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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   1373 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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Back in 2025, DOGE axed USAID and, according to partisans on the left and right, the results have been monumental.

To the left, USAID was somehow singlehandedly keeping millions of Africans alive. The loss of USAID resulted in their deaths. Wikipedia, the fallen one, reports this:

The impact of the actions taken by the USAID on global health is wide-reaching.[34] A study published in June 2025 estimated that funding cuts and the abolition of the agency could result in more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under 5 years old.[9] Another estimate (by epidemiologist and health economist Brooke Nichols) is that over a period of one year from when they began, the cuts will result in the deaths of as many as 262,915 adults and 518,428 children.[35]

Obviously this is farcical on its face. And nearly 18 months later, there is no evidence of the massive death wave that was predicted.

Not to be outdone, the right has its own version of a USAID conspiracy theory: that closing USAID somehow killed leftism in South America.

Since USAID was shut down, seven countries in Latin America have held Presidential elections (Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia). All seven have elected a President who is right of center. Brazil now remains as the strongest center of leftism in Latin America. But it looks like they might flip as well. In the first round of voting, Flávio Bolsonaro beat Lula by nearly 2 points. They now advance to the runoff.

Conservatives on X are crowing about how this shows that USAID was propping up leftist governments in Latin America. But... I just don't see the mechanism. The money spent was too small. The programs too ineffectual.

The likelier truth about USAID is, like most government programs, it was essentially useless. The biggest political effect is that it allowed leftists a sinecure with good pay and benefits. And cutting it was worth it for that reason alone. But did cutting USAID kill people in Africa or bring down communists in Latin America? Press D to doubt.

Conservatives on X are crowing about how this shows that USAID was propping up leftist governments in Latin America. But... I just don't see the mechanism. The money spent was too small. The programs too ineffectual.

The likelier truth about USAID is, like most government programs, it was essentially useless. The biggest political effect is that it allowed leftists a sinecure with good pay and benefits. And cutting it was worth it for that reason alone. But did cutting USAID kill people in Africa or bring down communists in Latin America? Press D to doubt.

I don’t think it’s as simple as either side says. I don’t think USA was specifically trying to prop of Leftist governments in Latin America. But having said that, avoiding the problems that come from leftist policies does prop up leftist governments. It’s like anything else, removing the consequences of bad ideas simply enables people to continue making those bad decisions. So in that sense, because those leftist governments could rely on Americans and (American tax dollars) to bail them out, they suddenly face the political consequences of the results of leftist policies. They can’t hide from it, because if the government owned power plants can’t keep the lights on, they can’t hide that, and the public will demand better. This is why homeschooling and private schools are popular in the USA, the failures of public schools are too obvious to hide and changes are demanded.

I AM bought in on the idea that the crushing of funding for various NGOs and similar government agencies that controlled the flow of 100's of millions of dollars with minimal accountability has resulted in the collapse of the overall lefty network of professional activists and organizers, and thus reduced their capability of shifting outcomes in various countries.

The amounts of rampant fraud that has come out in the last couple years is convincing me that there are well-oiled grift machines out there that convert tax dollars into either Mansions, Range Rovers, and Crab legs for some particular class of people, OR converts them into protests, election influence, and propaganda for particular candidates or causes. And STILL DOES, but has to be more judicious with its spending. Nudging a lefty candidate over the line in Bolivia, thus, would be less of a priority than, say, making one of your guys the Mayor of New York or Los Angeles.

And these flows were HIGHLY dependent on the U.S. government acting as a rich but absent-minded benefactor who hears a nice sounding cause or title and keeps writing checks because nobody told them what the money actually went to. Then you've got your George Soros' and Meckenzie Bezos supplementing these efforts, and funds being directed towards keeping those funds flowing, and it becomes a perfect parasitic organism.

So it is completely believable to me that organizations doing the work on the ground and sloshing money around to various causes in-country got dismantled due to lack of funding and these close elections are now slipping back towards the less-well-funded side.

I would want to see the actual money flows traced, however.

The amounts of rampant fraud that has come out in the last couple years is convincing me that there are well-oiled grift machines out there that convert Tax dollars into either Mansions, Range Rovers, and Crab legs for some particular class of people, OR converts them into protests, election influence, and propaganda for particular candidates or causes.

The US elections coming up will be instructive. So far the absentee ballots requested are way down, which might speak to the disruption of some, um, how shall we say, "get out the vote" efforts.

If Democrats don't win bigly, as predicted by polls and prediction markets, then perhaps there was a lot of electoral fraud after all.

I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.

