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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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I wonder how they square their purview with the most successful, the most attractive, and the most effective people being so uniformly leftist.

Since when? I searched "left wing people more attractive" and instead the top three results were this:

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29355104/

Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican.

2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-politics/201803/science-weighs-in-conservatives-look-better

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/10/conservatives-really-are-better-looking-research-says/

And you know it has to be a significant effect if even the more left-wing academic establishment can't help but acknowledge it so strongly.

As for the more/most effective and successful people being leftists... Wouldn't society in that case be, you know, actually genuinely more leftist? Instead of only superficially "leftist" (that is, woke) in the exact ways that serve to attack the White middle class that is the hardest to control and could be the biggest threat to the elite, while absolutely preserving the power of that same highly conservative (in the sense of how they've increasingly become more and more paranoid and reactionary about any protests against their power, no matter how mild, for example J6) military-intelligence-corporate-media elite?

While I do disagree with leftists strongly and think they're basically wrong about everything, I will still give them enough to credit to acknowledge that they are completely correct when they say that true leftism is not woke capitalism wearing its skinsuit, a rainbow-colored Raytheon logo and a few black women put in sinecure positions at Wells Fargo.

That the proponents of [useful idiotism of the decade] (not just wokeism, but in general) got played into providing the most convenient ideology at the time for their masters to maintain a narrative of control does not mean that [useful idiotism of the decade] is the inherent ideology of masters, even for the moment. True masters are flexible and adopt any ideology that suits their advantage at a particular moment, which is why governance design is so important. If it suddenly became more advantageous/unavoidable for the most influential supporters of woke these days to become literal national socialists, at least 90% of them (probably way more) would convert overnight. (This is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they're "true believers" too. They can be that to some degree too and still be willing to betray their truly believed ideology pretty quickly too, because humans are good at rationalization, especially again those flexible master types.)

I should have couched it more: I consider a weakness of BC's argument to be its reductiveness. If 1999 was the peak of human civilization, consider how "poorer" in possessions and quality of life people were in '89; '79; '69; etc. Also consider how families shrunk from each preceding decade. It doesn't take long before you find dozen-kid families in destitute households. Civilization marched on, it got better. We're not looking at the thing itself. Those modern households at question: generally single mothers, generally non-white, or if white, black children, 3/4+ kids--we're seeing social questions in divorces, children out of wedlock, and especially children from multiple fathers, and we're seeing governmental issues in their voting, where to leftist politicians, are described most congruently with reality when called "bought." We're looking at the consequence, or asset or vassal of the thing, when this is the framing. It is reductive, so I presented an opponent's hypothetical reductive response. Yes, as fitness has been labeled by eminently foolish leftist mouthpieces as at best "right-wing" and at worst (to them, they know not what they say) "fascist", physical fitness and "traditional", insofar as it's genetic, beauty standards are being conditioned into the masses as rightist. The right embraces this for obvious reasons, they're being freely given the easiest image W. The Soviets were very interested in fitness so I expect it will be remembered by history as quite the mistake when the American left decided on tolerating and more encouraging fatness as an angle for political power. Short of pathology or actual brain-hacking, there is not enough time or words in the world to make the average guy think of "placeholder excessively overweight woman celebrity" as more attractive than say, Sydney Sweeney.

I'm glad you brought up the question of "leftist" governance. One of the most insidious rhetorical tricks communists pulled (and there are many, as they are typified by such) was the invention of the concept of the "Lib-Left." Leftism is an inherently authoritarian ethos and this is evidenced by a simple looking at history. Since Marx, there has been no leftist political movement anywhere in the world that achieved majority power on the promise and subsequent delivery of a reduction in size of government. Leftism in all circumstances, again when in majority power, invariably strengthens itself. A state that seizes a child to trans them has identical spiritual power to the Soviets seizing Kulak land. In creating "Lib-Left" the trick was cemented with the two-axis political spectrum, thereby allowing leftists to deny any governance as left unless it were economically left, ie avowedly communist. Thus, all governments that failed to achieve communist utopia could be labeled "Auth-Left" and/or "not real communism", or even "Auth-Right", as everyday leftists were free to continue beating their drums in support of the most evil ideology ever conceived by man. We're swiftly approaching the final dissolution of political rhetoric into purely friend/enemy distinction, and I hope just as much that we are swiftly approaching the end of rightist political discourse entertaining the two-axis premise. Or at least until a new two-axis spectrum is likely conceived, but this one without the communist framing. To repeat just to be clear: I reject leftist framing as leftism requiring communist economic policy; leftism is about a powerful state, and the American state is very powerful indeed.

I'm glad you brought up the question of "leftist" governance. One of the most insidious rhetorical tricks communists pulled (and there are many, as they are typified by such) was the invention of the concept of the "Lib-Left." Leftism is an inherently authoritarian ethos and this is evidenced by a simple looking at history. Since Marx, there has been no leftist political movement anywhere in the world that achieved majority power on the promise and subsequent delivery of a reduction in size of government. Leftism in all circumstances, again when in majority power, invariably strengthens itself. A state that seizes a child to trans them has identical spiritual power to the Soviets seizing Kulak land. In creating "Lib-Left" the trick was cemented with the two-axis political spectrum, thereby allowing leftists to deny any governance as left unless it were economically left, ie avowedly communist. Thus, all governments that failed to achieve communist utopia could be labeled "Auth-Left" and/or "not real communism", or even "Auth-Right", as everyday leftists were free to continue beating their drums in support of the most evil ideology ever conceived by man. We're swiftly approaching the final dissolution of political rhetoric into purely friend/enemy distinction, and I hope just as much that we are swiftly approaching the end of rightist political discourse entertaining the two-axis premise. Or at least until a new two-axis spectrum is likely conceived, but this one without the communist framing. To repeat just to be clear: I reject leftist framing as leftism requiring communist economic policy; leftism is about a powerful state, and the American state is very powerful indeed.

While I agree that leftism tends toward authoritarianism (and that "leftist libertarians" are mostly liars or useful idiots who would immediately be purged after their precious revolution, as seen in basically every leftist revolution in human history), I still disagree that this means that all authoritarianism is leftism. To me authoritarian leftism (at least in the sense of the leaders being genuinely more true believerish in leftism, or at least very credibly willing to signal that) still looks more like Mao Zedong or Stalin than the present American regime (which isn't to say that the present American regime isn't resembling those two more and more lately, but still). Though wokeism is a variety or at least an offshoot of leftism, and though it has infected the present regime to a significant degree and increasingly root and branch, I still feel that it's not quite absolutely embedded or fundamental enough to make leftism the absolute defining context of the present American regime yet (though it is absolutely of course still far more left-wing than right-wing). That is, regime hasn't quite entirely abandoned its military/bureaucracy coup on liberal, small government republic origins enough yet. (This is shown by the fact that it was willing to jettison wokeism in military advertising to try to achieve better recruitment numbers, which it couldn't do if it was its entire legitimacy narrative and raison d'ĂȘtre. You would have never seen the Soviet Union go "Hey we're gonna relax on this whole socialism thing." to try to boost contributions to the Red Army, because in their whole political formula, the army only exists to defend socialism in the first place and without it there's nothing worth protecting.)