site banner
Goodguy  3d ago (text post)   Edited 2d ago   9605 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

These midterms scare me.

  1. The Country feels ungovernable to me now. I don’t think there is a true majority to rule in any direction. We have a right, a left, and some entirely confused middle. In theory you should run like Mitt Romney or some boring dude and crush it but I don’t think voter distributions are linear like that. The country just from Trump being able to win the popular vote to Sayed’s winning elections easily.

  2. I’m honestly scared with Texas going blue. Demographically it seemed like that was a risks in decades. It’s been very important in terms of deregulation and keeping America moving forward in the physical world. Texas can’t be a California version of Texas. Florida I don’t believe can be Texas in US politics. Florida might be the home of the red tribe now but geographically I just don’t think it can be a manufacturing, agricultural, and scientific hub that is Texas. Before recent history Florida sold sunshine and Texas sold Oil.

  3. Palestine has a realistic path of defeating Israel now. Israel has zero friends now. Sayed’s are the new breed US politicians.

  4. There is little chance at stopping third world US. A better Brazil has to be the copium now. Somehow you need to keep out the wrong parts of the Middle East and India from America and close the border to Africa. If America starts getting lower caste Indians instead of Brahmins then it’s over.

  5. I’m somewhat becoming a socialists with AI. It somewhat already feels like only 10% of Americans are productive + a huge medical industrial complex + it feels like a huge amount of America is already on UBI. Maybe AI is just going to turn all of commerce into what happened in agriculture (from 90% of population to 2%)

  6. The only Democratically viable election strategy seems to be to lean into Hispanic voters. You can probably partner with them to keep Somalians out of the country. There vote appears to be what shifted Texas blue.

  7. You might also need to figure out how to play Indian caste politics to get current Indians to agree with limiting unlimited Indian immigrants.

I'll push back on number 3. America's bonhomie with Israel goes beyond a handful of politicians, too many locked-in commitments to reverse in one election. Maybe they will slow-walk some munitions, but nothing else changes.

On number 4, we shall see. Democrats will certainly try to appear pro-immigration to counter the GOP's perceived bigotry, but I don't expect to see more H1Bs anytime soon.

We can only hope the GOP takes the midterms as a census on the economy and foreign policy, learn the right lessons. They will probably lose 2028 though.

I don’t mean necessarily today that Israel falls, but I do think a S Africa path is becoming politically possible.

I still don't believe it. There are things that a hostile public opinion cannot move. We're talking eight decades of military cooperation, intelligence integration, co-developed defense systems, congressional commitments, and bureaucratic planning that have created substantial institutional inertia. A Democratic administration could restrict arms transfers or adopt a more confrontational diplomatic posture without dismantling that architecture, but we've seen glimpses of this before even under Republican administrations (Reagan and Bush Sr). Israel simply isn't a client state waiting for Washington to withdraw its blessing.

I don’t like losing elections. So Jews either need to figure out how to win American elections or it’s Ciao. Sure some deep state connections will continue but not much else.

That those deep state connections and not much else are driving the foreign policy wrt Israel, is my point. Remember Genocide Joe?

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