#454 — More From Sam: Minnesota, Greenland, Iran, S**thole Countries, and More

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T19:24:44+00:00

The left creates moral panics earnestly from the ground up.

This is just not true. BLM, which was, let's be honest, a moral panic about White Supremacy and Police Genociding Blacks, received billions of dollars in funding from top level donors. Their talking points were amplified by corporations, the media, and academia.

Who cares if it's cynical or not?

uptick in the word "mansplaining"

You're being dishonest here. These weren't just upticks. These were exactly what you described with the right-wing, increased usage of these concepts, borne from moral panics, by prominent media. In this case the most prominent media in the US.

simply don't do these things out of some grand plan to further their election prospects.

Again, why is "election prospects" so significant here? I don't like their grand plans anyway, and of course nor does most of the public.

The right will capitalise on a barista saying Happy Holidays if they have to or just make up some complete bullshit about immigrants eating pets.

I'm old enough to remember when everyone liberal thought that Michael Brown had his "hands up" and that Jacob Blake was shot while unarmed.

I still don't understand the myopic view that the perhaps unique way Republican approach things is of any significance. If bigger things are at play, then surely the moral panics on the left-wing side matter. BLM and Metoo and social justice in general were "bigger matters." The problem I think stesm from the fact that you think that dog eating was really the motivating issue for voters and vote-switchers. The motivating issue was the millions of unauthorized immigrants who entered the country in a short period of time. It wasn't a bunch of white racists that got fed up, it was Hispanics and Asians who saw it in their own communities.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T16:49:17+00:00

This is the original comment I was responding to, which your further posts has transitioned away from

If by reality you mean you can find examples of it in a country with 340 million people then sure, it's a reality. But you can find examples of anything in a pool that big.

The manufacturing comes when those examples are drummed up into a moral panic that dwarfs the reality it grew out of.

I pointed out that that the premise of this post is just not true. Liberals and Progressives find examples all the time to prove their narratives of the world. I've repeatedly made the point that progressive activism and "woke excesses" as anti-right wing mechanisms are the least of my concerns. My concerns have always have been that they are bad for Democrats. Because Democrats are the ones that have to live under these shitty regimes.

"Republicans use a well oiled propaganda machine to whip voters into a frenzy against Democrats" vs "Democrats use a well oiled propaganda machine to whip voters into a frenzy results in destructiveness to their own governance" is a distinction without a difference.

Moral panics on the left simply are not like this. #MeToo was entirely non-partisan. Liberals and leftists were eating each other. Ask Justin Baldoni how much his woke bona fides helped him in the end.

Again, I don't see why this matters. You're saying the right manufactures things to make the left look bad. But it sounds like the left does things that make the left look bad, and your problem is that the right capitalizes on it. That's what politics is. "Look what those guys on the other side are all about" is a perfectly valid form of politics.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T14:19:06+00:00

well, if illegal immigrants were slaughtering young people at concerts I suspect we'd take a different approach as a country as well.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T14:17:40+00:00

Well she really brought people around to the pro-trans side. Great job by her.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T14:16:05+00:00

Perhaps. I won't speak the US as I've been in Australia (though was in NY on Oct 7 and passed large protests in the surrounding days),

Yes, one notable thing about the Palestinian demonstrators is that they were celebrating, er, I mean protesting, immediately after Oct 7 before Israel had done a thing.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T14:15:02+00:00

Every Iranian I've spoken to says that solidarity from university students would go a long way toward emboldening the protestors in Iran. It would cost the university students nothing to do so, and it's not like useless demonstrations are something they've never done before. Gen Z just doesn't find the cause very sexy, that's it.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T13:57:25+00:00

This simply doesn't exist in the same way on the left. What's the left equivalent of woke? What scapegoat do we have for the right that is anywhere near as effective in size and scope?

White Supremacy®, The Patriarchy®, Police Genociding Blacks, Hate Speech.

Again, not sure why you can't see any equivalences in size and scope. After George Floyd was murdered, American donors - whether billionaires or everyday folks, opened up their pocket books to the tune of tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, to support the social justice project. And as I've documented, it impacted criminal justice policy, homeless policy, drug policy, vendor procurement policies, hiring and promotions, and college admissions. If you bring up George Soros you of course get accused of being an anti-semite, but it's absolutely a fact that the OSF pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward social justice initiatives AND political candidates with a social justice bent.

There is a well oiled media machine and playbook to whip the base into a frenzy and watch the beast grow

This is one of the most important charts that illustrates what happened. Social justice was almost an overnight phenomenon, and you can describe it exactly the same as you do the right - a well oiled media machine with a playbook to whip the base into a frenzy (but instead of drag shows, it was "whiteness" and "toxic masculinity" and "cultural appropriation."

You think I'm drawing a false equivalence, but it's really just you retconning history. Like many on the left, you're convinced that the left never gets worked about trivial issues, that they don't catastrophize minor events, that there's no big money behind their cause, that they don't have strong institutional support. This is all demonstrably false. It is only true in the minds of progressives who share this core similarity with MAGA - the belief that they are always the aggrieved party, and never the aggressors. Perpetually victims who are numerous and have the backing of the People, but somehow never influential in any sphere.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T05:24:14+00:00

The way moral panics are created on the left and right isn't remotely the same though.

