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Capital_Room

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joined 2023 September 18 03:13:26 UTC

Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer


				
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Capital_Room


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I once got lectured by a Jewish person that "lizard people" (i.e., the myth about secret aliens controlling the world) is an antisemitic meme. And I'm like... do you really want to insist on that association?




Yeah, the tendency to reflexively react to criticism of "elites" — open, secret, or alien — controlling the world with "You mean the Jews, right? You're totally talking about us Jews!" isn't a good look. When you can watch someone put a standard lefty "eat the rich" rant on Tumblr, and immediately get piled on as a "Nazi" who wants to genocide all Jews because, between ranting about Musk, Bezos, and Klaus Schwab, they dared bring up George Soros; because the only reason anyone would ever mention Soros in a negative context is entirely because Soros is Jewish and they hate him because he's Jewish, because they must be an antisemite who hates all Jews — well, it's hard not to think this probably fuels at least a little antisemitism.


And back on the earlier point, it's not just goblins and reptilian aliens, either. How about the claim that the tengu of Japanese folklore are an antisemitic caricature? I mean, just look at those noses. I, mean, sure, the conventional explanation is as a more humanized form of their older depiction as bird-men:




The tengu in art appears in a variety of shapes. It usually falls somewhere in between a large, monstrous bird and a wholly anthropomorphized being, often with a red face or an unusually large or long nose. Early depictions of tengu show them as kite-like beings who can take a human-like form, often retaining avian wings, heads, or beaks. The tengu's long nose seems to have been conceived in the 14th century, likely as a humanization of the original bird's bill.




But, no, that doesn't stop people from claiming, like on Twitter here: https://nitter.poast.org/nerdtechgasm/status/1931926279106036079 that "it's not a theory" at all that the tengu are antisemitic depictions of a group of Jews who arrived in Japan in the 3rd Century and became the Hata clan.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Or are you going to adopt the leftist frame that akshually, goblins were metaphors for Jews even in the Dark Ages?




I've seen someone unironically assert this on Tumblr, in the context of calling the anime Goblin Slayer antisemitic. Because goblins are always and everywhere an antisemitic caricature, a deliberate stand-in for Jews, and always have been, thus anyone who uses goblins as an antagonist element is a deliberate antisemite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


disparaging misspellings of opponents' arguments




That's not the part I was calling uncharitable. I'm referring to @Amadan dragging @SecureSignals into this — without even having the decency to @ him — to put words into his mouth.


I mean, if in the middle of making some right-leaning argument, I were to drop a parenthetical about how "magicalkittycat will now come along to rant about how un-ironic literal Nazis are everywhere, the GOP will probably declare the Fourth Reich in 2028...", or something like that, I would not at all be surprised to get a mod warning at the least — and deservedly so.


I thought we're supposed to engage with the arguments people actually make, not the arguments we preemptively imagine them making.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If I say "Hey, it looks pretty stormy out there - there's a very high chance of rain, so you should take an umbrella" I'm not actually saying "Rain is morally good and I support the rain falling on you and getting your clothes wet".




And when an Italian gentleman with a crooked nose says "nice business you've got here; it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it," he's just paying your shop a complement, and then making a true observation about an entirely hypothetical situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The same norm preventing this is the norm that prevents, say, the father of someone screwed up (by the father's lights) by trans ideology and surgery from going and vigilante-ing intellectuals like Judith Butler who are, in some diffuse but obvious sense, clearly culpable for the ideology and thus its downstream material effects. Lode bearing norm etc - this gets fully general in a hurry in a society with meaningful liberal pluralism, because it means everyone is tolerating other people who are (by their lights) behaving like moral monsters.




Spending time on Tumblr as I do, the argument seems to be that we don't need "the norm" to prevent this father from "going and vigilante-ing," because the force of the state will do that. One side gets to attack the other for "behaving like moral monsters," and the state will mostly let them get away with it, and the other doesn't get to attack back, because the cops and courts will come down on them like a hammer.


To provide further example in a different context — the murder of Iryna Zarutska — someone made a comment about how, if our legal system keeps letting out people like Decarlos Brown Jr. to reoffend again and again, then eventually people will start resorting to vigilantism. The immediate reply was that, no, such people would be stopped immediately, because we've had laws put in place since the Civil Rights era to prevent such "vigilantism" — or, to call it by it's proper name, lynching — and the cops and courts all know how to properly deal with any such person, even if they decide this time to leave their pointy white hood at home.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


SS will now come along to rant about how inserting a sympathetic Jewish character in a book is part of the Joo-spiracy, Anthony Trollope was probably ZOGed....)




