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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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It is the biggest, stupidest, most obvious political error I've ever witnessed, and certainly seems like a big enough error to destroy the Republican party long-term.

It's certainly retarded but also a massive nothingburger. The economic costs of the conflict are miniscule compared to the all the bullshit that's happened in the last 5 years. If this is really the one thing it takes to totally flip the political landscape then I don't know what to say. Beyond $1 per gallon of gas pain, most people out there couldn't care less what's going on.

The basic issue is that, because of the long march through the institutions, Democrats are the majority and are known to be Good. Some of those Democrats can be pushed Republican if the Democrats get crazy, which is where 2024 came from. And Trump managed (all three times) also to tap into people who were willing to say (or at least think) "if this is what Good gets me, I'm Evil". Trump isn't running this time, and the Democrats haven't been in charge so they can't be blamed for any craziness. So.... blue Tsunami.

Agreed. Very little real costs to Americans. My guess is people would cite something else during the midterms if there was no war.

Probably beef shortage (years in the making), datacenters, or screeching about ice

Honestly beef prices may be an area I’m most questionable on capitalism because in theory it’s the exact industry that should be very good at adjusting supply to demand over the medium term. Best I can come up with is somehow the processors figured out how to get market power. Commodity markets are generally an area where markets work extremely well. And I wouldn’t think processors have enough economies of scale to gain too much pricing power.

I would guess it's much simpler -- as with eggs, it was Biden-era regulations causing the issue, deliberately to get people to consume less of the immoral thing. But beef life cycles are much longer than chickens.

as with eggs

Eggs were price fixing.

Well, actually, there's a couple of normal cyclical variations in the beef supply that all lined up at once- and while this was easily forseeable under Biden(I remember telling people that lamb would be cheaper than beef soon in 2023), the people actually doing it haven't voted for a democrat since the mid seventies.

The persistent drought out west doesn’t help, it destroyed a lot of grazing area.

I can tell you that economically to me it is indeed a nothingburger. But politically? I will be voting democrat (I voted for Trump in 24) almost entirely because of it. The "America First" President, who ran on no more foreign adventures decided that the high from bombing brown people and getting his dick sucked by Mossad honeypots was so much better than actually fixing ANY of the myriad problems in America. The American system is unfortunately designed so that the only way I can meaningfully express my displeasure is to hold my nose and vote for the opposition party. Who actually knows if I am at all representative of the independent electorate but obviously others think so too.

I still can't fathom people who bought into his no new wars schtick.

I mean, in his first term that was basically true.

During the entire decade of Trump's presence in politics I have heard every possible configuration of "Orang Man Bad" arguments, but somehow "he is going to start new wars" never came up, even from his most rabid opponents.

Scott made a post about this in 2016.

I saw (both at the time and as part of the discussion of the recent Iran war) "Trump's pulling out of JCPOA will make a war with Iran (or a nuclear Iran, which nobody wants) inevitable, and the people* who convinced him to pull out of JCPOA know this and are actively trying to maneuver America into a war Americans don't want." That isn't "Trump, personally wants to start a war" but it is close.

* Whether the people in question are Netanyahu and the Israeli right, or GOPe neocons and the Deep State in the US.

I bought into "Trump is not paid off by, and is rich enough not to need to be paid off by, the Saudi-Israeli Axis of Idiot, and will therefore pursue a saner foreign policy that may lead to less Salafi jihadism" in 2016. Hilary Clinton seemed to me to be unusually close to the Saudi influence machine, which I thought was more dangerous (in terms of corruptly influencing the US to pursue policies contrary to the national interest, and potentially in ways which would increase my personal risk of being blown up by Salafi jihadists) than the Israeli one, though the two machines were (and remained until the current Iran war started going wrong) sufficiently aligned that this may be a distinction without a difference.

Given the amount of Saudi (and Israeli? not sure) baksheesh the Trumps took in his first term, I didn't find this argument particularly credible in 2024. I also don't understand how anyone believed "Kamala is likely to do a forever war for Israel" strongly enough that "Trump won't" became a viable campaign message rather than a Captain Obvious kind of thing.

The American system is unfortunately designed so that the only way I can meaningfully express my displeasure is to hold my nose and vote for the opposition party.

Untrue. You could always vote Libertarian. If anything, that sends a stronger signal, because the Democrats are not exactly known for refraining from foreign adventurism. Bombing random Middle Eastern countries is, sadly, a bipartisan consensus.

Trust me, I intend to where there is a Libertarian candidate. I'm actually overjoyed one is available to me on my ballot.

Is your flair a reference to the Dunyain?

Yes. It is technically an application of Dunyain philosophy applied in a Gothosian fashion. A statement of the human condition.

Love it! Yeah I should've known with the username I didn't even notice that hehe. Good stuff. Excellent series, tragic the way it ended tho. I do hope he writes more at some point :/

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