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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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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do you, personally, believe that Israel has a right to exist as "a Jewish and Democratic state"?




Rights are irrelevant. It is impossible to have a Jewish, democratic state in the territory currently controlled by Israel because that territory contains more Palestinians than non-Haredi Jews, and without a genocide (real or technical) is likely to continue to do so.  (And even if a multiethnic democracy with Jewish character was possible, neither Israeli Jews nor Palestinians have any interest in attempting it).


Both the current governing coalition in Israel (led by Netanyahu) and the most popular opposition party (led by Naftali Bennett) claim to be committed to a Jewish state including the vast majority of the West Bank, which implies either permanent apartheid (with the Palestinians continuing to be treated worse than any minority group in any country which expects credit for being a "democracy") or a Final Solution to the Palestinian problem. For the record, I don't think either Bennett of Netanyahu or most of their supporters are thinking in terms of Final Solutions, but Netanyahu's coalition includes Kahanists who definitely are and Bennett ran on a joint list with them before he adopted big-tent anti-Netanyahu politics.


None of this implies that that the current Israeli government is as evil as Hamas, but when Germany play Argentina in the World Cup you don't have to hold your nose and root for the lesser evil, if you are a good person you can go touch grass, and if you are a bad person you can buy popcorn and root for injuries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
American Jews are more than 10x over-represented in wholesale financial services, and there are substantial parts of the industry (though not close to a majority) where access to senior positions is gated by Jewish social networks.


This is a long way from Jews controlling finance, but when you can't safely tell the truth except on a pseudonymous online forum or in left-wing spaces dominated by machine politicians elected by unassimilated immigrants from Goatfuckistan, it isn't surprising that people postulate a more powerful conspiracy than the one that actually exists.


The same applies to Hollywood and probably the US MSM more broadly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Antisemitic thoughts and speech among Palestinians whose family members have been mistreated by Jews in living memory is just as defensible as any other justified ethnic hatred. Were one being eristic, one might compare it to the routine anti-German sentiment that kept popping up in the cultural output of Jewish and philosemitic Americans well into the 1980s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In a sense the euphemism treadmill functions to exculpate words over time. The treadmill means that today nobody uses 'retard' to mean 'person with a mental disability'.




I still see "retarded" (though not "retard") used in the wild to describe actual retards, mostly from older people who don't know what the new PC circumlocution is. I think we are at least ten years away from the point where "retard" is as harmless as "idiot", "imbecile" or "moron" (all of which went from scientific term for learning disabilities to slur and now to mostly-harmless-but-not-PC term for generally stupid behaviour)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think attempts to broaden "gay" as a slur beyond male homosexuality don't work, because whatever broader meaning you adopt is impossible to protect and the word ends up being used to describe anything bad, in much the same way as "lame" (or possibly even anything at all, like "fag" on 4chan). In the UK in the early noughties I was part of a group that trolled the humourless scolds of then (then temporarily out of power) PC left by handing out buttons saying "Homophobia is Gay" and "Ablism is Lame". Everyone who wasn't a PC humourless scold got the joke instantly. I also remember a US-based online campaign around the same time trying to oppose the generic negative use of "gay" by saying "Gay is Lame" or something similar.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In British English, "cunt" has become the preferred slur for toxic masculinity taken to the extremes where a harsh slur is needed. "Douchebag" in AmE and "wanker" in BrE capture similar but subtly different aspects of toxic masculinity at a milder level.


Wokists use "bro" or "dudebro" as a slur for this kind of thing, but that usage hasn't caught on among normies. My impression was that "chud" is used this way by the very online yoof.


But the normal way to attach someone engaging in unnecessary performative masculinity is to accuse them of compensating for a small dick. I'm not sure why no dialect of English has developed a one-word term for "small dick energy"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Until about 30 years ago the average age of virginity loss was around here, so this is obviously false.




Not in cisHajnal countries, which not coincidentally are also the countries where consent in something approximating the modern sense formed part of traditional sexual morality. The average age at first marriage in England never dropped below 25 for men/23 for women (see here for example) until the 1950's baby boom. Pre-marital sex obviously happened, but since it tended to result in a shotgun wedding I don't find the idea that losing your virginity a decade before marriage was common.