C'mon, this is uncharitable, isn't it? Shouldn't you know better?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why not? There's nothing pejorative about an asylum institution, unless you're trying to smuggle in the connotation of an insane asylum in particular.




I was riffing on the classic metaphorical statement "the inmates are running the asylum" where the context is indeed an insane asylum. Thus, I didn't think it needed said explicitly




But if you have to have insane inmates as analogous to the citizenry of a country for that analogy to hold as a pejorative, it can be trivially dismissed as a false analogy




And if I say, no it can't? If I say that just like children, the senile, and the insane, the common masses don't know what's good for them, and that they need wiser heads ruling over them, what then?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hobbes talks about this, and it's one of the basic foundations of Enlightenment republican thought




Where does Rousseau, and his distinction between the "general will" and the "popular will" fit into "Enlightenment republican thought"? Because I generally see people class him as a major figure of the "Enlightenment" alongside Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu; and because I've read an argument about how that concept means that real democracy is when a self-selected vanguard party of intellectual elites take uncontested charge of the state, and that giving the voters what they vote for is instead "populism," which is the greatest threat to Our Democracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Government should be run by the people it governs




Should an asylum be run by its inmates?


As so many Boomer Republicans (still) like to say, "we don't live in a 'democracy,' we live in a representative republic." (Setting aside the quibble about how they here define "democracy…) Well, what does it mean to be a good "representative"?


How does a parent or guardian properly "represent" a small child?


How does someone with power of attorney "represent" a senile elder?


How does a relative "represent" a hospitalized schizophrenia patient who keeps trying to cut himself open to remove the chip the CIA implanted to control him?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Depending on how you define "conspiracy theory"… two come to mind:


    

  1. 

    That Carolyn Bryant Donham was telling the truth about what happened to her, and that Timothy Tyson is lying when he claims she secretly, off the record, recanted to him.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    That the jury in Fulton County convicted the right guy for the murder of Mary Phagan.
    

    3. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree with your scenario outlined here. First, because a "concerned parent" probably wouldn't just go in to the school. No, she'd probably go to the PTA first. So then, it's not one person going to the principal, it's a bunch of outraged soccer moms, threatening to raise a stink unless they Do Something.


Second, just a quick Google search returned a bunch of results. Like this case in California, albeit it was almost 13 years ago:




A middle school teacher who was fired after students learned she had appeared in pornography has lost her appeal to return to the classroom, her lawyer said Tuesday.






A three-judge panel unanimously decided Stacie Halas, 32, was unfit for the classroom. Halas was fired in April from her job as a science teacher at Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard after online videos of her in porn were discovered by students and teachers.






"Although (Halas') pornography career has concluded, the ongoing availability of her pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague," Judge Julie Cabos-Owen wrote in a 46-page decision issued Friday by the Commission on Professional Competence.






Halas was continually deceitful about her nine-month career in porn before she went to work at the school, the decision said.






Her lawyer Richard Schwab said Halas had tried to be honest but was embarrassed by her previous experience in the adult industry.




It's right there: fired for having done porn before she became a teacher, because the fact those videos are out there makes her "unfit for the classroom" in perpetuity.


And for a newer example, there's Texas in 2017, which also involves Libertarian politics:




A sixth-grade teacher at an all-girls school in Texas is out of a job and fighting to get her position back after district officials learned she worked in porn more than a decade ago.






Resa Woodward, 38, was removed from the classroom at the Young Women’s STEAM Academy in Dallas in November, after district officials received an anonymous tip regarding her work as an adult film actress, although a subsequent internal review cleared her of policy violations, the Dallas Morning News reported.




…




Woodward, who did not return messages seeking comment early Wednesday, told the paper that she was forced into pornography — saying “that involvement was not of my own choosing” — while living with an older man during a tough time financially. She eventually got herself out of the situation and finished school before becoming a teacher for the Dallas ISD, which serves roughly 160,000 students from pre-K through 12th grade.






But district officials got a tip in March claiming that Woodward worked in porn under the alias Robyn Foster, a name active in the business from 2001 and 2004, credited with 16 movies, according to a web-based adult film database cited by the Morning News.




