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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

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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 September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It would definitely have made sense for the US and Iran to co-operate against jihadi Salafism around that time.


I think US-backed and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq were co-operating in the fight against ISIS in the 2010s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Doing something unusual (unless it is locally usual in the place/subculture you grew up in) implies high openness to experience, which is correlated with political liberalism (and also IQ, education and whiteness). Any weird hobby will be full of WEIRD people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If I went back in time and told you we could destroy Iran's nuclear program at will




12 months ago, the official position of the President of the United States was that you had already destroyed Iran's nuclear programme - which implied that you couldn't destroy it in this war. I have not heard anyone claim credibly that the Iranian nuclear programme is more destroyed now that it was 12 months ago.




I would have been called a crazy Trump fanatic when everyone knows that it's not that simple.




"As of 1st January 2026, Iran has no remaining working centrifuges and their stockpile of 60% enriched uranium is buried under a large pile of rubble" was not a crazy Trump fanatic position.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Domestic migration is net-negative in places where foreign migration is net-positive" is an inevitable result of the pigeonhole principle in a world where everywhere is at least somewhat NIMBY. It doesn't imply preferences for anything other than not being homeless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Despite California’s wealth it seems like it’s much more third worldification than elsewhere in America.




Prop 13 deserves most, though not all, of the blame for California's high taxes on everything else, as well as contributing to municipal dysfunction by breaking the link between local tax bases and local government funding, was done by white conservatives. CEQA is ground zero of California NIMBYism and was bipartisan (signed by Governor Reagan), and predated the browning of the state. Local NIMBYism seems to be a bipartisan old white people thing much more than a third world immigrant thing.


So it looks like California was wrecked by Boomerism, not Third Worldification. The Asian-American vote is a powerful pro-sanity force in California politics, though mostly an isolated one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


All of which is perfectly within the bounds of the far-left.




Horseshoe theory, a banger meme with the added advantage of being true!


Red China is not on the western left-right axis - particularly in the current year where the western left-right axis is defined by somewhat parochial culture-war concerns and everyone from Bernie to Vance supports some form of state capitalism. In so far as it matters, China is neutral on white vs black skin, in favour of legal abortion, and mildly against public displays of sexual deviance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True, but gays who are not bog-standard mainstream progressives are relatively more likely to be anti-Muslim-immigration right-populists than they are to be other varieties of right-winger.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We used to insist on assimilation.




Rep Peter King (IRA-NY) was fundraising, based on Old World ethnic grudges, for a private war against a US treaty ally on the streets of New York, and nobody in state or local politics had a problem with this until 9-11 - even after the Irish ambassador boycotted the St Patrick's Day parade over the issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What they got was a lot of Spanish and Italian immigrants with the Italians being mostly northern Italian




Also Welsh.  It doesn't change the fact that the northern Italians were the highest quality European stock heading out there on a permanent basis. (A few Englishmen and Scots went out temporarily to make money, and left both football codes behind to our long-term inconvenience).


Argentina isn't literally the poorest white-majority country (Belarus recently overtook them in GDP per capita, but Albania and Moldova are still well below them) but it is close, and they are poorer than countries like Greece with fewer natural resources and worse human capital. It really does come down to policy choices.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The fact that American has now done this demonstrates that they could have done it all along, so the pre-war status quo was precisely that the Americans could destroy most targets in Iran at any time. They were just mostly choosing not to do so because it wasn't going to achieve their political goals. The Americans have now destroyed a lot of targets, and the Iranians have also destroyed some targets (but a lot less), and it looks like neither side is going to achieve any political goals.


That America can destroy targets from the air with terrifying effectiveness was established at Hiroshima and has been barely challenged since then. Destroying targets from the air is a really rather ineffective way of achieving most political goals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


largely impotent




If the missiles and drones were impotent, I assume the 5th Fleet base in Bahrain was destroyed by Iran's trained attack geese.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Unfortunately for your sort (which includes my wife and eldest son - I know how much it sucks), it looks like music, dancing and intoxicants as social lubricants are pretty lindy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the doctrine of Calvary chapel is basically "We can't be sure on the basis of Scripture when the rapture will happen, but the elders of Calvary chapel have thought about this question a lot over the last hundred years and our collective best guess is that it will be pre-trib for the following reasons" then you can teach that without having to misrepresent your own views. This is how good academics teach the views that are mainstream in their disciplines but which they are not convinced by.  (I studied physics, so the only course I saw this being done in was quantum information).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Unfortunately outgroup homogeneity bias means I have no idea if those kids actually look like half-siblings, or if they just look Chinese.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


pre-trib rapture, or more generally dispensationalism




Is there a logical connection between these things, or do they just travel together because of Darby? The link between dispensationalism and a literal 1000-calendar-year Christ-rules-on-this-earth Millennium (I think the technical term is pre-millenialism) makes sense, but I don't see why the timing of the rapture affects the dispensational structure at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As orchestral music, Il canto degli Italiani


As poetry, La Marseillaise turns the bloodthirstiness up so far that it goes through the "sick and violent"/"actually no, this has to be ironic" barrier multiple times, and I can't help but appreciate this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for September 10, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My sources pre-election were saying that this would come down to whether or not the Liberals (right-liberal in theory and practice) crossed the 4% threshold to get seats. So an outcome where L comfortably exceeded the threshold, but the right-wing coalition still fell short is surprising.


My perspective on this election is that it is a (rare) case of a coalition between the establishment right and right populists that didn't blow up harming both sides.  (See for example my post about last year's Dutch elections). Instead the right-populists lost votes to the centre-right - even the Liberals will gain seats, despite tanking in the polls and a noisy minority of L supporters saying that forming a government relying on SD support was a betrayal of liberal principles. Although the narrative may well end up being "the voters punished the coalition" because they went from having just enough seats to govern to falling just short.


What happened? As a liberal elite, even a temporarily embarassed one, I obviously want this to be a case where the government was simply more competent than other right-populist coalitions because SD did not take cabinet seats. As far as I can see, this is roughly correct. You can make a lot of progress on crime and immigration by (a) wanting to and (b) being quietly competent without doing any of the flashy stuff that right-populist voters want to see, and the Swedish coalition did. This doesn't get you actual right-populist votes, but if you are able to take the credit it gets you the votes of people who were previously holding their nose and voting right-populist because the alternatives were so awful. (Even left-wing parties can do this, as we have seen in Denmark, and even in the UK although neither the right nor the left wants this widely known).


Final thought - this is probably going to come down to <0.25% of the vote between the left and right blocs.   Nobody thinks that Sweden can't count an election to that level of accuracy, and an attempt by the losing side to attack the integrity of the election is not going to succeed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


standard remigration targetting




The original question that drove this thread is "are AfD far-right?"


You can argue whether "remove citizenship from natural-born citizens and deport them on the basis of ethnicity" is a good idea or not, but I think it is clearly a far-right policy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There are no high quality black majority countries.




As a quibble, Bermuda is 52% black per the local census (and about 60% black if you follow the American rule and count black-other mixes as black). It's definitely high quality, although you can argue about whether it should count as a country - it's a British colony where the elected local government has de facto full control of everything except foreign and defence policy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How about Liechtenstein? It’s a strong enough monarchy to override the elected government. Wealthy, developed, not gratuitously oppressive.




It's a client state of Switzerland (to the point where the Swiss army asks for forgiveness and not permission when it conducts live fire exercises in Lichtenstinian territory), which is also a pretty good place to live for the same reasons and is an unusually direct democracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eliezer never said he thought alignment was a solvable problem - he said that if we built AGI without solving it, we would die. He has always be clear that the possibilities include "this is not a solvable problem and we should ban high-end GPUs to buy ourselves a few more years before we get paperclipped"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To someone who just specifically listed "get rid of sixty percent of the text" as something that would improve most web fiction?




A lot less than 60% of Project Lawful needs to be cut. My guess is 40% of Eliezer's text and 10% of lintamande's. The graphic BDSM scenes are identified as skippable and worksafe summaries are provided. The existence of the BDSM scenes is genuinely justified by character development - they are not gratuitous. (Lintamande is a technically better writer than Eliezer, and the driving force of the second half of the saga is the contrast between the two authors' views of what rationalists winning actually means.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you interpret it as mildly misogynistic mockery of bad fiction by women (which it mostly is, because the vast majority of wannabe novelists are women and most of the errors it calls out are either directly female-coded or characteristic of female-coded genres) it is a lot more sufferable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Criticism, review and parody are fair use, so a version of How Not to Write a Novel which used real excerpts would almost certainly be legal even if the books being panned aren't public domain. But that "almost" is probably enough to make it unpublishable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also anything where the badness stems from the author being immersed in therapy culture and/or lefty politics without realising that the rest of the world isn't. Which is about a third of the book.