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WandererintheWilderness


				

				

				

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WandererintheWilderness


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you're being this maximally cynical and high-level, then trying to analyze political ideologies at all, as more than a red flag and a blue flag waved furiously by two warring, unprincipled tribes, loses all meaning. We were talking about the extent to which fascism as a system can be defined as an offshoot of communism, and it seems to me that this is a topic of conversation that necessitates focus on the theoretical systems themselves. If ideologies don't matter then the proper definition of fascism as an ideology doesn't matter either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think People's Front of Judea jokes make sense with regards to splitting hairs about who's a communist vs a socialist vs a trotskyist and so on, but your proper anarchists are not going to be interchangeable with the above. Certainly, they're not going to be relevantly interchangeable with them when it comes to whether they'd endorse "fascism is basically just a mutant strain of communism".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That issue is somewhat confused by postmodernism and death-of-the-author being associated with left-wing intellectual discourse, even though it's also left-wing to hate on AI for lacking soul. It's not quite irreconcilable - you can say, for example, that the fun thing about experiencing art is trying to guess what the author meant, so that the game is equally spoiled by rigid adherence to factually documented authorial intent or by the knowledge that the content was spat out by a machine and there is no 'there' there to guess at. But it's an interesting paradox.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and further, that "fascism" is universally and obviously "evil" in some incontestable normative sense (also proven through the application of rationality, I guess?)




The steelman of this step in the reasoning is the idea of slippery slopes and logical endpoints. The claim is that any fascistic system of government will inevitably trend towards uncontroversially evil policies like mass murder because those are the natural extrapolations of its founding principles, even if the initial proponents don't intend to go that far. So maybe moderate fascism is benign or even beneficial in the short term, but if you elect a moderate fascist, there is a serious risk that he will gradually turn into a full-blooded fascist dictator - perhaps because he was always more ruthless than he made himself appear, perhaps just because power corrupts - simply because that's the result of putting his money where his mouth is.


Mark that I present this as a steelman, not something I claim is the belief of everyone who uses Trump-is-a-fascist rhetoric. But I do think it's a relatively mainstream understanding of why it's meant to be such a devastating blow to call him a fascist, given the almost voyeuristic lust for a flashpoint they can describe as a mask-off moment, crossing the Rubicon, etc. Hence, I don't think it's quite as simple as a case of Scott's "Worst Argument in the World", which is what the "Magic Word" complaint reduces to. The claim is not just "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you must shun Trump", but "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you shouldn't be fooled by current-Trump's relative benign-ness: he will predictably get exponentially eviler if he continues along the current trend".


Of course, one might fairly ask if this is uniquely true of fascism, or if any political ideology taken to "its logical endpoint" can turn into an evil dictatorship.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hardly the only people. There are plenty of leftists with an interest in condemning right-wing figures as fascists who would also regard themselves as being against communism - from mainstream Dems who don't even go as far as calling themselves socialists or anti-capitalists, to radical leftists of a more libertarian-adjacent, anarchist bent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You're gilding the past a bit




I think you're misunderstanding OP. In the context of the paragraph, it seems clear to me that "at one point they were admirable titans of industry" means "at one point current billionaires seemed like admirable titans of industry to me", not "I currently think that billionaires actually used to be admirable titans of industry back in the day".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


heaps of hobbies




What hobbies? Can't she meet any interesting people through said hobbies?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've always thought this, it's great to see it articulated so well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


he was “only a middle ranking cleric” at appointment (such a trivial negative to count)






he was “not even an Ayatollah” before appointment (again, trivial, at least to most audiences)




Not sure these are even intended as negatives, however mild; they could as easily give the impression of a humble-man-of-the-people success story as anything else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is not the point; 4bpp is specifically analogizing the overnight invalidation of documents where you called yourself "Dr." to the overnight invalidation of ID papers which included transgender people's chosen genders instead of their sex. In either case, it seems inordinately disruptive to the lives of the people involved, even if one were in favor of phasing out the practice as far as issuing new documents is concerned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the Torah really does reduce to race worship of Jews symbolically represented by their tribal god Yahweh (…) Yahweh didn't promise anything to the Jews, Yahweh is literary fiction- ancient capeshit, and the bible is Jewish race propaganda.




