site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   25610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Truthfully? I just want the country I grew up in back.

I want back a justice system and a police force that punishes crime, regardless of "disproportionate impact". I want back a world where I'm not skipping over 50% of the job listing because they explicitly say they have a focus on "marginalized people" for the role. I want back a country where it doesn't feel like we can't have one single nice thing because some third worlder does some third world shit and ruins it. I want back a country where our government isn't a naked racial spoils system. I have no illusions that the government was never corrupt. Just like I have no illusions that my auto mechanic is probably fleecing me. However, my auto mechanic, despite probably ripping me off somewhat, at least also keeps my car running. The government is just handing out sinecures to nakedly incompetent diversity hires, and meanwhile the country is falling the fuck apart.

I want back a country where I'm not awash in naked anti-white propaganda, and it doesn't feel like my government is oozing hate out of every pore at me.

If these wishes could be accomplished without violent expulsion, I'd be down. It felt like we had all these things in the 90's. Maybe that was an illusion. I don't know. Maybe the 90's was the top of the roller coaster, where for a brief moment the acceleration has almost cancelled out your velocity, before you plummet straight to hell. I no longer know what to believe that I'd say publicly about "multiculturalism". But privately, seems to me it's only going to end in genocide, and I'm not confident about who's.

As far as I can tell, the primary beneficiaries of "disproportionate impact" policies and hiring of "marginalized people" are black people. The people advocating and voting for these policies are white people.

How and when did this come about? Well, affirmative action dates back to the sixties, and was well underway in the nineties. As for where all these black people came from, if I remember your family history correctly, I am afraid you will have to blame your ancestors.

As for where all these black people came from, if I remember your family history correctly, I am afraid you will have to blame your ancestors.

Regrettably so. We were on the wrong side of both the revolution and the civil war. 'Won' both.

I've said this before, I'll keep saying it: solidarity with the far threat against the near enemy. progressive whites do not view normie whites as their own kin, the normie is the enemy to be subjugated. blacks are merely the enemy of normies so advancing blacks is useful. if blacks all turned out to be value aligned witb normies the progs would abandon them, just like the progs abandoned asians and now latinos. in the competition for cultural supremacy, the prize is being the dispenser of the systems spoils. that the fruits are withered because the normies tending the orchard have been replaced by blacks (or in europe muslims) is not a possibility entertained by progs.

As for where all these black people came from, if I remember your family history correctly, I am afraid you will have to blame your ancestors.

If we were truly to accept this argument, we could strictly limit affirmative action to ADOS, rather than all Americans of African lineage. On the other hand, maybe this could be acceptable: it would rule out race-based favoritism on behalf of, for example, Barack Obama and Claudine Gay.

I am against affirmative action in general, but I think there are some progressives who are on board with that.

What if my ancestors didn't own slaves, and in fact fought to free them? Do I get a prize?

They weren't a problem when they were slaves. Your ancestors fighting to free them are why we're in this mess.

You know why the south lost and Rome fell right? Slavery is as bad for the owners as it is for the slaves. It stifles every good thing in humanity and promotes the bad. Most surviving cultures have figured that out.

Slavery was a bad idea, and should never have been implemented. You might as well blame Kulaks and wreckers for the failures of Communism. Your ancestors should, in fact, have picked their own damn cotton.

You call it slavery, I call it animal husbandry. It worked just fine and while cruelty to animals sucks, domestication is not evil. Often it's a pretty great deal for the animals. Nature is harsh and wild animals are generally worse to each other than their human masters.

My ancestors are at fault inasmuch as they failed to adequately anticipate the fatal flaw in voting-based government, which is the incentive to expand the franchise to those who should never have had it in exchange for political support and dominance over the responsible opponents who refuse to stoop so low.

I'll go ahead and agree that modeling your fellow man as animals, or more specifically, social mammals, and then using animal husbandry techniques on them is valid. The same soothing and awareness and empathetic techniques work on both. I do notice that- "animals" being a slur is completely unfair both to humans and to non-human animals.