…




Woodward, according to the internal report, told district officials she stopped working in the business in 2001 and thought a man she knew was retaliating against her by informing her employers of her past.






“I’ve been trying to live my life as far away as possible from this stuff for a long time,” Woodward told district officials, adding that no students, colleagues or supervisors knew of her sordid past.






Bauer then closed the district’s investigation in March, ruling that Woodward’s “past participation” in pornography did not constitute a policy violation.






Woodward’s work as a well-known activist for the Libertarian Party of Texas, however, would lead to her being outed, according to the Dallas Morning News.




…




Woodward told the Dallas Morning News that she wrote a post on Facebook last fall about a drunken driver that angered another man who claimed to be associated with the Libertarian Party in another state due to his beliefs about police. That man then detailed her past on social media websites, Woodward said.






Woodward then notified district officials of the post and she was placed on administrative leave on Nov. 29.






“They told me they were pursuing termination because it became public,” she said.




And it's not just women who get fired, either. From Florida in 2011:




A Miami-Dade teacher's past life in the adult entertainment industry has gotten him kicked out of the classroom.






The school district's investigation into Shawn Loftis, a substitute teacher assigned to Nautilus Middle, Miami Edison Middle, Fienberg-Fisher K-8 Center and Miami Beach Senior High, began last January.




…




But that time was cut short after administrators at Nautilus learned about Loftis' past. Under the alias Collin O'Neal, Loftis was a successful adult film star, even shooting movies on location in Miami Beach. After three to four years of success, Loftis went from in front of the camera to behind it and ran his own adult film company.






But then Loftis decided to change careers and get out of the business all together. Loftis said he wanted to sell his company and use his Master's Degree to teach. He qualified to be a substitute, taught for about a year until one day the past caught up to his present.




…




Loftis said he was terminated because it was determined that he broke a School Board rule which states:






"They are expected to conduct themselves both in their employment and in the community in a manner that will reflect credit upon themselves and the school system."






In addition to being fired, Loftis' teaching certificate is also in jeopardy. He said he may no longer be able to teach the lessons he wishes someone would have taught him years ago.






"I also want people to think before they dabble in that industry what they want to with their future," said Loftis.




Or then, moving over to Canada, there's Quebec in 2014 proving that time is no real remedy:




Pre-internet, you could likely move on from a career in pornography with only the occasional wondering glance your way. But now one Quebecois teacher, 73-year-old Jacqueline Laurent Auger, has had her past catch up with her after pupils went online and discovered softcore porn films she appeared in around 45 years previously.






She has now been dismissed from her position teaching drama workshops at the elite Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal. “As educators, we had to ask what message is transmitted to all our students, boys and girls, from the first year of high school to the fifth, by the fact that the teacher of their drama workshops could now be seen on the Internet in the most suggestive of scenes,” the school wrote in an online statement, adding that they wanted to preserve “a calm setting free of allusions or discomfort that is unfavourable to our educational mission.”






Laurent Auger has called the move “completely absurd. I’m 73 years old. When I made those films I must have been 28 or 29. It was to make a living so that after[wards] I could work with great teachers and actors, in Paris and in Quebec. Come on.”




Sure, the culture has shifted in the past decade, but not that much, and not everywhere. So, again, I still don't see it playing out like in your scenario.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Frieren: "Why call out to a mother? Demons are monsters, and like all monsters, they don't raise their young. Once born, you are abandoned. You walk this world alone. That makes you ruthless, solitary creatures. Lone wolves with no concept of what family means. Explain."






Demon Child:  "It's simple. That word stops humans. It keeps them from murdering us. Isn't that magical?"




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I’m beating around the bush, but I’m pretty much talking about scam culture, being the winner, getting one up on the people that are outsiders to ‘my group’, and getting status points for exploiting my outgroup.






I’d like to reiterate that this isn’t an Indian only issue, but it’s a culture clash between high and low trust cultures and is worthy of discussion.




I know that this is one of a half-Native Alaskan friend of mine's biggest complaints about his fully-Native cousins. He's a devout Christian who believes strongly in the Golden Rule, while they make no effort to hide the ways they exploit the system, based in solidly tribalist views of ethics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The counterpoint is "the government is outnumbered and an armed populace doing guerilla warfare wins pretty much every time", which is also true.