You are making a pretty weird claim here, and one that doesn't seem necessary to the rest of your point at all (the validity of which I don't intend to get into at this time). Are you really saying that ancient Jews did not believe in the literal existence of God — that the average Hebrew didn't have an earnest belief in the existence of an almighty supernatural being manifest within the Holiest of Holies — that only Christians got into the bad habit of taking the Bible literally even at this very basic "is the character of God meant to be, like, real" level? Why? What does that have to do with anything? Surely your argument would work much the same if we simply posit that the Torah was written to be taken literally, with all its assertions that Yahweh is a very real guy and he really does like the Hebrews best.


I don't even dispute your anthropological characterization of Yahweh as a "tribal god", exactly. But that's ethnography, not theology. It doesn't follow that the writers of the Old Testament themselves understood God as a mere metaphor. The Ancient Greeks also largely believed in the supernatural, even if they understood that the word-for-word details of Homer were fictional and the "real" gods might not be such anthropomorphic characters as the epics portrayed. There's nothing odd about that — most Christians today believe that the Devil really exists but is probably not a big red man with horns who makes pacts signed in blood. There is every reason to think that ancient Jews understood their own mythology in much the same way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That may be, but "evil state-sized megacorps make you pay through the nose for the very air you breathe" is still a core enough part of the aesthetic that "in order to avoid a cyberpunk dystopia, we should establish a regimented system where people get less food to eat depending on a social credit score" scans to me as almost comically backwards.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We want to minimize scammers, cheaters and criminals.




I think that can more straightforwardly and more humanely achieved by, you know, making laws against those things and enforcing them. You don't need to start gatekeeping access to food like a Charles Dickens villain.


And also, reducing welfare to disincentivize actively harmful behavior is one thing; setting the bar at positive "social contributions" is still another. In a post-scarcity world where there's no need to incentivize human beings to pump their time and energy into the economy rather than spending it on more pleasant pursuits, there is no ethical justification for placing any artificial barriers in the way of someone who just wants to collect their share and then go off to live as a reclusive hermit, keeping to himself and never affecting other people's lives one way or the other. In the real world, we rightfully discourage people from becoming unproductive hermits living on welfare, because they're unfairly leeching off other people's sweat and toil, and if too many people defected in that way, the economy would collapse. But if the economy starts literally running itself then preventing hermits from being hermits is just senseless tyranny.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cyberpunk dystopias are defined by the social order itself being oppressive in one way or another, not by the behavior of the citizens - but regardless, if citizens' good behavior isn't producing anything I object to calling it "social contribution". If what we are talking about is some kind of social conformity tax, its advocates should own up to what they are proposing, without hiding behind language associated with the fair allocation of scarce resources between productive and non-productive members of an economy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't understand this. If we're talking about ~universal welfare in the age of AGI-granted post-scarcity, it becomes ridiculous to try to police the "social contribution" of citizens: nobody's "contributions" will be worth a damn anymore, that's exactly why everyone will be on the dole in the first place. Tiered welfare of the kind you propose might be a useful framework in a society for whose long-term survival the existence of a growing chronically-unemployed underclass is an existential risk, but it loses all meaning in a world where everyone is unemployed and human labor has become permanently irrelevant to the survival of human society.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't dispute that there's a lot of fraud and over-extension, but "25-year-old girls" can have crippling health issues. I've known 25-year-old girls with crippling health issues. I imagine you meant "obviously healthy and able-bodied 25-year-old girls", but at that point why specify "25-year-old girls" at all, and while leaving the important bit implicit? Chronic illness can affect people at any age, and of either sex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cheap bread isn't very healthy to have as a major component of your diet. Ought to be rye bread or the like, if we're trying to design something people can live on indefinitely with no adverse effects to their health.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do not lightly agree with SecureSignals about anything, but I think he has a point that you'd misunderstood his claim: while it may be true that some advocates for the meme want to intentionally cause Hard Times, Signals had bee fairly clear that he wasn't making that point, merely the retrospective claim that historically, as a matter of fact, Hard Times have produced Strong Men via eugenics - whether or no that was "worth it" and whether or not that would or should still work today.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If I am spending my free time reading about Sparta, it's because I think Spartans are cool, and I want to learn more about them.




