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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26698 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.

MEGYN KELLY: This is one of the reasons why I said if this judge [Chutkan] in DC… because we assume Trump's gonna get convicted in that case, I mean, the smart bet would be this DC jury convicts him because they hate them politically. 92% voted for Joe Biden. And she hates him. If she puts him in jail, pending appeal before the election, the country's going to burn. And then all this blowback, ‘Oh my god. She's calling for violence.’ I'm not calling for violence. But there is no way that Trump base is not going to be beside itself with anger at that level of deprivation of being able to simply vote for the candidate of choice. That's what's being taken away here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Speaking of violence, that's what you're gonna get. And speaking as someone who detests violence… If you leave people no alternative, then what do you think is going to happen? The whole point of electoral democracy is that it's a pressure relief valve that takes people who are very frustrated with the way things are going and gives them a way to express themselves, have their desires heard, and ultimately, their will done to be represented in a peaceful way. And if you take that away, if you have staged an unfair election, which 2020 was, if you suppress information that voters need to make an informed decision, you're rigging the election, and they did that.

So if you keep doing that, and people are like, ‘Wait, I have no economic power, you've devalued my currency, so it's like $11 for a dozen eggs, and my vote doesn't matter anymore. Well, then what do I have? Like what power do I have?’ And you're gonna get violence if you keep the shit up. And that's just the truth. And I am very upset about that, I don't want that to happen, I think the counter violence will be much more extreme than the violence. But any rational person can see what's coming. So they have to stop this.

The charges against Trump are not real. They're not even for serious crimes. I was told Trump was like a murderer and had killed a bunch of people in New Jersey or something. He didn't even cheat on his taxes. And they're treating him like a felon at the same time. Like they protect Epstein until they have to murder him in his cell. It's insane and it's all on public display. Everybody knows what's going on. So I do think the people in charge the people were pulling the strings on Tanya Chutkan in or whatever these ridiculous front people they hire. Those people need to really think this through a little bit. You're about to wreck the country. Don't do this, please.

First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".

But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.

No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.

Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.

But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.

Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.

  • -20
  • 38 downvotes

And some claim themotte doesn't downvote opinions. And this is from a centrist regular, not a truly progressive opinion. It appears you still have enough credit with the userbase, and you're socially conservative enough, to avoid the bad faith and strawman accusations for now, Ashlael.

I think one should probably not try to draw too many conclusions from votes on trump threads. I'd hazard at least half of regulars just collapse any thread with trump in it immediately. I suggest others do the same, it makes the place much more enjoyable.

As a leftist liberal, I downvoted this because the commentary was inflammatory with almost no substance. I don't think the downvote count of this comment tells us anything about whether or not theMotte downvotes opinions (it does).

I didn't downvote here, and don't downvote for disagreement in the general case, but I've personally called out and gotten warned for calling out AshLael's bizarre and uneven behavior on this topic.

This post might not have gotten as much downvote-spam as its Red Tribe equivalent, but that's more a fault for the people overlooking the consensus-building and evidence-free claims when their team makes them.

Ashlael is literally a political operative, which might explain some of that bizarre and uneven behavior.

I'm flattered to be the subject of a conspiracy theory, but no, no one is paying me to shit talk Trump on themotte.org. This is entirely my own pathology.

And there's the bad faith accusation. What's the theory, anyway? He's BLM shadow liaison to the australian government, moonlighting as autist whisperer?

@gattsuru

  • Yeah, I still don't see the problem, like I told you in that thread. Your standard for sinister behaviour is frighteningly low. Not denouncing BLM more than once or twice is bizarre and uneven behaviour apparently.

  • What consensus is he building, all alone and despised?

  • And the good thing about evidence-free claims is that one can refute them with evidence. There really is no reason to write everything in blue.

@07mk

Frank disagreement is always inflammatory.

Frank disagreement is always inflammatory

Frankly, I disagree.

like I told you in that thread

I'll repeat the arguments from there, then: you can't proclaim law-and-order credentials if you don't care about the law, you can't claim public order as a priority if some disruptions of public order can go unpunished for years lest orderly-but-not-state response squick someone out, and you can't claim anti-violence as a principle if you're willing to excuse it at the drop of a hat when the state wants to use it.

Your standard for sinister behaviour is frighteningly low.

I don't think there's anything sinister, unless you're making a left/right pun -- and even then, Aussie politics doesn't break down into the right/left divide.

But if in one case, people honking horns and blocking traffic are so bad that they justify suspension of civil rights and all the normal protections of democratic processes, and in the other case, riots that burn down buildings with people in them are nothing special and should be resolved through democratic means. Some riots, and some terrorism, it turns out, are special.

What consensus is he building, all alone and despised?

... the sentence structure for consensus-building is around the right-wing posts you (and I) are bitching about.

And the good thing about evidence-free claims is that one can refute them with evidence. There really is no reason to write everything in blue.

And part of the warning I got was that I'm not allowed to do so. So there's a bit of an eyeroll, here.

And part of the warning I got was that I'm not allowed to do so. So there's a bit of an eyeroll, here.

I'll address @fuckduck9000's question below, but stop claiming you were told you're not allowed to refute claims with evidence. That isn't what you were warned about, and you know it. You may disagree with what you were told to stop doing, and you can keep arguing that point with us if you must, but it wasn't "Stop refuting people's arguments."

Some riots, and some terrorism, it turns out, are special.[...]

So he's seemingly guilty of mild, year-spanning contradiction, as interpreted by you. I'm not going to waste my time explaining in detail why ashlael's positions are not contradictory, suffice to say you don't have a smoking gun. And all of this has nothing to do with the downvotes you were trying to justify.

.. the sentence structure for consensus-building is around the right-wing posts you (and I) are bitching about.

You implied he was consensus building, like the post's Red Tribe equivalent. But those posts actually have a consensus to build on. At best he's gathering a coalition of the damned.

You implied he was consensus building, like the post's Red Tribe equivalent. But those posts actually have a consensus to build on.

The rule against "Consensus building" doesn't have anything to do with how many people one is immediately appealing to. "We (you and I) agree on X" can be an appeal to common knowledge to your opposite number, provided they actually do agree; if you're not sure whether they agree, it's best to phrase it as a question rather than a statement.

"We (me and others, not you) agree on X, so clearly you're the odd one out" is consensus-building, whether the others are specified or not, and whether the others are present or not. Speaking for other people is generally frowned upon.

You genuinely do not appear to understand the rules this place operates under, and you are rounding all disagreement with your flawed understanding to evidence of bias. This makes your arguments against the actual, considerable, and quite damaging bias that does exist counterproductive.

This is not an endorsement of the object-level claim above.

I think you confuse consensus building with appeal to consensus. The latter pits an external authoritative perspective against the opponent, the former excludes a perspective from the debate entirely, and is characteristic of echo chambers.

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What's the theory, anyway? He's BLM shadow liaison to the australian government, moonlighting as autist whisperer?

The reason why we have the concept of "conflict of interest" is to prevent that general sort of thing even when it would sound silly and be impossible to prove.

Remember the adage "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Do you think we could convince him that Trump is a good guy, or any other non-left idea, when his lobbying position depends on not believing that? (And yes, I think that applies even though Trump is not running for any office in Australia.)

Whoa. In case anybody didn’t read the link:

NA, $90,000, to buy a year of his time. NA is an experienced Australian political operative "on a first name basis with multiple federal politicians". You might remember some of his comments and stories from the ACX comment section, where he goes by AshLael. He's interested in using his expertise to promote effective altruism, either by lobbying directly or by training EAs in how to produce political change. I have no idea what to do with him right now but I am going to figure it out and then do it. If you're in EA and have a good idea how to use this opportunity, please let me know.

@AshLael, I get if you can't tell us, but I'm curious: what did that year of your time end up going towards?

I'll DM you. My commitment to OPSEC is pretty thin and easily pierced, but I'm not quite willing to fully dox myself here.

I downvoted it because it's not actually contributing anything to the debate.

I can go read people being mad at the right existing and having opinions on /r/politics, I can do the converse on /pol/, this isn't what this place is for.

I wouldn't say I liked it as a post - I'm happy it was posted if only because there just aren't enough toplevel posts in general - but if it was the right-wing equivalent, it'd be at the minimum +10.

I got an actual death threat one time, that was wild.

I always said it's an "I disagree" button, and that we should just get rid of voting, because it seems to cause too much distress for some people.

Better to let the mob have this impotent outlet for their censorious impulse than through accusations of rules-violating behaviour.

Would you like to have a conversation about this?

Anytime. Why don’t we step inside and settle this like women?

That was a legitimate question.

I don't think my behavior was objectionable, but I recognize you didn't like it, apologized for giving offense, and promised not to do it again as a show of good faith. Now you bring it up two comments in a row, which leaves the impression that you don't want to let it rest. So what sort of response are you looking for here?

Look Craven, there is no bad blood between us, I am happy to debate this or anything else with you. No offense was taken, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer not to be accused of bannable actions.

I think the rules can be, and have been, weaponized for censorship. I thought this before I became aware I could be a target too (back when my opinions were closer to motte-mode, instead of somewhat motte-left now, due to the rightward shift).

Believe it or not, we don't go looking for reasons to ban people. That said, I don't know if calling someone "Craven" is an ongoing joke between you two or what, but it looks like a gratuitous snipe.

As for weaponizing the rules for censorship, if you tell us how you think that's happening, we will discuss it. Usually I see these sorts of claims thrown out there as basically a complaint that the Motte is not modded according to how the complainer would prefer.

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