But chattel slavery was piss poor animal husbandry. As evidenced by its fruits. If your animals are suffering, you're not doing a great job. If you are in physical conflict with your animals, you have failed to engage with them emotionally. This is the smell of your mandate of heaven rotting beneath your mismanagement.

If your animals can learn read and write and become functional independent general intelligences that can potentially engage with high society and you aren't bothering to cultivate that. You fail druid class!

We allow all kinds of hot takes, including "slavery was good, actually," as long as you can argue the case civilly and in accordance with our rules.

You've broken a few of those rules, notably "Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument" and "Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion."

Sometimes people really want to say something about a particular group of people, because this is what they really, honestly believe. Things like "Jews are vermin," "Women aren't sentient," or "Black people are animals." And when we mod them for saying these things, they complain that we are "protecting the feelings" of the group they despise. Well, no, we don't care that you might hurt someone's feelings (arguing that blacks have lower IQs and higher criminality, or that women are hypergamous, or that Jews have disproportionate power in Hollywood, likely hurts some people's feelings, but you are allowed to say that). But it's one thing to describe your grievances with the behavior of a group, and quite another to declare they are less than human and should be treated as such.

Assuming you are not just trolling, pretend there are black people participating here (sometimes there are) and that you aren't trying to insult and denigrate them (even if that's what you do want to do - you may not).

Yes, I think you're generally correct to flag me here as 'just being honest' isn't a great excuse for being so transgressive, though most of the rest of what you wrote doesn't apply in this case I think. This isn't an instance of me wanting to say mean things about a group.

Nor is my issue with 'black people' so much as... look, I'm having sincere trouble finding terminology that gets the idea across without being legitimately interpreted as 'antagonistic'. There's a continuum problem. "Human" is a fuzzy category and largely in the eye of the beholder. Is a gorilla which speaks sign language human? What about Lucy (A. afarensis)? Primitive Tanzanians who discovered fire, then lost the secret and apparently reverted to the lifestyle of other hominids generally not recognized as human?

Skin color is not especially interesting to me. But I agree that the language about human/non-human is inflammatory and doesn't really get the point across, so I'll try to refrain from it in the future. My sincere apologies.

There is a quality which is something along the lines of 'capacity for moral responsibility' that generally (but not perfectly) correlates with IQ and which I think is localized entirely within select groups of ancestries and almost entirely men. These embody and sustain priceless phenomena ranging from how they experience and perceive the world to cultural inheritances. This heritage is inestimably valuable, fragile, and, increasingly, endangered.

My take on 'humans' outside of those groups is that they're something more like children than like non-humans. The trouble, of course, is that they generally don't have the capacity to grow into members of those groups. So they're something else, a third category between children and animals. Something more like permanently disabled children which are helpful dependents at best and, if they get strong and numerous enough, serious existential threats to the system and individuals within it. Their existences are often improved by domestication (honest question: is that word okay? I feel like it's exactly the one I want, no shade) and in the process they can participate in the grand project and enjoy in many of its fruits.

Meanwhile, inability to see this picture clearly or even discuss it intelligibly is one of the greatest threats to the Good and I'm at great pains to figure out how to articulate it.

So that's the perspective, more or less.

I am not sure how to give you guidelines for how you can argue that blacks and women are incapable of functioning as fully sentient adults with agency, which seems to be what you're asking for. I mean, your post above would not, IMO, break any rules, much as I disagree with it. But I would suggest that if you want to argue that black people cannot and should not be free citizens and need to be "domesticated" to keep them in line, or that women should be property (not sure if that is your position, but it has been the position of some other posters), well, we've allowed those arguments, but it matters a lot how you say it.

"I don't think women are actually fully capable of expressing agency the same way men are" - probably okay. "Women don't have agency" - not okay.

"I question whether blacks are capable of building a fully functional civilization on their own" - probably okay. "Blacks are animals" - not okay.

Now, some of our critics will be quick to say "Aha! It really is just about using MOAR WORDS!" But it isn't. It's about expressing some epistemic humility, or put another way, allowing for the possibility that you might be wrong. And at least pretending that you believe those people are people who have a right to disagree with you.