Aside from Gas prices (which are trending down?) and a few bad candidates in races, the GOP is pretty well situated and the base seems motivated!

So I actually have some bets on some Prediction markets that there's a likely stronger Republican showing than expected, especially in Texas. Regardless of how 'bad' Paxton is, its just truly hard to imagine a Dem waltzing to victory there.

Which... we've already seen that the polls can have such a bias. As you're suggesting, if the polls have a bias AND any theoretical electoral fraud machine is crippled, we should honestly expect a narrow Republican victory rather than the certain blowout they allege is brewing.

Trump and Co. sure seem to be acting like they expect a good outcome.

So yeah. I will slightly update my priors on 'electoral fraud is a systemic problem and it impacts national elections' in favor of "true" if the Dems have an underwhelming night.

I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.

Aside from Gas prices (which are trending down?) and a few bad candidates in races, the GOP is pretty well situated and the base seems motivated!

Wanna bet?

I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.

The Trump administration has been extraordinarily chaotic. And dysfunctional. Also war.

Chaotic, maybe. Dysfunctional, hardly. You couldn't have asked for better performance on the core goal of the administration. They have completely closed the border and have deported 1 million people, accelerating over time. No one could have predicted that level of success. IMO, they earn an A+ on that issue, and it's the most important issue.

Second most important. The most important always will be cost of living. And the only way I could characterize the Trump foreign policy signature issue - tariffs is difunctional.

Immigration is by far the most important for Trump (and also for me and the health of the country).

Though people might say affordability is the most important, it was always a fake crisis that the party out of power uses as a cudgel for the party in power. Except for a couple years during the Biden admin, real wages have gone up consistently. But people's expectations go up faster thanks to Instagram and other comparison tools.

And of course the usual solution to "affordability" is to subsidize demand or to rob Peter to pay Paul, which just makes the problem worse.

I know that it's still important for Trump to acknowledge the retarded demands of the people. It's just that, in 5 years, no one will remember that gas was $1 higher than normal for a sixth month period. But immigration, if left to continue unabated, will permanently ruin the country.

I agree with you. Doesn't change the fact that USA is unfortunately functioning democracy and people are swayed by the strain on their wallets. If Trump manages to hold to some legislative power he may as well be celebrated as visionary 20 years down the line - especially when we see what joy and benefits diversity brings on France's streets now. But doesn't change that winning elections in democracy is not optional.

Compared to Trump 1 this has been a positively stoic 2 years, with plenty of policy wins racked up.

I simply disagree.

The War is baked in, but as stated, gas prices have actually been on the downward trend, which is the main day-to-day reminder of the war.

Trump and Co. sure seem to be acting like they expect a good outcome.

Is that why he promised $5000 to everyone if they won the midterms?

Yes.

Very literally yes.

If he didn't think they were within distance, why even bother? At this point, I suspect they view it as a simple matter of goosing turnout.

Trump said as much recently.

https://polymarket.us/event/usgub-oh-2026-11-03

We'll see if that's an effective strategy considering his approval ratings.

The Senate in particular seems like it will be hard for Democrats to capture. They need to flip 4 seats.

The easiest to flip are North Carolina, Maine, Texas and Ohio. After that, Iowa, Alaska, Kansas. With the exception of Maine these are all red states! Trump won Texas by 14, Iowa by 13, Ohio by 11!

They also need to avoid being flipped in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Georgia.

Michigan in particular is a tough race for them with a DSA Muslim vs a turbo normie. Wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers win that one by 8 points.

Michigan in particular is a tough race for them with a DSA Muslim vs a turbo normie. Wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers win that one by 8 points.

How much you wanna bet? I'll take even odds that Rogers loses.

Why would I ever bet you with those odds when I can get much better odds on Kalshi? What a strange offer. Counterparty risk means I wouldn't bet you at any odds, no offense.

Basically what I'm saying. If the big national races are close, semi-coinflip outcomes should ultimately come down for the GOP in the end. You have to believe in a serious blue wave to expect a flip of the Senate, especially a flip that actually gives them 'control' vs. just a nominal majority.

Polymarket believes blue wave, Nate silver believes blue wave, polls predict blue wave, RCP believes blue wave, rumors are that GOP insiders believe blue wave, I am pro Trump also - but I think that his absolute remarkable dumb political luck has finally ran out. A nominal majority is control when it comes to appointments and passing laws.

And importantly, Trump needs 50 non-cucked Republicans to make any appointments. Judges can rule like kings in many cases. We need Trump to be able to appoint them which he can't do without those 50 votes.

I am hopeful for a blue fizzle based on demonstrated poll bias. But maybe I have my head in the sand.

