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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28015 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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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.

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