I hardly think that follows - one can be interested in monstrously evil societies because they're monstrously evil. A man who seeks out an in-depth exposé about the Spanish Inquisition or the Gulags or the Nazis probably is here for the lurid details and the frequent histrionics about how twisted and awful they were. By no means is this the only possible audience for a documentary series about Sparta, but there's no reason to assume that audience doesn't exist.


(Indeed, I myself as a boy, during the brief period where Sparta occupied a large part of my thoughts, pictured it as very much the City Populated Entirely By Nasty Drill Sergeants - it tickled my imagination as a city of insane-sounding joyless motherfuckers which I could scarcely believe had ever existed outside of a cartoon. Not something to be condemned with serious mournful expressions like the Nazis, but a nation made up entirely of heels. That's fun.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Eupraxia means that it's one thing for sleep sex to have its own appeal that might make up for the advantages it otherwise lacks relative to conventional mutual sex; and another thing to declare it a strict improvement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would think that the problem is self-compounding due to the absurdity heuristic. A woman waking up with sore genitals for the first time ever could conceivably put 2 and 2 together and go "oh God, have I been raped in my sleep"; but provided she otherwise trusted her husband, what kind of a mind does it take to go "I've been periodically waking up from sleep with sore genitals for years; it must be because I have been systematically raped every time"? The latter sounds insane. Even if the thought occurred to her, she might very well dismiss it as ridiculous paranoia. Human bodies are weird and full of little aches and itches, middle-aged women's bodies especially. I would guess that precisely because it was a somewhat regular occurrence, she just assumed these sensations must be some kind of natural most-menopausal ailment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I can imagine a kind of internal logic that overlaps heavily with "men bad, women good" ideas. Anyone can change their identity and pronouns at will, but by choosing to do something heinous, they have switched their identity to male.




That's conceivable, but I'd hardly describe someone who believed that as non-zealous in their gender activism, they'd just be a very idiosyncratic zealot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why should I indulge a murderer, though?




You needn't; but the non-murderous trans people you're interested in being nice to understandably perceive misgendering any trans person as an insult to them as a group. Similarly, you may not care about a black murderer's feelings, but you shouldn't call him the N-word in a newspaper article, because it would be hurtful to your non-murderous black readers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is fair, but I don't think that Scott, if asked, would in fact defend ignoring a murderer's pronouns in the press on that basis. Not sure if he'd phrase his objection in terms of "misgendering anybody is hurtful to the sensibilities of the innocent trans people in your readership, so you should she-her the murderer to be nice to them", or in terms of "misgendering people is a mild but indecorous insult, and it's undignified for journalists to hurl indecorous insults at murderers; you shouldn't harp on about a dead murderer's biological sex any more than you should harp on about a dead murderer having had a small penis or an ugly wart, even if the claims are factually true", or something else I can't model.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Lukewarm support for trans rights looks like "studiously use preferred pronouns but avoid materially contentious questions like kids, prisons, sports and bathrooms", not like "use preferred pronouns for nice people but not for murderers". I'm not actually sure if there's anyone in the world who does the latter, it would imply a very weird outlook where ability to change one's social gender is some sort of… revocable privilege? By and large, "anyone can change their pronouns" vs "no one can change their pronouns" is a binary debate, nuance vs zealotry is a question of what else someone in the former camp believes falls under the umbrella of inalienable trans rights.