@MadMonzer's banner p

MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

4 followers   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If we are nitpicking, "Great Britain" is both the toponym for the main island of the British Isles, and also the legal name for the mostly-obsolete political entity that includes both the main island and the minor islands (like the Isle of Wight and the Hebrides) associated with it. (Apart from an old joke about Berwick being at war with Russia, Great Britain in the political sense = England + Wales + Scotland)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes - I think the core fact about Trump's three elections is that in 2016 and 2024 either party could have won by nominating an empty suit instead of the unpopular candidate they did nominate, and in 2020 the Democrats did win by nominating an empty suit.


Interestingly, even if he had won the popular vote 55-45, DeSantis would only have got 15 more EVs. So many states are deep red or deep blue that 1980-style electoral college blowouts are no longer possible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is an old joke in anti-cop circles that certain words have an unusual technical meaning in police reports. On the list is "Pitbull": a small pale-coloured dog that barked at a cop and "Rottweiler": a large dark-coloured dog that barked at a cop.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
TACO is the way to bet.


Apart from raw materials, most of the Canadian goods surplus with the US comes through the highly integrated auto industry-based economy of Greater Greater Detroit, most of which ends up in vehicles badged Ford or GM (even if final assembly was in a Canadian plant). If this trade war lasts for more than a few weeks then two iconic American companies are going to be screaming in pain, and UAW workers who voted for Trump are going to be laid off. Even if the tariffs are working to shift demand to cars made with a US/Mexican supply chain and not a US/Canadian one, the politics of "one union job noisily lost at a US-owned plant in purple Michigan, two nonunion jobs quietly added at a Japanese-owned plant in red South Carolina" is a disaster for the administration.


It isn't clear that Canada think they can give in even if they wanted to. What Carney has said is pretty close to "Trump's America is not agreement-capable, so we will make no concessions." Trump's public antics and the online activity of his core supporters have been entirely consistent with the MAGA view on Canada being that it should be a vassal-state and that the punishment beatings will continue as long as Canada perversely insists on pretending to be sovereign (see also @Shakes and @Ex_Nihilo above).


I also think the intra-MAGA politics of this mean that we can expect to see the "Blame Canada"/TACO pattern continue for the rest of Trump's term. Increasingly I am leaning towards a model of MAGA psychology where the beatings are the point. One of the things the right-wing base thought they would get when they renominated Trump in the 2024 primaries was a President who would use the powers of the Presidency to inflict visible pain on the hated Blues. Right-wing Americans who pay some attention to foreign news but don't actually understand foreign countries (this isn't intended as an insult - very few people anywhere actually understand foreign countries) see Soviet Canuckistan and the EUSSR as Blues-over-the-water, so punishment beatings of Canada (which cause fewer legal and constitutional issues than punishment beatings of domestic political opponents) scratch the same itch. But I'm pretty certain that MAGA would support a 50% tariff on Massachusetts if there was a legal way of doing it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My favourite story of this type is that USA Today published temperatures for US cities in Fahrenheit and for Canadian cities in Celsius without saying what they were doing, and nobody noticed for several years because Americans find it completely reasonable for Toronto to be as cold as freezing brine in the winter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I fully believe that Iran's warships and fixed-wing warplanes have been destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable. So what.


I don't remember hearing about Iran having warships worth mentioning before the war. Sinking a few minelayers may deprive Iran of a strategic option they don't currently want (mining the Straits so they are off limits to everyone) but doesn't achieve any US political goals - although it isn't clear if it even does that given that you could probably mine the Straits with rowboats if you wanted to.


The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates that second world armies facing second world air defences don't fly fixed-wing warplanes in anger, so destroying them doesn't hurt Iran much. Even mid-price reusable drones like the Turkish Byraktar are steering clear of enemy air defences (Ukraine is mostly using them over water) with the proper air war fought using cheap disposable drones and missiles. Iran's behaviour in the current war is consistent with this picture. The Fog of War means I can't be sure whether or not the 5th Fleet base in Bahrain is rekt, but if it is the damage was done by cheap drones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The EU institutions are more based than western European governments, because of the eastern European influence. The EU has its own uniformed border force (Frontex) who largely have closed the eastern land border to illegal immigration and would have stopped the boats if they weren't being sabotaged by fake search-and-rescue NGOs protected by the French/Spanish/Italian governments.


If the people and governments of the EU wanted to pursue an anti-immigration agenda, they could do so through the existing institutions with no reform needed. And "If the peoples and sovereigns of Christian Europe want to keep the Turk out, we need to do so together or we will end up letting him in separately" is 1000-year old cached conventional wisdom for a reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Although their self-identity is more complicated than that, and they now consider themselves to be de facto indigenous to Ulster in the same way that non-woke white Americans consider themselves de facto indigenous to the United States or Boers consider themselves de facto indigenous to South Africa.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a descriptive comment about how British people use language, we don't consider "British" to be an ethnicity. Self-identifying as "British" is a marker for civic nationalism, and self-identifying as "English" is a marker for ethno-nationalism. Everyone agrees that "English", "Scottish", "Welsh" and "Irish" are ethnicities and nations, but it isn't clear how they relate to Britishness.  Scottish ethno-nationalism is (again, descriptively) explicitly anti-English and is increasingly linked to a left-aligned secessionist movement, Welsh ethno-nationalism is implicitly anti-English because it is tied to preserving a non-English language, and Irish ethno-nationalism is basically anti-Britishness boiled down to tar.


