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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27864 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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I'm not always great at predictions and have a general tendency to catastrophize, but mark me down for this being the end of a good portion of the people who live in America playing nice. Stealing the election was one thing, that's practically an American tradition, but this is unchartered territory

This is like the mirror inverse of "this will be the end of Trump's campaign, says increasingly nervous man for the seventh time this year".

"Now, this time it's no more mr. nice guy!" Yeah, uh huh. Sure thing.

The only way that would actually work is if the right had a leader who had a clear vision for seizing power and was able to issue clear marching orders. J6 showed Trump really doesn't know what he's doing on that front. He wants something to happen, but he lacks the institutional capacity to do much more than simply lash out at random.

I should have been much more clear that I meant things like not tipping as much or returning their shopping carts, your point is very well taken (and also correct).

I do however think this is the 'this time' for a pretty good chunk of the country where they will decide everything sucks and 'quiet quit'

If the ultimate result of all the Trump drama is the end of tipping culture, that will make it worth it all.

A sentiment which I endorse 100%.

Fair enough.

"Last thing they did was tolerable, but current thing is beyond the pale!" seems like an ever-popular rhetorical device on all sides.

Things have always been horrible and will forever continue to be so in novel-seeming but probably recurring ways. We just get used to what we've already witnessed.

It tended to be a common rhetorical device in countries which actually slid into violence too.

Yeah, the punchline to Hrazdka's garbage person thesis is that you just need a few morons around hearing "current thing is beyond the pale!" at the wrong time, maybe thinking the wrong type of protest is Actually Allowed, and then whoops dozens or hundreds of deaths, and then it's too late for the pebbles to vote.

garbage person thesis

I'm familiar with the person, but not the thesis; do you have an explanation or a link handy?

I don't think he's written too much on it in one place, but basically this: a large portion of extremists (and especially violent extremists) are just generally miserable and unlikable (and "jarringly Not a Normal Person"), lashing out in an unstable emotional spasm rather than any serious plan (and sometimes with little real connection to their ideological alignment, to the extent they even have rather than wear ideological alignments).

They're extremely dangerous individually, despite or because of all that, but it's mostly important in how little they're tied to actual concrete positions or principles; the 'real' motivating factors are more Travis Bickle Lost His Job and the manifesto's are excuses.

Thank you! I think I partially buy that. The group I knew that became "radicalized" was partially deeply unhappy people who finally found something that they didn't have to ( = weren't told to) be unhappy for feeling good about, and partially people whose ethics had atrophied from disuse and chose instead to maintain social ties by mimicking whatever was in fashion. I'd only worry about violence from the more unstable members of the first part.

That already happened, on January 6. It turns out the state has the capacity to deal with it without much effort.

Yep. Before J6, I literally argued that the Red Tribe side at least wouldn't be riots, and that was a mistake, and I'm not gonna make the mistake of arguing that they'll keep managing to avoid killing people if it happens again.

Just because it'll slide into violence doesn't mean the people who have morons going first violent will win, or even that they won't be the ones most of the violence, in the long run, is aimed at.

B5 fan?

This week's feeling more like a Lando Mollari thing than a Kosh one, but yes.

Blood calls out for blood if we are quoting Londo.

Yeah, that's a good deal of what I'm worried about.

I don't disagree, and this was worth a hearty chuckle, you got me good.

But still. Trump is this weirdly out-of-history figure that has a power all to his own. His name was synonymous with success before he ran for president, and his running for president had been in the popular conscious for decades, and he 'picked the crown out of the gutter' with some very low hanging fruit (they have to go back, etc) and now he's going to Rikers Island.

Napoleon asked the army who was supposed to arrest him if they would really sink to shooting their own emperor, and they said no, we'll fight with you instead. Sometimes things do happen

You seem to be arguing that it's a barber pole. I'm pretty sure it's not a barber pole. There is going to be significantly less trust in our institutions six months from now than there was six months ago. Political division and social polarization will be significantly worse. There's a pretty clear trend here, and sooner or later that trend is going to run out of road.

There is going to be significantly less trust in our institutions six months from now than there was six months ago.

Again, "the institutions" don't need "trust," they only need obedience. And to get that, you need only escalate punishments for disobedience until every single person is either compliant or dead.

Political division and social polarization will be significantly worse.

So what? Increasing division and distinction between the two sides doesn't change which one is vastly stronger than the other, and thus which tribe is pretty much guaranteed to triumph.

There's a pretty clear trend here, and sooner or later that trend is going to run out of road.

And at the end of that road, the triumphant Blues completely erase the Red Tribe (as a culture) from the earth forever.

Edit: as further support, I'd like to add this quote from Michael Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority:

I have suggested in this chapter that human beings come equipped with strong and pervasive pro-authority biases that operate even when an authority is illegitimate or issues illegitimate and indefensible commands. As we have see, individuals confronted with the demands of authority figures are liable to feel an almost unconditional compulsion to obey, and this may prompt them to look for explanations for why the authority is legitimate and why they are morally required to obey. People often defer instinctively to those who wield power, and there are even cases in which people emotionally bond with others (such as kidnappers) who hold great but completely unjustified power over them, adopting the perspective and goals of those who hold the power. Once a pattern of obedience has started, the need to minimize cognitive dissonance favors continued obedience and the adoption of beliefs that rationalize the authority’s commands and one’s own obedience to them. Due to a general status quo bias, once a practice or institution becomes established in some society, that practice is likely to be viewed by members of that society, almost automatically, as normal, right, and good.

None of this by itself shows that existing political institutions are illegitimate. But it strongly suggests that they would be widely accepted as legitimate even if they were not. Theories of authority devised by political philosophers can plausibly be viewed as attempts to rationalize common intuitions about the need for obedience, where these intuitions are the product of systematic biases.

You seem to be arguing that it's a barber pole. I'm pretty sure it's not a barber pole.

I'm not even sure what the barber pole represents.

It's the election theft being discounted as a minor offence compared to yonder verdict that prompted my comment.

not even sure what the barber pole represents.

Shorthand for something that's always arriving and never arrives. See also: Shephard Tone.

I'm arguing that this pattern does arrive. People react to each successive event differently. At each event, some portion lose faith in the system. I'm saying they don't appear to get it back, and so the portion gets larger over time, driving the increasing extremism of our political culture. At some point, that portion hits critical mass, and then things go badly. We will be significantly closer to critical mass in six months than we were six months ago.

At some point, that portion hits critical mass, and then things go badly.

And I still have little idea what this is supposed to look like, and everything that's suggested seems rather implausible to me. The only remotely plausible "critical mass" outcome, in my view, is a parallel to the German Peasants' War; and even that requires a level of unrest I find implausible. A bunch of Wacos and Oklahoma Cities — the latter followed by prosecutions and crackdowns — seems more likely.

"Not with a bang, but a whimper" and all that.

Less trust on the right, more trust on the left... but the right is dying, so that's more trust overall.

There is going to be significantly less trust in our institutions six months from now than there was six months ago.

This seems inevitable, sadly. I don't expect fireworks, but I do expect a lot more quiet quitting. Cops stop enforcing the law, people stop joining the military, that sort of thing.

Instead of focusing on what's best for the country, interest groups will fight to get handouts. In fact we're already seeing that with the student loan bailouts.

Cops stop enforcing the law, people stop joining the military, that sort of thing.

So you just replace them with people who will.

I'm reminded of when Curtis Yarvin was on the Good Ol' Boyz podcast some time ago, where he first claimed that he "loves the 'chuds'," but then went on to argue that those same Red Tribe chuds are "worse than Morlocks" because the Eloi at least needed the Morlocks to maintain the machinery that supported their comfortable lifestyles, while "you can be entirely replaced with immigrants and automation," and just who do you think he was talking about warehousing in the Matrix in his "Virtual Option"?

And if you stop working, people eventually stop paying you, and then how do you keep your family fed and a roof over their heads?

Agree. Once you decide the ship really is going down, you stop showing up to fix the leaks and keeping the rudder straight .... and just start looting the supply stocks, picking out your life raft, and hope some ditzy redhead leaves you some room on the door.

My thoughts exactly. Defection may be about to get a lot more popular. I think it did after 2020, too.

Defection may be about to get a lot more popular.

Defection to where, exactly? And why would they want said "defector" anyway?

Defection against the common weal. One's fellow Americans.

Defection against the common weal. One's fellow Americans.

Oh, "defection" in the prisoner's dilemma sense, not "defection" in the "Soviet defecting to America" sense. That makes a little more sense.

But I don't see it mattering all that much, except seeing conditions for the average person decline while elites remain insulated from it all. As other people have noted, one can live a fully "first world" lifestyle in even pretty terrible "third world" countries, provided you're rich enough — the latter gets you cheaper servants, even. So plenty of people at the top will see nothing change even while life continues to get even worse for the rest of us.

Christ, I miss the Cold War

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