hydroacetylene
No bio...
User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
On John Senior
John Senior- the one I'm talking about, not the British one- is one of the more influential figures that you've probably never heard of. On the face of it, he was an obscure academic at a state school in flyover. But his Integrated Humanities Program was shut down by the university of Kansas for producing hundreds of converts to Catholicism, despite a thorough investigation debunking allegations of proselytism. One of those converts is the current president of the American bishop's conference. Another one is the abbot of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey; there are a handful of somewhat less broadly influential bishops as well. This was when Catholicism was at a low point, in the seventies, when no one knew what it was really.
So what was the integrated humanities program? Well it would probably look quite familiar to those of you who follow classical education, but with an emphasis on the ability to occupy the mind with understanding. To do this, the courtly graces were emphasized as a means of practice, alongside spending time with nature, avoiding the television, stargazing, singing folk songs(not pop songs), and other things of the like. I think we have a couple of homeschoolers here- if you're aligned with the classical education school, this guy was the ideologue who developed your curriculum. It's been watered down for younger grades, but it's fundamentally his project.
After his program was shut down, Senior wrote two books- The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture- and drifted into the burgeoning traditionalist movement. He then went on the speaking circuit, and his followers moved around creating a network of conservative Catholic universities which embraced his methods and teachings. Senior died a pessimist, more or less affiliated with the SSPX(and this was in the 90s, when traditional Catholicism was more or less a game preserve for reactionaries and the SSPX was officially schismatic). But his ideas were gaining in popularity; shortly after his death the 'Newman guide' list of universities for conservative Catholics became a normal feature of orthodox Catholic life in the US. The model is now under threat due to the extreme cost of private college education, but it's trickled down. Classical schooling is fairly common. Florida is now allowing a special standardized test for classical educators to be an SAT/ACT equivalent for state colleges, and they're unlikely to be the last.
But you're motteizeans and you want the culture war relevance. Ok. We've had posts about the Trump admin being full of Catholics- one of which I'm not quite sure if it's a satire of Jewposting or not. You wonder why that is? It's because you can't run a society with all stemlords. Look at western society's literati- you will find, almost literally, conservative Catholics and SJWs and no one else. The conservative intelligentsia converts to Catholicism so often it's nearly a 'personal life check' on wikipedia, and the few noncatholics are mostly Anglicans with self-interested reasons or suspiciously Catholic-inflected Orthodox. Republicans put Catholics on the supreme court because they won't Sandra Day O'Connor, all due to John Senior. Yes, the pro-life movement provided money and alignment, but Senior provided something even more important.
That thing is elite formation. Every society, including ours, is led by an elite. Senior built a counter-elite, and you can't have conservative policy successes without it. This counter-elite staffs the republican party, it holds a majority on the supreme court by itself, it's most of the staffers at conservative think tanks- in short, it's why US conservatives are less singularly useless than their Canadian and British counterparts. The 'rise of christian nationalism' is because his elite stratum has been taught to think in terms of Christian culture(see their founding ideologue). The legitimate sociological term for this is the American Conservative Catholic renaissance, of which John Senior is the leading ideologue.
What we can learn from this is 1) you need an elite stratum 2) that elite stratum needs customs and ideology to sustain itself. What's your plan? Because Stemlording isn't one. Complaining about woke casting in movies isn't one(you'll notice the one director who avoids this is... Mel Gibson, a[n insane] member of the elite stratum I've just described). Being reflexively anti-woke isn't one. Are you going to form a pro-white elite(I have bad news for you about the skin colour of those attempting to join)? At the moment, we're very slowly winning, simply by being indispensable to the dominant party.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
On the other hand, they could’ve charged with unlawful detention alongside all that- it seems like if she showed up consensually(and I don’t believe she didn’t understand the strings attached up front) they still tried to prevent her from leaving.
hydroacetylene
17hr ago
European cops in Chicago would just put knife wielding thugs in the hospital with multiple broken bones. That's what they do in the continent- the UK is not synonymous with Europe and Europe is not synonymous with the UK, Las Grisas or the Gendarmerie would be quite capable of dealing with south side Chicago before they were sued out of existence for use-of-force.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
This is the same insane fantasy as 'women will dispense with fatherhood and raise their children communally after conceiving by IVF'. Actually, that's more likely to generate a 100% Aryan world, given who tends to be preferred as a sperm donor. Most children will be born by essentially natural methods, for the same reason the orientals don't breed now- anything that makes children more of a uber-high-investment optimized decision is going to have fewer of them.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Turkeys are easier than deer, but on an effort per unit of meat basis I tend to get a much better return from deer. Not a perfect analogy for chicken/beef, but it does point to economy of scale being a bigger deal than effort per animal. The parolees at the kill side of the slaughterhouse can probably produce more pounds of beef per hour, even if it comes from fewer animals.