If you said the first thing - "I question whether blacks are capable of building a fully functional civilization on their own" - a black poster here, assuming they were willing to engage, has something to engage with. They can disagree with your premise, they can offer counter-evidence, they can ask you why you think that.... But what is a black person supposed to say to "You're an animal"?

More comments

There's a continuum problem. "Human" is a fuzzy category and largely in the eye of the beholder.

There is not a continuum problem, and "human" is not a fuzzy category largely in the eyes of the beholder. Awareness, sense-of-self, language, volition and Will are obvious and inescapably significant, despite more than a century of extremely popular lies to the contrary. The evidence you are gesturing at simply does not exist, and claims to the contrary have long been established as lies that no one bothers to maintain or defend any more.

Is a gorilla which speaks sign language human?

There are not, nor have there been, any gorillas that can speak sign language. Claims to the contrary appear to be a more elaborate form of Clever Hans, and more generally yet another example of how Psychology and Sociology are grifts that have polluted our society for more than a century.

What about Lucy (A. afarensis)?

We have no observations of Lucy's behavior or capabilities one way or the other. What we can observe is current humans, and the observation shows that while their capabilities may differ, the cluster is still significant and very, very well-separated from all other animals.

There is a quality which is something along the lines of 'capacity for moral responsibility' that I think is generally localized entirely within select groups of ancestries and almost entirely men.

I observe capacity for moral responsibility in my wife, and in the females of my family generally. They make choices and live with the results. That does not mean there is a difference in how they think versus how I and the males in my family think, but the difference is not a matter of "greater" and "lesser" in the way you seem to be claiming.

If domestication is a thing, it is a thing that all humans require. I can identify ways in which I myself have been "domesticated", how my instincts and desires have been shaped away from raw selfishness and self-gratification toward responsibility and care for others. in this sense, I see no way to argue that domestication is something white men do to white women in particular and blacks generally. In other senses, I cannot see support for an argument that "domestication" exists at all.

More comments

You call it slavery, I call it animal husbandry.

Humans aren't animals. Animals can be safely disregarded. Humans cannot. That is the distinction.

Often it's a pretty great deal for the animals.

And yet, they don't seem to have appreciated it, and because they are humans and not actually animals, their lack of appreciation is in fact dispositive.

My ancestors are at fault inasmuch as they failed to adequately anticipate the fatal flaw in voting-based government, which is the incentive to expand the franchise to those who should never have had it in exchange for political support and dominance over the responsible opponents who refuse to stoop so low.

I do not believe Abolitionism won because its supporters expected to reap new voters. All evidence I've seen indicates that it won because its supporters considered chattel slavery an intolerable evil, and were willing to make considerable sacrifices to eradicate it. I believe they were correct in this estimation. If you wish to disregard the humanity of Africans, I certainly cannot stop you. Leave them in Africa, and it's no business of mine what happens on the other side of the world. Bring them here and you make them, and by extension yourself, my problem.

Humans aren't animals.

I know you know you're arguing by defining things in a way I wouldn't agree with, so what's the point?

I do not believe Abolitionism won because its supporters expected to reap new voters. All evidence I've seen indicates that it won because its supporters considered chattel slavery an intolerable evil, and were willing to make considerable sacrifices to eradicate it.

That was the popular justification, yes, and for the same reason that people become vegetarians or vegans or join PETA and try to ban pet ownership: we're incredibly prone to anthropomorphizing animals.

The power politics behind the war were rather different. Regardless, my point has less to do with why the war was fought and more to do with what happened afterward. "Send them back to their native habitat" was a great idea with plenty of support and should have happened, though FWIW I think we owed it to them to administrate for their sakes. Whatever they are, they're close enough to us that I don't like the thought of leaving them to their own wretched devices. Perhaps in time, and with guidance...

But even people who cared very much for them often understood that treating them as equals, let alone giving them the franchise, would be insane. But it happened. So with women &c.

I know you know you're arguing by defining things in a way I wouldn't agree with, so what's the point?