No, it's not true. In * Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present*, Max Boot calculates that, of all the insurgencies since 1775, about 78% of them failed. Of the 22% who did win, one of the necessary (though not sufficient) preconditions is substantial material support from one or more foreign states. (Also, AIUI, practically every case of successful guerrilla warfare has been against a de facto foreign occupation.)




The left is way better at this.




Yes, and the right seems unwilling to try to remedy that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, and thank you for pointing this out. Given how obvious this is, I don't know why it's so hard to get people on the right (as well as a few on the moderate left) to understand it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In most other contexts, it is considered absurd to try and impose treaty institutions on a state that is not part of the treaty, even when you think that treaty is a good idea or should supersede other principles of international law.




I remember one of the times someone brought up online (as a possible novel solution to some issue of the time) Congress's Constitutional power to issue letters of marque, adding that the US is not a signatory to the 1856 Declaration of Paris banning them. A few Europeans all responded with the same message: it doesn't matter what the US Constitution says. That the US claims to retain this power is face-saving cope, as are the excuses given for why the US hasn't issued such letters since. The actual reason Congress won't issue letters of marque is because they can't, because the rest of the world considers the Declaration of Paris a universal ban, binding on signatories and non-signatories alike. And were the US to try to defy this binding international law, then the rest of the world will enforce that ban on the Americans receiving those illegal, invalid letters of marque, lack of ratification be damned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Currently reading The Balkan Languages by Victor A. Friedman and Brian D. Joseph, from the Cambridge Language Surveys series.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you missed that you responded to Arjin, when the quoted statement you're arguing against was made by Eupraxia one comment up.


So, why are you attacking Arjin for a comment he didn't make — and even argued against — instead of the person who said it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


No? I think it's both funny and clever, and in the traditional vein of "devilish contracts are foiled by word-play" stories. There's always a catch to the genie's gifts, and the gifts of Sauron are no exception. The Witch-king, by this view, may in part have surrendered to the lure of his ring through "I will be truly immortal and no-one will be able to kill me", and then the loophole smacks him in the face.






That he is taken down by a woman and a hobbit is completely in harmony with how the demons are foiled in Hindu mythology. They perform penances to gain boons from the Supreme Trinity, immortality is not possible, so they ask for elaborate conditions ("nobody can kill me except...") and think they have gained because this particular set will never come to pass.




It's also not unknown in European tales either, beyond just Macbeth. My favorite for "complex loophole" bit is Welsh, from the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. Specifically, that Lleu Llaw Gyffes cannot be killed "during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made."


So he gets struck down at dusk, wrapped in a net, with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat, using a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is supposed to be at mass.


Because, like you note, there's always a loophole to these things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nobody at your apartment complex wants to go through the effort of filing a complaint for something that doesn’t bother them.




You obviously aren't familiar with a certain type of (almost always female) busybody who goes out of her way to find where people are Not Following The Rules, and then making a big deal of it to whomever she can, mostly because she enjoys the petty powertrip involved in pushing people around, and making them comply just because you can. The one who will call CFS every single day if she sees you're not parenting your kids the way she thinks you should. The kind who get out rulers to measure lawns so she can rat people out to the HOA.


(I'm thinking of my late grandmother — the one who was a "special ed" teacher because the crippled and cognitively-impaired kids were easier for her to bully.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Having to band together with locals to fight nature is an amazing social lubricant.




Don't forget fighting hostile Natives, too. That was also a notable factor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks. A quick Google turns up the original phrasing, which searched in turn gives Douthat's original 2016 tweet:




A thought sent back in time to the theocracy panic of 2005: If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm looking forwards to Harris losing to Vance or Abbott or Rubio




But how would she do against DeSantis?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Go ahead and insert the Douthat quote.




Which quote would that be?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But if I were to meet an American who described himself as a white nationalist, I would put money on him having voted for Trump over any competing candidate.




You probably haven't listened to anyone over at therightstuff.biz, then. Several of them openly supported Biden over "Zion Don," and some of them even Kamala — because there's plenty of open "anti-Zionists" over on the Democrat side, while Trump is "practically one of the Tribe" since he "gave his daughter to one of (((them)))." That the "Russian Collusion" narrative about 2016 was right in every detail… except that it wasn't Moscow that meddled to install Trump and give him his weekly marching orders, it's Tel Aviv. That, contrary to what many on the right claim, Trump did accomplish in his first term everything the people who got him into the White House put him there to do: he moved the embassy to Jerusalem and gave tax cuts to Jewish billionaires.