and not retaliate against pointless cruelty, it's another thing entirely to take the high road over something that gives your enemy an actual strategic advantage.
I also disagree this is not a war, and I don't think it's specifically an American thing, the entire western world seems locked in the same conflict. Oh, and I'm not a burger.
The thing is, Trump does not consider it a bad thing at all. He's not saying "I'll retaliate and then we'll negotiate that nobody does this thing again". He just considers it a neat weapon. He doesn't care for the commons.
Destroying civilian infra does have direct effects on the battlefield. Russians mostly bomb logistics and energy systems, the pure terror component is magnified by Ukrainian propaganda; Ukrainian strikes are likewise mostly rational (plus some of it is retaliation for boosting morale). It's still bad for everyone because it incentivizes a race to the bottom where civilian suffering is disproportionate to the delta in battlefield results.
And the thing about that is, how long have we seen politicians selling votes? When was Social Security implemented? Medicare? Medicaid? 7 zillion welfare and various pork barrel spending programs no one has even heard of? I too dream of a politician coming in and, dare I say, draining the swamp, but this has been going on for a century or so. At that point it's just standard warfare, rather than something that calls for international tribunals.
But it's not clear if they are even buying votes. Gibs are the essence of leftism, redistribution is the bulk of their value proposition of egalitarianism. If you simply concede that it's the winning move in a democracy, you should focus on dismantling democracy.
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