Marrying your daughter off at 14 is for royals and goatfuckers, and in neither case is her consent relevant.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The best answer I have seen, and it isn't a great one, is this law review article by (left-wing lawprofs) Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson (henceforth B/L)


They identify three types of constitutional crisis:


    

  1. A political actor openly violates the constitution, typically citing necessity in an emergency or some kind of extra-constitutional plebiscitary mandate, and nobody is able or willing to stop them.
    2. 

  2. Something needs to be done but isn't because there is no constitutionally regular way of doing it and nobody is prepared to trigger a type 1 crisis.
    3. 

  3. People disagree about what is and is not constitutional and the normal tools of constitutional adjudication can't resolve the dispute, so people turn to (threatened or actual) political violence instead.
    4. 



The traditional paradigmatic examples (not cited by B/L) are:


    

  1. Sulla and Caesar's coups against the Roman Republic
    2. 

  2. The unanimity requirement in the Polish Diet making the Polish Commonwealth unable to defend itself because foreign enemies only needed to bribe one Diet member.
    3. 

  3. The English and American Civil Wars.
    4. 



B/L are good on what is not a constitutional crisis - for example anything which can be resolved by SCOTUS is a normal dispute, not a crisis; impeachment is an extraordinary but regular remedy for Presidential misbehaviour, not a crisis; the controversial use of emergency powers in a real emergency is a crisis, but not a constitutional one.


B/L are less good on what is a constitutional crisis - partly because the US Constitution mostly works so true constitutional crises by their definition are rare. (Also it will never be clear whether something is a type 2 crisis or not because it isn't clear what action is actually necessary). They say there has only been one clear-cut type 1 crisis in America since independence - and it was right at the beginning, with the Constitutional Convention going rogue and the Constitution being adopted in violation of the amendment procedure set out in the Articles of Confederation. They identify two cases of type 2 crises that they think are clear-cut:


    

  • The 1800 election, where the Federalist majority in Congress was required to break a tie between two Democratic-Republican candidates for President, but had no incentive to do so. (They say this crises was only resolved by Democratic-Republican states near Washington DC threatening to send their militias to compel Congress to act).
    • 

  • The 1861 secession crisis, where both the lame-duck Buchanan administration and the incoming Lincoln administration thought that secession was illegal, but neither thought there was anything constitutional they could do about it.
    • 



The biggest flaw in the paper is that B/L don't think about game theory. There are a number of cases where actor A threatens to violate the constitution (triggering a type 1 crisis) or to use dubiously constitutional hardball tactics (triggering a type 3 crisis) and actor B acquiesces. B/L consider this to be a dispute resolved within the constitutional framework, but it isn't. They give numerous examples of Roosevelt getting his way with this type of threat, both during the New Deal and during WW2.


The other obvious gap (which B/L acknowledge) is that their framework doesn't really work in an environment of pervasive government secrecy. If the President violates the constitution but doesn't get caught, is it really a constitutional crisis?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


we will never be capable of thinking in the sort of "my tribe versus other tribes" thinking we see in, say, Somali scammers.




Somali scammers will scam and rob each other as cheerfully as they scam us (see actual Somalia for evidence) - the idea that they are some kind of high-asabiyyah society which gains an advantage over the west through tribal unity is absurd.  Tolerating this kind of behaviour in Minnesota was a (foolish) choice, not an skill level issue. See for instance this Patrick McKenzie post about how institutions that actually want to stop fraud (including regulated financial institutions) do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apart from Iran, which doesn't have the option, "Don't sponsor Wahhabi jihadis as a plausibly deniable political tool against your sane enemies" is a lesson countries apparently have to learn the hard way, and in the case of the US and Pakistan more than once. Many such cases - I think it needs to go into a Princess Bride remake before people take the lesson seriously.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I also think the Tanner Greer theory about Chinese fear of US soft power is relevant.