You offered an implicit argument by definition by calling blacks animals. I pointed out a salient distinction between humans, including black humans, and animals: humans, including black humans, have awareness, will and volition, and so they cannot safely be discounted under any system mankind has yet devised. The only truly safe human is a dead human, and the dead cannot be enslaved.

I am not arguing by definition. You are, and you are refusing to address a salient distinction that your definition cannot account for.

Whatever they are, they're close enough to us that I don't like the thought of leaving them to their own wretched devices. Perhaps in time, and with guidance...

You argue that they are animals, and yet you are unwilling to treat them like animals. Why? Your "guidance" didn't work before and won't work now. Why persist in your folly?

It isn't about caring or not caring. My care leads me to wish to leave them alone. Your care demands domination, and has led to this disaster every step of the way. I certainly have no interest in joining you in your folly, or of protecting your from its consequences.

The franchise is largely irrelevant. What's killing it would have killed it regardless, although racial and sexual politics clearly accelerate the process.

More comments

I'm still waiting for my prize for being the first of my ancestors to even be born in the western hemisphere, so I'll let you know.

You're your own ancestor?

Though art God. Drink water, grow closer.

No, you can sit in the same bucket with the white Ellis Island immigrants, who also never owned slaves.

You should know that somebody took your comment, combined it with the comment of @SecureSignals below, and posted in the /r/BlockedAndReported weekly discussion thread. I first assumed it was you yourself, but then I saw it's two different comments glued together.

ETA and it's gone. You can find the traces, a few replies of the "are you okay?" kind. It wasn't me, and I'm very curious what was the purpose of it all.

That's a fascinating sub with much wrongthink; has Reddit become more tolerant or is this sub just flying under the radar until they get the inevitable ban? I stopped browsing Reddit when they banned CCJ2, so I don't know how things go over there nowadays.

Great. See if I end up needing another new account soon. Nothing good ever comes of being noticed.

And because my comment wasn't yet visible to common users by the time of deletion, the culprit must be one of the motte mods, dun-dun-dun! But seriously, good luck, man, I remember the shitstorm with your previous account.

With 2 comments you say this?

Is there really a culprit? A crime? I don't know the tone of the comment over there, maybe it was totally mocking, but I also don't really share the fear that someone might notice us anymore. We're not on reddit, we are free of the gigajanny's tyranny.

It was not quoting those two comments, somebody was posting them as one and under their own name. Very weird. You can head to https://old.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1cw6mpn/weekly_random_discussion_thread_for_52024_52624/l5bwmui/ and see that the replies line up with the contents of the posts by @WhiningCoil and @SecureSignals. Maybe one of Iconochasm, JTarrou, professorgerm, SerialStateLineXer, or somebody else who I don't know, caught it, but it stayed up for such a brief period that I doubt it. One could take these two comments and ask people in that thread if they recognize the result.

I'm tired of this matter, back to lurking for months. Peace.

And because my comment wasn't yet visible to common users by the time of deletion, the culprit must be one of the motte mods, dun-dun-dun

Really, now?

I doubt very much any mod did that. Here's an alternate hypothesis: given the recent spate of trolls spinning up alts to post flamebait and then deleting all their comments, it is far more likely it was one of them. You know, like a brand new account with a great deal of familiarity with the details of motte posting, whose only two comments here are to helpfully inform us about that now-deleted post.

Did you not get that I was joking, really? Teaches me to try to do right by a person whose posts I've consistently liked for my years of lurking. If I wanted to cause drama, I could have brought up his previous identity and what forced him to create a new account, not do this weird who-knows-what-this-is that just happened.

Yeah, I'm not good at being subtle.

Good news!

The people that hate you now already hated you in the 90s. Affirmative action was already going strong and third worlders were already ruining nice things with their third world shit.

It felt like we had all these things in the 90's. Maybe that was an illusion. I don't know.

Presumably you were a kid, so that helps. It also helps that this was in the pre-internet or later the dialup era, when people were generally less ‘pilled of broader ongoings.