Do you have links towards serious analysis why polls are terribly wrong that is not fueled by binge on copium and hopium?

North Carolina is a Purple state, It has a democrat governor and a republican state legislature. It doesn't help that the Republican senate candidate is fairly odious, and the democratic senate candidate is a fairly popular former governor. I think it is likely Roy Cooper takes the senate seat.

I agree that North Carolina is a likely flip, made less painful by the fact that Thom Tillis was a closet Democrat.

Very few bad things show up in the aggregate death statistics. In Israel, 2023 had less deaths than 2021, 2022, 2024, or 2025. Are we to conclude that October 7th was fake, or that it was no big deal?

We would conclude that anyone claiming October 7th killed millions of people is an idiot.

I don't think it's tenable to deny that the US intervenes in other democracies. A lot of money is spent on facially-neutral "Initiatives" that are staffed by the 95% Democratic Washington DC one-party state. They will define democracy, a priori, as left-wing culture war victories, and spend money. A lot of this stuff was operant in Hungary, where NGOs lead out of Washington defined Orban's government as anti-democratic and spent money on his opposition. It's the same kind of thing that hobbled the American occupation in Afghanistan. It happens everywhere, it's the American government on autopilot.

It's even public knowledge in Brazil in one respect: In the run-up to the 2022 election, there was a lot of speculation that Bolsonaro could seize on irregularities and declare the election invalid. The CIA and the Biden White House told the Brazilian government that if this happened they would cut all diplomatic ties and consider sanctions.

At the same time, I don't believe that everything in the world was a giant USAID-organized US government plot. For one thing, USAID is basically what every department of the American government looks like when it interacts with foreign countries. For another, USAID would have been the most successful program in the American government, ever, if true. I find it much more likely that the modal failure for USAID was elites in foreign countries skimming vast quantities of money off the top.

Yes, I think this is the correct take.

USAID was just a small part of a whole government pressure program in support of Leftism. Cutting USAID didn't have much of an effect since the amount of money spent was small and most was simply wasted. But turning off or even reversing the whole government pressure is quite impactful.

For example, this time it is Lula who must beware of U.S. intervention. And Trump actually did tariff Brazil for their politically motivated prosecution of Bolsonaro. (It's currently at 25%). Brazilians can look forward to the prospect of being much richer if Flavio Bolsonaro is elected and the tariffs are ended. My $PAGS stock which I recommended on the finance thread two weeks ago is up 21% today on election news.

I think this one is more fun: Joe Rogan Claims Rap Has ‘Fallen Off the Charts’ Because the ‘USAID Got Defunded’

Drake delivered hip-hop's only No. 1 hit atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2026

Somebody needs to figure out how Jazz is doing, though that might be more dependent on the CIA

Also allegedly why Nike (and hoodwear generally) is in decline

NKE has been in free fall since 2021.

Lol. That's a good one.

My personal favorite is when the New York Times implies causation by using weasly language construction.

"He criticized the President. Now he's being deported." (serial rapist)

"He donated money to Trump. Then he lost his house."

"Man dies after police incident"

My cousin got the vax. Two weeks later? BAM. Falling space junk.

That's because the vaccine has the 5G beacons that are used to target the space junk correctly.

Happened afterward. ✅

Plausible method of action. ✅

Epistemological hygiene check passed. Very good chance it was causative.

USAID was spending most of its money in Africa, so I'd expect that to be where things change.

There is maybe a story to be told that USAID was a method for coordination among the left. They go out and verify that a charitable cause in another country or region will advance the goals they care about, and private money simply follows their recommendation. This is somewhat explicitly what they were doing. Its just that they didn't say something like "advancing leftist ideology is our goal". Usually the goal of USAID was stated to be a kind of soft power projection by the US. Show the world we are the good guys by giving money to good causes.

I do think USAID was doing something. Simply because throwing billions of dollars around in poor nations is bound to have some effect. From some numbers I looked up on wikipedia we were giving about 1 billion to ethiopia, ethiopia's government expenditure is about 25 billion. Therefore we were contributing about 4% of ethiopias government budget. Its play money for the US, but that is a big amount for other countries. Certainly enough to sway elections.

The parsimonious explanation is that an extra 1 billion dollars given to Ethiopians is immediately spent on consumption, mostly on imported goods.

Definitely nice for the Ethiopians who benefited, but I doubt they made any progress on fixing entrenched problems.

We simply must get past the idea that government/NGO spending does anything useful unless we can closely track it and see the progress. Allocating funds != accomplishing goals. Look at California High Speed Rail. This applies doubly in corrupt countries.