The basic thesis (see for example this blogpost but it is a theme of much of Greer's work) is:


    

  • 

    The Chinese regime cares about its own survival a lot, as you would expect
    

    • 

  • 

    The Chinese regime is more likely to be defeated by American soft power (as the USSR regime arguably was) than by American hard power - there is no scenario where America (or a broader Western alliance) acquires the ability to enforce regime change in mainland China militarily. In fact, American (or western more broadly depending on your point of view, but probably almost entirely American) soft power is the main threat to the survival of the Chinese regime.
    

    • 

  • 

    China spends a huge amount of resources (e.g. the Great Firewall) defending itself against American soft power, but as long as China has to do business with the rest of the world the potential effectiveness of this approach is limited.
    

    • 

  • 

    The nature of American soft power is that America can't turn off their soft power threat to China, even if they wanted to.
    

    • 

  • 

    Accordingly the Chinese regime will not feel secure as long as America looks like a powerful, attractive alternative, and Chinese policy reflects this.
    

    • 

  • 

    All this applies whether or not China wants to spread their system - or indeed whether America wants to spread theirs. Freedom wants to spread even if individual free countries don't care about spreading it.
    

    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks. The UK media had lost interest at some point before then once it was clear to anyone who wasn't wishcasting that Trump would win.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, apart from South Asian muslims. In particular, black-white intermarriage is noticeably more common here than it is in the US.


The overall rate of interracial marriages is just under 10% in both countries, but you have a lot more opportunities in the US because you are more diverse to start off with (the UK is still 83% monoracial white as of the 2021 Census), so compared to baseline demographics Brits are more likely to marry interracially than Americans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


pregnant men




Men still can't get pregnant. Women pretending to be men getting pregnant is vanishingly rare - cross-sex hormones suppress fertility, and the kind of woman who pretends to be a man probably doesn't want to anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you are following the right-wing noise machine in America, you are learning about twice as many problems in Europe as could be Noticed by being there. We have problems, but the American right has an incentive to exaggerate them. It is exactly analogous to Guardian readers in the UK learning about problems in the US that they would struggle to Notice if they spend time there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yeah, it's interesting that where I live (Northeastern Suburb) the native European stock is completely gone (I'm talking about the "posterity" referenced in the Declaration of Independence.) All that's left is street names and old gravestones.




"European stock" and "the posterity mentioned in the Declaration of Independence" are different groups. Intermarriage between white ethnic groups makes the statistics dubiously meaningful, but most white Americans self-define as descended from Ellis Island era immigrant groups.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Since 1997, British governments of both parties have pursued a policy of cutting material inequality within the wage-and-salary class while trying to increase inequality between low-paid workers and able-bodied dole bludgers* and being broadly relaxed about the increasing wealth of the super-rich. It isn't clear to me how much of this was deliberate, but almost every government economic policy since 1997 is either that agenda or a transfer to pensioners.


* Hence why every marginally employable adult in the UK has found a disability.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is nonsense. I don't think Phoebe is unhappy because she is a paypig for entitled Boomers (the problem is clearly spiritual and not material), but that is a much more accurate model than Phoebe as ungrateful welfare queen.




Yes. Her education is subsidised,




Phoebe took out a student loan to pay for tuition fees and living expenses. The fees she (nominally) paid don't cover the full cost of delivering her education as calculated by the Hollywood accountants in the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-for-finance's office, but they are a lot more than the amount of actual instructional and facility spending she got the benefit of. The loan is subsidised, but in a way Phoebe won't see the benefit of until the unpaid balance is written off when she is in her fifties.




a lot of the jobs she could get are probably a result of legislation passed by the state and subsidised by it,




Roughly half of female graduates are working in healthcare professions, teaching, or non-graduate retail and food service jobs. Comparing the UK to peer countries suggests that government involvement in healthcare and teaching reduces worker pay (by setting up a monopsony) rather than increasing it. Also, a large percentage of the total compensation in healthcare and teaching is public-sector pensions which are generous in a non-obvious way - i.e. money that Phoebe isn't seeing and would, if she stopped to think, assume she would somehow-or-other be cheated out of by the time she reaches retirement age.


The UK is a big exporter of professional services, so the stereotypical power-suited girlboss is much more likely to be working in a competitive export-focussed firm than her US equivalent.