However, I would agree in the estimation that things have certainly gotten worse since then: Affirmative action stronger; anti-white propaganda more naked; government more explicitly a racial spoils system; justice system and police force more anarcho-tyrannic and “disproportionate impact” pearl-clutchy.

If these wishes could be accomplished without violent expulsion, I'd be down.

I could also be down for some flavors of “with.”

The people that hate you now already hated you in the 90s. Affirmative action was already going strong and third worlders were already ruining nice things with their third world shit.

The difference is just time and accumulation. Mass immigration to the U.S. started in the 1970s and really got going in the 1990s before going insane in the Biden era.

In the 1990s, the effects of immigration weren't that notable in most places even if the seeds were already sown.

Mass immigration started in the 1850s.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/30/immigrant-share-in-u-s-nears-record-high-but-remains-below-that-of-many-other-countries/

And mass immigration was stopped in the 1920s, thereby allowing multiple contentious immigrant groups to assimilate. Furthermore, until the 1970s, almost all U.S. immigration was from European countries. Not counting slavery, of course.

Given that we were near record highs in 2019, imagine what 10 million more illegal immigrants has done to that number.

Efforts to "contextualize" the unprecedented wave of immigration we've experienced post-2020 are typically historically ignorant.

Ten million more illegal immigrants since 2019? What's the methodology for that estimate?

The total illegal immigrant population in 2021 (the latest I could find estimates for) was 10.5M, down from 12.2M around 2009.

I'm having a hard time this comment is being offered in good faith. Do you think the border crisis is just made up and the number of illegals has actually decreased since 2009? All those cities claiming they are overwhelmed... it's all just fake? If so, I can forgive you. Google seems to want you to believe that. They are really, really, determined to skew the information here. It's actually breathtaking how heavily their thumb is on the scale here.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=illegal%20immigrants%20per%20month%202024#ip=1

But, yes about 10.8 million illegals have entered the country since Biden took office:

https://homeland.house.gov/2024/03/26/factsheet-nationwide-border-encounters-hit-nine-million-on-secretary-mayorkas-watch-in-the-worst-february-in-decades/

I'll admit this article has a partisan spin. But it's based on DHS data. I could find an unbiased source if Google would let me or if I felt like running errands.

But, yes about 10.8 million illegals have entered the country since Biden took office:

https://homeland.house.gov/2024/03/26/factsheet-nationwide-border-encounters-hit-nine-million-on-secretary-mayorkas-watch-in-the-worst-february-in-decades/

As far as I can tell you're conflating encounters and people actually living in the country. The article contrasts 70k aliens granted parole into the country vs 256k encounters in February. I don't see how ten million new residents can come from this data.

Why not? Are you claiming the other 186k per month were shipped back to their home countries?

Only 330,000 people have been deported since 2021: https://www.ice.gov/spotlight/statistics

More comments

For all the talk about Biden and Obama keeping the border secure by performing border rejections and spinning up ICE, no one ever acknowledged that Biden was seen by migrants as the opening of the gates. Migrants are motivated to gp to the USA by promises made to migrants such as DREAM and sanctuary cities, migrants are drawn to europe by weakness and riches for the taking.

The irony of developmental economics is that as western aid becomes more efficient at making poor countries richers, it just gives them resources to make a trip to the promised land. Refugee laws were made when only neighbouring countries would flood your border, now you can get a trip on Air India to Canada or get coyotes to set up food and water and transport on your way to the promised land. The only thing that will stop migrants flooding borders is the rejection of any benefits to these people, including NGOs hiding them from police and illegal work. You westerners have no idea how to deal with these culturally disruptive peoples and the rubber band will snap back soon.

You westerners have no idea how to deal with these culturally disruptive peoples and the rubber band will snap back soon.

The thing about rubber bands is that if you stretch them too much, they don't snap back; they break.

Genocide? This word has lost almost all impact through overuse in the current landscape. It also has a specific definition that is apparently being lost along with all meaning. The word was coined in 1944 by a Jewish Lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to describe what the Nazi regime had done. You think we're going to be in cattle cars soon? or are you talking peaceful demographic replacement? Those are 2 very different kinds of "genocide".

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats