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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the US context, if you were too young for the Vietnam draft (1955 birth year or later) you are a noncentral example of a Boomer. (Despite Strauss and Howe's capacious definition). The term "Generation Jones" used to be used for the later Boomer cohorts, but has fallen out of fashion.


Forced bussing applied to all age groups, so some early Xers would have been bussed in elementary school.


But I agree with the key point @2rafa is making, which is that the Boomers are not the adult generation at fault for this one. The leadership on both sides of the civil rights struggles mostly came from the Silent Generation, and it was Silent parents who either acquiesced in bussing or fought it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Zvi Moskovitz has pointed out (in the context of online sports betting, but the principle applies more generally) that there is a specific problem in the US with the current interpretation of the First Amendment in a world where smartphones and targetted in-app advertising exist - in effect any legal activity can be aggressively marketed to vulnerable people in a highly-optimised way beamed directly to their pockets, so the option of keeping vices legal (to avoid the costs of prohibition) but on-the-downlow (so randos who don't go looking for them won't be sucked into them) is not available.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my professional opinion as a risk manager, if I were Klarna I would not accept Doordash as a merchant. Irresponsible lending to irresponsible people is a self-punishing crime, as Angelo Mozillo and Dick Fuld learned in 2008.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It wasn't intended as actionable advice - it was a crass comment by an Australian real estate developer with a sideline as a professional right-wing troll.


Australia, like the UK and California, is a place where the young can't afford housing because of deliberate supply restriction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Food away from home" includes a relatively cheap lunch in a workplace canteen/from a food truck outside the office/a supermarket meal deal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"




Marie Antoinette was not responsible for the opulence of Versailles, and probably hated it. Her palace at Petit Trianon is the least blinged-out part of the whole complex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Urban schools being bad goes all the way back to the forced bussing cases in the 1970s, if not earlier. Whether they have got even worse since then, or whether they are less bad (but still not good) varies from city to city. But they haven't got dramatically worse recently in a way which would explain the current fertility drop-off.


In the UK, schools in London are noticeably better than they ever have been, and the primary schools are now some of the best in the world (where a "good school" is defined as one where a child with a 90-110 IQ and no special needs that the school can't manage will learn a lot). This hasn't affected the narrative.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From an England perspective, it goes back to the Falklands war and the 1986 World Cup quarter-final where Maradonna punched the ball into the net and the referee missed the blatant handball and allowed the goal.


From a neutral perspective, there have been a lot of complaints that the refs are protecting Messi in an unfair way, which link into the usual allegations of FIFA corruption and greed. Since the Balogun affair it is also possible to link it to rumours of Trumpy interference - the idea that Trump has leant on Infantino to help his ally Milei win re-election is too good to check.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you think that flipping and installing Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela (or installing and flipping, although it looks increasingly like she flipped first) is a shining example of the new Trumpy way of war, it is an obvious thing to try. The main problem is the lack of an obvious route to get Ahmadinejad installed as leader.


As a pro-regime "democratic" politician in a fake democracy, Ahmadinejad had one job - to legitimise the regime using the methods of democratic politics. Ultimately he wasn't very good at it, which makes him useless. Stary Lee had the same problem in Hong Kong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have considered it, and rejected it. When Russia was not engaged in a genocidal* war against Ukraine, Ukrainians did not wish to fight Russia. Now Russia is engaged in a genocidal war against Ukraine, Ukrainians do wish to fight Russia. So Occam's razor says that Ukrainian belligerence is caused by Russian policy, which is not consistent with it being caused by European aid. (Which was not particularly significant at the time the key decision to fight was taken in Kyiv).


* Genocidal both in the technical sense that abolishing Ukrainian nationhood and forcibly Russifying Ukrainians is a stated Russian war aim, and in the colloquial sense that Russia is killing large numbers of Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Anthropic doesn't care about the peasants, they want to draw more talented people from Google or OpenAI or Meta.




The interesting question is why those people are particularly likely to be watching a World Cup semi-final between England and Argentina. I suppose everyone who isn't a heritage-American or an IPL diehard is going to be watching a World Cup semi-final, but given that heritage-Americans and Indians are over-represented groups in Silicon Valley, it seems an inefficient way of reaching the target audience.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am British living in England, and support England, so I feel the pain, although I can acknowledge that we deserved to lose this one. (So did Argentina in the first half).