Yes, to be clear when I said USAID money was definitely doing something I don't mean to imply that "something" is good. My default assumption with untracked aid money is the "something" is being used by the government in charge to hand out bribes to their friends.

I'd expect that removing the spigot of money results in more political upheaval since the group in charge has less of an ability to bribe people into being allies. And they either have to make that up through increased extraction from their enemies, or reduce their bribing amount. Both of which make their position weaker.

I just ultimately don't think it should be the responsibility of the US taxpayer to worry about these things. So I'm happy to see the program ended.

Education would be another one. I'm generally not prone to trying to correct the misconceptions of normies in the course of my daily life, but one thing I do bring up from time to time is that additional funding for education generally has little to no effect on outcomes. I encourage them to google that. Because it's something they can immediately grasp (and be shocked by), some even do so!

Doesn't precipitate any major political changes but once I was lucky enough to observe, afterward, that when the subject ("We just need more money for schools!") came up again in a group setting the freshly-pilled normie sat quietly with a distressed look on his face.

From such beginnings, perhaps...

This has me thinking about taxonomy. In this context, let me suggest:

Normie: One who derives political/policy opinions from ambient social consensus
Midwit: One who does the above, but is smart enough to search for supporting (never conflicting) data
Contrarian: One who, driven by reflexive disgust at normie consensus-assumption, searches for conflicting data

There's no tension between being a midwit and being a contrarian. Indeed, a tremendous amount of contrarianism is simply reversing popular or intuitive assumptions, seeking data that supports the beliefs they arrived at for fundamentally emotional/ideological reasons, and scoffing at the naivete of people who accept the convention claims.

I almost want to say real education spending has never been tried. Literally though a big issue is the cities with lot of money have powerful teacher unions that just find ways to gobble up the money to their members.

The data is really bad on more money and schools. The one thing that has me seeing a little daylight is it appears Mississippi has actually succeeded at fixing the schools.

They fixed it via ending social promotion and by mandating phonics, right? Did they do anything else? Without looking it up, I would assume their spending is very low by US standards.

I mostly agree spending hasn’t been important in US education. Learning is mostly having a floor of resources and then independently grinding thru a textbook.

But I would still say spending more hasn’t been tried. Because the blue cities turned their schools into job programs.

This is how it usually goes down for me.

NPC: We need more tax money for our underfunded public schools

Me: How much do you think insert local ghetto spends per student?

NPC: I don't know, $3000?

Me: They spend $34,000 per student per year. There's 20 kids to a class, so that's $680,000 per teacher.

NPC: Nevertheless

I've encountered similar (but in reverse) with people arguing the US needs to reduce military spending (especially among people who are otherwise supportive of NATO).

The USA is definitely getting little bang for its buck procurement wise.

Yeah, people are shocked when they learn that defense is only like 15% of federal spending and most of that is just social programs and salaries as well.

We spend almost as much on veterans disability (much of which is fraud) as we do on weapons procurement.

And a lot of the weapons procurement budget is being spent inside the US so it's less evaporative than foreign aid

Why is South Africa the appropriate reference country? If you look at the impactcounter dashboard (the Brooke Nichols project) they break down their death estimates by cause and provide a methodology for them. To take one example: Malaria. Approximately 71k of their death estimates are from additional Malaria cases due to canceling the President's Malaria Initiative. As best I can tell from Wikipedia the initiative never extended to South Africa.

It's the only data we have.

The streetlight effect is still the streetlight effect even if it's dark in the park.

I guess an iron law of writing is that one should never use weak evidence in your argument, even if it's all that is available.

I'm just going to take it out, since it seems like a lightning rod for people who, lacking evidence of their own, latch onto the weakest part of the argument like a terrier onto a bull's penis.

Latching onto the weakest part of an argument is a necessary defense against Gish gallops.

Sufficient, but not necessary ... and superior as deterrence vs future gallops, but not as dismissal of a current gallop. Dismantling just the strongest argument instead (or the first, if the galloper hasn't signified what they think is strongest) is a great way to claim the rest are beneath you.

Yet the logic isn’t applied by your critics to the initial claim that there will be hundreds of thousands of deaths. Curious how you need evidence to support your claim but they don’t.

The dashboard I linked to does give the source of its data though.

The methodology page for malaria generally is here and it relies on this medrxiv paper for the estimation of the impact of the PMI. The paper provides specific estimates for impacts by country and over the course of the year based on what countries were receiving PMI, how much of their national anti-malarial program it constituted, and what kind of stockpiles were already available.

Yeah, every online debate is just a meta argument about who the burden of proof falls on.

I think the lesson for me is not to proactively provide evidence but rather to make claims and then address with evidence if there are non-lazy counterclaims. Otherwise people will just do their lazy drivebys while sitting on the toilet.

I guess an iron law of writing is that one should never use weak evidence in your argument, even if it's all that is available.

Yes, actually. If your argument is purely speculative, you should be up front about that. "Here are my assumptions and logical arguments as why I think X even though I don't have hard evidence" isn't the most convincing, but it is at least honest. Incorporating bad evidence or evidence that doesn't actually support the central claim makes you look like a bullshitter.

I did state it was the only evidence we have. But yeah. It's removed now.

Better to state the universal negative, let people come up with counterexamples, and then attack those. Prevents lazy drive-bys.

But the right has its own version of a USAID conspiracy theory: that closing USAID somehow killed leftism in South Africa.

Since USAID was shut down, seven countries in Latin America...

Was that meant to be South America?

Fixed

Forgive the self-reply, but I feel like it's too juicy not to point out the amazing parallels between Brazilian politics and US poltics.

Obviously Bolsonaro is the Brazilian Trump.

Trump: almost assassinated. Bolsonaro: almost assassinated and seriously wounded.

Trump: defeated by a geriatric man from a previous regime. Bolsonaro: same.

Trump: defeated by a "corrupt socialist". Bolsonaro: Defeated by a corrupt socialist.

Trump: Janaury 6th. Bolsonaro: January 8th

Trump: target of judicial warfare. Bolsonaro: same, but actually sent to prison

Trump: stymied by kinglike judges. Bolsonaro: stymied by Godlike judges.

Trump: children proposed as political heirs. Bolsonaro: children elected to Senate and maybe Presidency

Trump: ballot harvesting in black areas might have lost him election. Brazil: Ballot harvesting in black areas but no electoral college.

Brazil is just like the U.S. except like 50% more retarded. Lusotropicalism enjoyers are on Cloud 9.

At least for the "killed people in Africa" claim, the numbers most cited about how many people cutting it would kill were beyond bogus to the point of what I would consider blatant academic malpractice: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-4eQZdxlPCU

I cannot believe how facile the basis for this claim is.

It's embarrassing that so many progressive journalists uncritically reported such an obviously spurious finding. But what really alarms me is that it wouldn't surprise me if the level of numerical or statistical aptitude among the journos at the NYT, the BBC etc. was so remedial that they literally wouldn't understand why this finding was spurious.

No one who is unable to define the differences between "mean", "median" and "mode" should be working as a journalist. (Okay, fine, you can be a film or literary critic. If you're reporting on the news, you need to understand stats. Your opinions should not be taken seriously if you don't.)

Yes, and if true, it would be trivially easy for people to raise money and save those lives. The fact that no one really made an effort shows a lack of belief. If relatively small amounts of money is all it takes to save African lives, they all would have been saved long ago.

The fact that no one really made an effort shows a lack of belief.

I would argue that EA has been trying to pick up some of the slack. Likely they favored the most effective measures, but it seems to me that they stopped because they ran out of funds rather than because they thought that most of the things USAID funded were net negative

The truth is that before Trump, USAID was spending 12-15G$/a on global healthcare and EA (with a total budget of 1.5-2G$/a over all cause areas) is simply not in the position to simply replace the gap with some spare change.

Was there some USAID funded NGO delivering books with inspiring stories about racial justice to some structurally disadvantaged girls? Probably. Was this where the median dollar was spent? Unlikely, it seems more likely that it got into vaccination campaigns and the like.

In the past, USAID was part of a broader strategy of the US painting itself as the good guy. Sure, sometimes they would bomb the shit out of you and steal your oil, but overall they were not a terrible hegemon as these things go. Trump does not care about USAID as a tool of soft power because he does not understand soft power. His levers of foreign policy are tariffs and the US military.

The US never gets any credit for any of the great things we do (Covid vaccines being a recent example) but gets maximum blame for bad things. No one ever said how great the US was because of USAID, but when we took it away, there were howls of protest.

So I would say that, it's not just Trump. The U.S. hasn't understood soft power in a long time. Everyone hates us. So, if hated, better at least to be respected than to continue to beg for scraps of affection.

I do hope that EA's will fully fund the most effective measures with a small share of the bonanza of money coming their way post Anthropic and Open AI IPO's. Personally, I predict little progress on Africa's core problems but much higher SF real estate prices and political donations to politicians who promise to regulate AI. Perhaps I'm overly cynical. I do think that EA's in general believe what they say. It's just that they are also lazy and bullshit and status seeking, just like everyone else.

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