Reform don't run candidates in Northern Ireland, and do badly in Scotland. Welsh Reform do very well indeed, but they do so by being the only party in Wales to uncomplicatedly oppose Welsh language policy, not by running the same messages they do in England. "Monoglot English speakers shouldn't be second-class citizens in parts of the UK" is the kind of position which blurs the distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism.


I suspect "I meant that British identity (specifically as opposed to English, Scottish or Welsh identity) is civic" is the motte Phillips was planning to retreat to if her comments got her into enough trouble.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Almost certainly, Phillips is not a Zionist who is motivated to delegitimize British ethnic identity because of her Zionism, but rather a Zionist who is also a progressive or who is trying to appeal to progressives, and so must start from the default progressive position on ethnonationalism and then explain why Jews should be an exception.




Melanie Phillips was a progressive in her early career, but has been publicly taking the standard right-populist positions on education, crime, Muslim immigration, Pride parades and vaccines causing autism since before right-populism was fashionable. She has not been a progressive in any way, shape or form for decades. Her motivation for opposing British ethno-nationalism is that she (correctly) thinks that it doesn't have a place in British public life a Jew whose primary loyalty is very visibly to Israel and not the UK. And she knows she might need such a place, because she can see the risk that Israeli society will develop in a way which makes Jerusalem an unhappy place for an outspoken woman who self-identifies as Modern Orthodox Jewish but isn't exactly frum (and whose husband is even less frum).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Old enough to vote, old enough to swing. Some cases are easy and, assuming that she was indeed a co-conspirator, the Dutcher case is one of them. I don't see why you are comparing it to an infanticide.


Mothers who kill their children is one of the absolutely classic hard cases - not because it isn't heinous, but because anyone who has been a mother, or even an involved father, bellyfeels that


    

  • Only a crazy mother would do it
    • 

  • A mother going crazy is a "there but for the grace of God" thing, not a "those people are awful" thing.
    • 



In England, a separate crime of infanticide (with the same range of sentences as manslaughter) was carved out of murder in 1922 because all murders were capital back then and nobody wanted to hang women for it. It is possibly significant that the law passes just after women got the vote and started serving on juries, but probably not given:


    

  • There was a single-figure number of women MPs at the time the law passed
    • 

  • There was still a super-majority male electorate because the female voting age was set at 30 for the first decade
    • 

  • The law had been known to be non-functional since the 1870's. The last woman to actually be hanged for infanticide was Rebecca Smith in 1849 and she poisoned eight children with arsenic (which was seen as a particularly heinous way of killing at the time). Even in the era of all-male juries, prosecutors and judges felt they had to tell the jury that they could assume the death sentence would be commuted in order to get a conviction.
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Blockchains provide low-trust secure public timestamping, which means they can confirm priority and therefore resolve double-spend disputes (which is how they enable cryptocurrency). The issue with certificates is whether the public key is correct in the first place, and blockchains don't provide any additional security beyond the key-signing process - fundamentally you can't trust that a public key is correct unless you trust the person who published it, or someone else who signed it.


If two certificates for the same person or entity with different public keys are published at roughly the same time, either both are valid (you can have multiple public keys) or one should explicitly revoke the other. There is no question of priority.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Maybe the 90s truly were some magical time as the nation basked in the glory of triumphing over the Soviets; I suppose I wouldn't know.




If you are looking at violence in general, the 1990's were the tail end of the massive crime wave that began in the 1970's - the US murder rate peaked in 1991. If you are looking at American political violence in particular, there was Ruby Ridge, Waco etc. at the start of the decade and the Oklahoma city bombing in the middle of it. OKC killed 168 people, which on most counts is more than the total number of Americans killed by domestic (i.e. not Islamist) political violence so far in the 21st century in a single incident.


In the UK, the 1990's was the tail end of the Troubles (the IRA ceasefire was in 1996, but the last big bombing was by dissident Republicans in 1998), as well as the tail end of the crime wave. If you grew up in a British city in the 1990's, the present day is safer in a way that most people can feel viscerally.


Modern media dynamics mean that a single incident with zero deaths can be the current thing (particularly in the partisan filter bubble on the victim's side) for weeks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
After the first two, the books get too long to make one movie per book while sticking close to the source material.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The poetry-reciting Orc sounds like something in the tradition of Douglas Adams' Vogons. Except it won't be funny.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hitchhiker's Guide




Was a radio show before it was a book.  (Or at least the first two books were - the rather obscure later series of the radio show were based on the later books).


The BBC TV show is supposed to be an adaptation of the radio show, not the book. I'm not sure about the other material in the franchise.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					




Lords of the Rings was pretty faithful to the books, and an excellent series of films, while the Hobbit was less faithful and much less good, although I can easily imagine a faithful adaptation that was bad, since I'd say the main problem with the Hobbit was that it allowed Peter Jackson complete control to bring out his worst impulses.


The problem with the Hobbit movies was the attempt to stretch the material to three films. I have a theory that Tolkien (and CS Lewis) had a secret sauce that the culture has now lost such that any attempt by moderns to flesh out the material he only sketched will fail - with the most visible examples being the Radagast and Dol Guldur scenes in the Hobbit and Amazon's execrable Rings of Power


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


31 years ago was 1995. It's easy to notice how much the norms and standards of academia, journalism, and general discourse around intellectual pursuits has noticeably changed in that time. Would a Jason Arday in 1995 have made it as far into Cambridge? I think a reasonable guess is No, he would not have made it as far and, in fact, there's a high likelihood that he wouldn't even have made it to the interview step in applying for the job.




In 1995 the only subjects Liverpool John Moores University (formerly known as Liverpool Polytechnic - they gained University status and the right to award their own degrees in 1992) offered research degrees in were sport science and certain engineering disciplines, so Arday would not have been able to get an education PhD at all. Unlike many of the 1992 universities, it didn't incorporate a teacher training college when established (although it now does). Training PE teachers was an obvious cash cow for an institution with a strong research-heavy sport science department, and Arday's Masters was in PE pedagogy. I wonder if he arrived at LJMU expecting to do PhD-level research in PE pedagogy and ended up playing the race card when he couldn't hack it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Feminists claimed to think that frat boys need this type of condescending propaganda in order to not rape people (I suspect they were lying and understood that the purpose of the propaganda was to humiliate). It was a few current things in the past, but back when Haven Monahan and his dastardly bros was the current thing, "We don't need to teach women to keep themselves safe, we need to teach men not to rape." was the feminist slogan du jour.


This is exactly what I would expect a deep state riddled with feminists to do if the tabloids said that something must be done about rape gangs, regardless of whether or not it is necessary or helpful. (And it definitely isn't helpful).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wog poetry. Any true son of the soil knows that gypsies are worse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think e-Verify is already supposed to do this. As far as I can see, neither side of the fence thinks that it is fit for purpose.


And of course a system without biometrics cannot catch the case of an illegal immigrant using a valid name and SSN that were issued to someone else. (Remember that the photo on an ID card counts as a biometric, although it isn't the most reliable one).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Go back a few months and people would say that Iran would close the Straits and America would have no way to open them, and everybody in the world knows this which is why nobody before Trump ever attacked Iran. Really I think you're making my point for me.




If you have given up claiming victory and are just saying that the war was less of a disaster than online doomers predicted, I am happy to concede the point. The war has indeed been less of a disaster than online doomers predicted, and the Straits of Hormuz are indeed partially open in a way that they would not be if we had seen an Iranian victory.


As I have said elsewhere, this is what a draw looks like...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If her condition is treatable or self-limiting (as post-partum psychosis normally is) it makes all the difference in the world, because if she successfully pleads an insanity defence she will be released when she gets better.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If before the war you had told the average person that at the end of the war the Iranian regime would still be in power, that the Straits would be marginally less open to shipping than before the war, that there would be no change in the status of the Iranian HEU stockpile that had been buried under rubble a year earlier, and that the US had achieved this result based on a huge drawdown of hard-to-replace munitions stockpiles, this would be seen as a draw, and a net negative for the American national interest.


Bombing Iran, destroying its navy, killing its top leaders, dismantling its militias, and blockading its ports doesn't benefit America unless it also delivers a political goal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think in the context of American race politics, both "Black" and "White" are normally used to refer to specific ethnic groups, and are therefore correctly capitalised. American Blacks are definitely an ethnic group - they have a distinct identity and their ancestors have been in America and mostly endogamous since 1808. American Whites' status as an ethnic group is less clear - their distinct identity (as White, rather than the various European nationalities their ancestors came from) comes from an artificial project designed to hold the Democrat's corrupt bargain between northern "white ethnics" and southern racists together, and they weren't meaningfully endogamous until the taboo on Catholic-Protestant intermarriage weakened after WW2. But the Democrats' racist project was successful, and in the current year "White American" is an ethnic group and American White nationalists (and Black nationalists) are bad people, but intellectually coherent.


Applying the American ideas of Black and White to the rest of the world makes you stupid - outside American there are black people and white people (based on broad racial characteristics, and not capitalised because the words are purely descriptive like "short" and "big-nosed") but neither is an ethnic group. For a European to be a White nationalist is not even wrong - there is no White nation over here.