But I can at least be aware that England were in a World Cup semi-final. For the second time in eight years. And that is a stunning achievement. In 1990 everyone knew this - even after going out on penalties to West Germany, the team that made the semi-final were hailed as heroes. But English fans are more susceptible to entitlement that any other country except Brazil, and now we have far too many people thinking we deserve to win the World Cup and anything less is a disappointment that the manager should be blamed for.


I'm still dreaming, but I think the 60 years of hurt are basically over now. If England had played their best and the opposition had not, we would have won the World Cup. But the opposite was what happened in the second half of yesterday's game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Precisely - Romans is immediately after Acts in the conventional order, so if (as @FlailingAce appears to be required to do) you teach the New Testatment from front-to-back, Romans 1 is the first Pauline epistle you get to. And if you want an unequivocal declaration that Jesus is not the hippie he appears to be based on some readings of the Gospels, Romans 1 works.  But if you are trying to teach Christian sexual morality to people who are receptive to it but not familiar with it, "God curses people who deny him by turning their wives lesbian" isn't the best place to start.


Paul was writing for a society where the Christian ideas about marriage (the Christian idea of marriage is similar to, but not the same as, the pagan Roman idea of marriage) and the family were not countercultural, so he doesn't need to point to the centre of the thing he is pointing at before he can point to the edges. This is the Bible we are talking about, so all of Christian sexual morality is in there, and it forms an intellectually coherent whole. But the presentation was optimised for a time and a place. (Well, a set of places that Paul was writing to.)


But in a world where "marriage" as it was understood from the dawn of time to the 1960s is a somewhat-eldritch piece of lost technology, the logical sequence to teach the material is:


    

  1. God's plan for marriage and the family - both what it is and it's additional significance as e.g. a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the Church.
    2. 

  2. The role of sex and sexual attraction in same.
    3. 

  3. Specific teachings on specific types of sexual immorality, of which the prohibition on male homosexuality is one of the most important.
    4. 



"Christian sexual morality is basically normie-American sexual morality except we don't like gays" is not true, and empirically doesn't work as a seeker-sensitive white lie either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How far had the destigmatisation of male homosexuality got in blue states when AIDS turned up in the early 1980's? It looks like blue states and libertarian-inclined red states repealed their antisodomy laws in the 1970s but most of the South still had them. And of course that is only the first stage in destigmatisation.


In the UK, homosexuality was still broadly stigmatised, even in left-wing circles, well into the 1980's. (The Labour Party was still dominated by blue-collar unions at the time). For example, Section 28 (which prohibited public-sector organisations promoting homosexuality) was broadly popular when it was introduced in 1988


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The student evangelical group that almost* managed to convert me taught Ephesians first after the Gospel - the official reason given was that it is the most important of the Epistles if you want to learn quickly how to live a Christian life.


But in any case, you need to ram home the message that God is not a hippie. I suppose hitting Romans 1 immediately after the Gospel and Acts is actually a reasonable way of doing it. In today's society, the "order and hierarchy is good actually" message of Ephesians 4-6 is probably even more countercultural than Romans 1, and "God does not provide an easy remedy in this world for abuse of secular authority" definitely is.


* It wasn't the social conservatism that put me off. It may have been the "low church" character of the group (such that Catholics would have had a better chance) but I think ultimately I am the kind of person who struggles to believe in the supernatural given the world now makes sense without it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Europoor eugenicists




From an actual eugenicist perspective, raising a sterile mutant like a Down's baby is merely a waste of resources that could be used to raise healthy siblings. The chav mother with three (fertile) chav babies is doing far more damage to the long-term health of the race.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you are teaching Romans 1 after teaching Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 on biblical gender roles and the numerous passages (including the Gospels) on the indissolubility of Christian marriage, I doubt you will lose any additional congregants that you haven't already lost.


If you are teaching Romans 1 before teaching those passages, that is probably the wrong order given the relative damage different sexual sins are doing in today's society.


If someone were to teach Romans 1 without teaching those passages, I would assume that they don't actually care about biblical sexual morality and are just a homophobe or a grifter appealing to homophobes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Binding mandatory arbitration clauses in individually-negotiated contracts are benign and should be encouraged - even if they specify a Shariah judge or a Beth Din as the arbitrator.


That said, the objection to commercial surrogacy is that you should not be able to contract to sell children at all, not to the way a specific contract is enforced.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The O2 in London was called the North Greenwich Arena for the duration of the 2012 Olympics because O2 didn't pony up for Olympic sponsorship. So the IOC, as usual, are engaged in the same forms of obnoxious greed as FIFA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think we're going to see the end of suburbia as currently understood as a result of widespread availability of self-driving cars. The built form of suburbia is dominated by parking, and self-driving cars mostly remove the need for car parking near destinations - either your robotaxi drives off and finds another fare, or your privately owned robocar valet parks itself somewhere where the marginal cost of a parking space is negligible.


Assuming that cities can charge enough for road space that we avoid permanent gridlock, city life gets better with affordable taxis and the no-longer needed car parks either turned into human parks or built on. And actual rural living gets better if you don't need to drive yourself on minor roads in the dark. But I don't see who will want to live in the kind of place with a massive sunk investment in what is basically sheds on the edge of parking lots.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Marx identified a number of very real problems with the capitalism of his day, and a lot of his work was about explaining why they would be politically impossible to fix within a broadly capitalist framework. The classical economists identified a number of the same problems a century earlier, but was optimistic that they could be fixed eventually. (The most obvious case is that  Smith thought that an competent government would be able to enforce antitrust laws, whereas Marx thought that a coalition of business-owners would be able to cartelize politics as well as the economy).


The problems were, in fact, solved within a broadly capitalist framework. The system of capitalism we actually have, and which works wonderfully, includes things like antitrust, macroeconomic stabilisation, social insurance, subsidised homeownership, and health and safety regulation. (Also environmental regulation, which is a problem Marx and Smith missed). There is some question about which of these things are net-beneficial, and whether we can get by with less of them, but the suggestion that we should adopt devil-take-the-hindmost greedhead libertarianism in full is outside the Overton window for good reasons.


The spectre of communism that Marx warned the ruling class about was very real, and it was defeated by actually-existing liberal democracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I won't go into detail on which I find the most likely, strongest factor, but it's hard not to notice that they are all fundamentally cultural and, in fact, down to personal choices. You actually can simply choose to forego solitary entertainment and spend more time with family & friends. You can just stay religious. You can just avoid education and choose a job that is easy to combine with a family. As the kids say (well, if you have them), you can just DO things.




You personally having four kids won't stop your kids growing up in a society with an unsustainable dependency ratio, or (if this scenario turns out to be relevant) a society that has too small a population to defend itself against outsiders.




Nor am I compelled by the pronatalists to do anything in any way, at least so far.




The pro-life movement in the US claims to be motivated partly by pronatalism, and is definitely in the business of coercing people on behalf of their unborn children. (The MoreBirths X account claims it hasn't worked, but this came as a surprise to almost everyone). I have seen sprawl zoning promoted as pronatalist policy, which is also coercive about how you use your own property.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't think childcare was something specifically on the radar at the time (as opposed to poverty in general)




Socialising the cost of childrearing doesn't imply government-provided childcare. (I consider government pensions to be part of the process of socialising the cost of supporting the elderly). After WW2, when we were not a gerontocracy, a number of countries partially socialised the cost of childrearing by introducing non-means-tested cash payments to mothers of children. These have mostly withered on the vine in favour of payments to the elderly or more targetted subsidies for bastards and babymamas who were otherwise at risk of extreme poverty.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But the essential problem with the ‘it’s true in wokespeak’ is that the wokespeak term doesn’t have a definition. There’s a (hilarious)movie about it. The sentence ‘can I bum a fag’ has different meanings in American and British English- the key word being meaning, one of those meanings being rather unfortunate to express to outlaw bikers. But the alternate meaning is also well defined, and while outlaw bikers might not let you borrow a cig they would understand the concept. In contrast the wokespeak sentence ‘Caitlin Jenner is a woman’ doesn’t express a concept, as far as anyone can tell- it means as much as my 14 month old saying… no one’s quite sure.




The wokespeak term doesn't have a definition in the sense of a necessary and sufficient condition for being a "woman", expressed in terms of simpler concepts to avoid circularity. But it has an established usage which allows you to understand the core cases of "woman" and "not-woman", and Caitlin Jenner is within the core meaning of "woman" in wokespeak. This is completely normal for language - even the English meaning of "woman" doesn't have a scientific definition that matches the duck types in all the (vanishingly rare) corner cases. "Is Caster Semenya a woman?" would still be a confusing question if the whole trans silliness had never happened.  [Of course, the wokespeak meaning is poorly specified, so there are orders of magnitude more corner cases].


The goal of transactivists is thought reform via changing the meaning of common words.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In practice, liking it up the butt. Kathoey-hijra type MtFs are not entitled and pornsick men, they are gay men who are sufficiently effeminate that the social role of "woman" is more accessible than the social role of "conventionally gay guy". In practice they don't seem to cause the problems that AGPs do.