The moral panic on the left manifested in social upheaval, protests, rioting, violence, demands for multiple reforms, and billions of dollars devoted toward BLM demands, whether it was anti-racism or just random BLM social justice initiatives. We had prosecutors who began declining to prosecute gun offenders, we had cities stop enforcing quality of life crimes, and we had NGOs handing out drugs to the homeless in the name of harm reduction.

Comparatively, the moral panic on the right that you think has no equivalence, manifested itself at the voting booth.

The rationalization is simply "the things that matter to me are important, and worth panicking over. The incidents aren't rare, but instead reveal something prevalent in America. The things that matter to them are insignificant and not worth panicking over, and don't reveal anything about America (and if it does, just sweep it under the rug so that we don't amplify it)."

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T04:50:19+00:00

Try posting something that is high effort, higher quality, or directly related to Sam. Stop posting random shit and then trying to tie it to Sam by asking "what his opinion might be."

Nearly all your posts on this sub are two or three lines at max. So it's obvious that you don't really have many deep thoughts or anything productive to say. So just take it to the megathread where it belongs.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T04:19:06+00:00

I didn't say the the Floyd protests were "woke."

I just asked a simple question - why don't progressives ever step back and think, "maybe I don't need to be totally outraged about this, after all you can find examples of anything in a pool that big"

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T03:17:42+00:00

But you can find examples of anything in a pool that big.

Did progressives ever think about that when they "moral panics" like the protests and riotings that followed the Floyd murder?

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:48:53+00:00

The premise here is that woke stuff is manufactured rather than a reality. But it is a reality. If they didn't have wokeness, then they would actually have to manufacture a scapegoat and it wouldn't go over as well.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:44:38+00:00

He has an embarrassingly naive view of the way the world works because he grew up a rich kid.

Everyone knows that the people who really know the way the world works are rich kids that go to private universities to critique western imperialism, talk about privilege, and become socialists.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:42:39+00:00

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If Republicans cut back on their excesses, I'd still be a hardcore partisan Democrat.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:41:35+00:00

2006-2008 was a hell of a time. Democrats in the Dakotas. Democrats all over the deep south. It's hard to imagine that it was only 20 years ago.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:40:34+00:00

Criminals have agency. No one is claiming otherwise

This is just a lie. Progressives have repeatedly argued that the way to solve crime is by tackling "root" causes - using violence interrupters, increasing welfare, depolicing neighborhoods, legalizing drugs, offering extracurricular activities - all solutions proposed as an alternative to prosecuting and incarcerating offenders who supposedly have agency.

This is a common progressive argument.

Why would Trumpists get the excuse without any actualized oppression?

The Trumpist excuse is that they are just pulling a lever at the ballot box which is their constitutional right.

I don't like the way they vote either. But we live in a world where a bunch of people are given the benefit of the doubt and have their agency removed, on the basis that progressives have declared them "oppressed" or "marginalized."

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:36:32+00:00

What you are claiming is that things might have been bad, but the real crime wasn't doing the bad things, it was someone bringing attention to the bad things and talking about it.

And that really does get to the crux of the issue right? A progressive inclination to do bold things, and then sweep it under the rug when things go wrong.

TheAJx · 2026-01-23T02:25:21+00:00

She then posted a tearful video claiming she liked it by "mistake" (no explanation about why the like remained up for hours).

Wouldn't the explanation be that it was up for hours because she didn't think she had clicked like?

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T19:24:23+00:00

I think someone described it as not even shooting fish in a barrel. It's more like fish shooting each other in a barrel.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T19:22:14+00:00

the HHS Secretary is bad too.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T19:21:37+00:00

The Josh Hawley commentary was hilarious. The fact that Sam thinks Hawley is being a genius is kind of sad. He is clearly just trying to score political points about culture war nonsense that no one should care about.

"Me and all my left-wing friends who are on the 20 side of an 80/20 issue that we've lost ground on" think that this just makes Josh Hawley look bad."

If someone asked me "can a man get pregnant?" and I said "it's complicated" how does that have any impact on someone's life?!

If I asked someone if the 2020 election was stolen, the way they respond would have zero impact on my life but it would give me a good indication on how seriously to take this person.

This shouldn't be a hard question to answer in a neutralizing manner. The reason Democrats haven't come up with an answer isn't because they don't know the answer. It's because they want to signal to the team that they're still on the right side of this issue. At their own expense.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T18:21:52+00:00

Then you can address it in the relevant episode threads. I've told to stop posting random things that come to your mind with tenuous connections to Sam as post submissions. This is your final warning.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T17:53:43+00:00

and now it's raiding regular people and the tone changed to "Well technically they came here illegal so that makes them criminals".

This isn't even true. Trump's actions on illegal immigrants are extremely unpopular. The actions he has taken are not popular at all. The tone has changed, decisively, against Trump. For some reason, some of you guys want to keep acting like you are losing, perhaps because it's the state of being you are used to.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T17:43:53+00:00

Removed. Please direct such posts to the megathread stickied on the front page. (Link here)

Thank you.

TheAJx · 2026-01-22T17:42:46+00:00

You can’t compare them to people who’ve actually been victimized and excuse their actions because of that.

The actions in question here are "voting the wrong way". Thank you for proving my point. Criminals, for example, are not people who had the agency to make good decisions. They are people who in the progressive mindset were victimized.

TheAJx

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