So the chance that Phoebe is a government-subsidised girlboss in a way which is legible to her is well below 50%. Overall, there is some subsidy to girlbossing, but not enough (definitely in the UK, and almost certainly in other rich countries) to compensate for the cost of the three Bs of grand-scale welfare beneficiaries (Boomers, bastards and babymamas).


If Phoebe is able-bodied, employed, and childless she is going to be a net contributor. The Boomers get so much that there is not much left for deserving working-age cases, and in any case single childless able-bodied white women are pretty close to the bottom of the Progressive Stack.




in the unlikely event she has kids that is heavily subsidised,




As you acknowledge, she doesn't. And Phoebe comes from a culture and social class which means she would expect to only have kids with a gainfully employed husband, meaning that the amount of subsidy would not be high, and would not count as a transfer from men to women.




as is her aged pension, her healthcare, of which she will consume a lot more statistically over a lifetime than if she were a male,




Her mother is subsidised. She may be subsidised in the future if the country doesn't go bankrupt in the interim. (She is even more pessimistic on this point than we are). Right now, she is paying the subsidies.




Taxes overwhelmingly go to the old, women and the infirm.




Taxes go to the old, the infirm, and families with children. (In the UK, now in that order, and increasingly not to families with children where at least one parent has an upper-middle-class income). Not women like Phoebe. The statistics show women as net beneficiaries because subsidies to families disproportionately go to families headed by single mothers, and the payee field on the welfare cheque has the babymama's name on it even though the money is supposed to be for the kids.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is an absolute racing certainty that she would say this - it is the politically correct thing to say. She would be wrong though, as demonstrated by her dissatisfaction having begun a lot more than six weeks ago.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the UK, the falling pound (and resulting imported inflation) and declining tax revenues (and resulting bond-market enforced cuts to the public services her mother relies on). Finance is an export industry for us, so whether or not it benefits the clients is not a problem for the British to worry about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I came across the idea of the omnicause from Matthew Yglesias, but I think he was popularising a term coined by other centre-left figures with more experience at the sharp end of intra-left turf battles.


From a mistake theory perspective, the omnicause is the mistake common on the activist left of taking everything bad in the world, lumping it together, calling it "patriarchy" or "capitalism" or something similar, and defining your activism as opposing the lump. When the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the news, the lump is "Zionism".


From a conflict theory perspective, the omnicause is the result of all professional left-wing NGOs adjusting their positioning to attract funding from the same small number of funders. Right-wing conflict theorists tend to suspect the relevant funders are George Soros and other European financiers with large noses, centre-left conflict theorists are pretty sure that it is the Ford and Hewlett foundations (and they would know).


The link between feminist causes in the US and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the minds of omnicause activists is that real progress (as defined by the activist left) on both can only be made if the lump is defeated, and military defeat of Israel by Hamas would take a lump out of the lump. This is as stupid as it sounds, which is why I subscribe to the mistake theory on this point.


Sufficient words have been spilled that you can just google "omnicause" to find them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Did the RINOs line up behind Cruz? My memory is that Kasich went the distance until it was mathematically impossible to beat Trump and the RINOs supported him in doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But once the shape of the 2016 primary became clear, Trump was running against Cruz, so "I want a real Republican and not a RINO" doesn't point to a Trump vote.


I know a lot of people who thought that way did vote for Trump over Cruz, and it sounds like you were one of them. I would be interested to hear what the logic is - was it simply that Trump was hated by the GOPe even more than Cruz was, or was it a specific policy or issue? (The small number of non-Mormon conservative Americans I know all voted for Cruz, although they thought of it as a 2 good options scenario rather than holding their noses and voting for the lesser evil).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very much agreed. Trump got about 40% of the 2016 Republican primary vote if you only look at states which voted while the race was still competitive. Cruz voters don't need to hold their nose to vote for Trump, but I don't think they are any happier with him than they would be with another winning Republican who appointed pro-life SCOTUS justices.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Most of the issue isn't value over replacement on substantive issues, it is value over replacement on beating Democrats.


MAGA supporters are right that Trump is more electable than a Goldman-Aramco Republican who wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and let another million H1Bs in, but I suspect they are wrong that he is more electable than a more competent, less divisive populist Republican like DeSantis.