FWIW my experience of at-home butchery is that pigs give the most meat poundage per hour invested, then lambs/sheep, then deer, then pigeons, then fowl. No doubt that the slaughterhouse has some technology and automation to make this less stark, but I'd still expect economy of scale to wash it out.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Mexico is experiencing huge economic growth and latin countries in practice tend to cycle between electing mano dura rightist tough on crime populists and pro-indigenous semiwoke quasisocialists(they're a lot wooier than the US version)... a lot like the USA is shaping up to start doing. The difference is that Mexico under US administration could plausibly carry out a mano dura crackdown on cartel violence in a way the Mexican authorities are incapable of.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
The southern strategy was not the reason the south experienced a party switch- the south went reliably R in the 90's, long after the southern strategy was over.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
ICE has mostly moved to places that aren't Karen central, though, right?
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
A foster care escapee is almost certainly well aware of the strings attached to a grown man willing to take her in- but if they didn't feed her and took her shoes away so she couldn't leave, well, this is the kind of thing that statutory rape charges exist to be filed over.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
A runaway teen that they didn't feed or allow to sleep? Uh, hate to break it too you, but that's kinda a shitty way to treat someone for being a consensual sex partner. It sounds a lot more likely that she ran away and then they took her home and abused her. I have no doubt that she expected to have to sleep with him for housing and food, but it sounds like her treatment was unusually poor even by the low standards of minors trading sex for housing in a trailer park.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
America is 60% white and older Americans are whiter on average. The 12 pack a day Hispanics drink bud(because it’s cheap). Among minors whites and Hispanics are of roughly equal numbers.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
In Texas it's spring. All of these people are business owners, and all of them are insane.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Have you read the Odyssey? It's protagonist centered morality, full of sex and violence, with an approach to the progression of time that isn't particularly keyed to modern sensibilities, and it spends most of the plot in fantasyland.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The iliad and the odyssey are fine, but nobody wants to watch a movie of a faithful adaptation. It'd be seven hours, nc-17, and an art film all at the same time. The Iliad is better, I guess, but still.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Most adults in the ghetto are not within the justice system. Welfare might be an argument though.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Normie Americans don't drink bud light. The most popular beer in America is actually Modelo.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
From my memories of paying to get deer processed(granted, it's been a few years, I've DIY'd 100% since the pandemic), labor in the packing plant is a relatively minor contribution- I remember it still being a third to half of the price as buying beef in the grocery store.
Not saying raising meatpacking wages won't raise prices. But probably less than you'd think- the price of the animal dominates the price of the meat in the store, not the price of the labor to process it(further evidence- the cheapest meat comes from chickens, then pigs, then cows. For economy of scale reasons, you should expect labor to be lowest per unit of meat on a cow and highest on a chicken).
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yep. Illegal guatemalan workers in the US don't expect citizenship(they think that if they have retirement savings they'll enjoy them in... Guatemala, whether or not that's true). They work crappy jobs for the higher wages compared to their home countries, not because they expect to bring their families up here(some of them do, but it isn't the draw).
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Why do you think the west is legalizing weed? So the lumpenproles in dire straights don't wreck shit when they demand change. You can deal with stupid hippies by turning on the firehoses, if they switch from beer and pipe glue they're less willing to fight the cops(and cops will be taken care of, governments aren't stupid).
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Public school teachers being creepwads towards their adolescent students is a page five story during a slow news cycle. What makes this case unusual is being a state legislator... but state legislators are pretty much random people who are crazy and have a drive to get elected to something.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Black culture is not very third world. It’s dysfunctional, sûre, but it’s the kind of dysfunction that the urban poor in developed countries exhibit, not the kind of dysfunction that tends to be more common in actually poor countries. They are also culturally quite similar to their white actual neighbors- not the well heeled ones from the other side of the city. Have you been around white trash? Being poor and dysfunctional is not the same thing as being unassimilated.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
The U.S. is not likely to be a failed state due to immigration, however. Latins are perfectly capable of maintaining a functioning society- not as wealthy as the US, but nowhere is. Chinamen and Indians are too. The USA is not importing a billion African mud farmers.
That is not to say that continuing to import tens of millions of centraco laborers won’t make things worse. But ‘failed state’ isn’t a likely outcome.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Mamdani isn’t exactly a believing Muslim and won on a dsa platform by promising free shit. Hardly a ‘Muslim’ story.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Probably irrelevant whether this juror could be impartial- pro se defendants going with police corruption as a defense have long odds.
But still enjoying the irony of transgenders not believing discrimination against blacks is real.
Uh, while we don't have an ironclad reconstruction of the night trayvon died, the evidence we do have indicate that he started the fight by attacking the guy that shouldn't have been following him. Entirely within the realm of normal 17 year old boy behavior, but he still did the thing that led to his death.
More options
Context Copy link