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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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Why even have a country if you don't believe in anything except exatly what you want? You are kind of that guy though, you're a boogaloo boy.

  • -12

Why even have a country if you don't believe in anything except exatly what you want?

The point of a country is cooperation to secure the common good. This doesn't work if, as in our present circumstance, we collectively can't agree on the common good. It's not about getting exactly what "I" or "we" want. It's about whether or not there's a rational basis for believing cooperation is possible. With regard to the Constitution, such a belief is no longer rational, and it doesn't seem to me that it can be recovered, because the evolution of our Constitutional understanding is necessarily path-dependent. The arguments that worked before, worked because at the time we hadn't seen their long-term results. We have seen those results, so they won't work again.

You are kind of that guy though, you're a boogaloo boy.

If you say so. What follows?

You want violent confrontation to bend others to your will, hoping for collapse for some excitiment, and are dissatisfied when things are going ok.

You want violent confrontation to bend others to your will

No, I want me and mine to be left alone to live in peace. I'm happy for offer the same to others. That's just not the direction we appear to be heading in.

hoping for collapse for some excitement

How'd you feel about watching the police station burn?

and are dissatisfied when things are going ok.

Things are generally not "going okay". It's possible that they'll get somewhat better, and it's also possible that they'll get a whole lot worse. Even the worse outcomes are preferable to living at the mercy of people who hate myself, my tribe and my family, though.

On the topic at hand, I think my argument is pretty solid. The court exists to limit the scale of conflict, but it is failing to do that. If you think the Court is important, this should concern you.

I just told you not to do this.

You said what you said, he responded, and now you're just repeating yourself. If you want to engage with someone on why they think they way they do, actually engage them, don't just sneer at them.

He asked what follows, that is what follows. The dude self identifies as a violent radical.

You cannot simply say this isn't working.

What's the alternative?

Radical federalism or large-scale violence, one imagines, but we will be free of each other, one way or the other. Society requires coherent values. That can be accomplished by all the blues sorting themselves into blue areas ruled by blue laws, and all the reds sorting themselves into red areas ruled by red laws, and the two areas generally leaving each other alone. Alternatively, it can be accomplished by not having a society any more. Those seem the most likely outcomes, and I obviously prefer the sorting one. I think you should as well.

It's possible I'm wrong, of course, and time will tell. Given that this is a massively-multiplayer game, though, I'm skeptical as to how long the waiting can really last before things break one way or the other.

Society requires coherent values.

Does it? Or does it just require sufficient force to keep the cork in the bottle?

The rhetorical point is well-taken, but if this is a genuine question that you're interested in discussing, I'd invite you to offer an answer to the questions posed in this comment.

There is one more. The small, radical, defiant bits of Red Tribe are crushed by main force, the way the stupider parts of it were crushed on January 6. The rest is basically oppressed and shrinks away as its children defect to Blue, with the tactic or explicit approval of their parents. Any Red Triber who becomes defiant is kept in check by other Red Tribers, partially for fear they'll bring Blue's wrath upon themselves, but mostly because Red accepts Blue's legitimacy as long as they hold the institutions with the correct names (by hook or by crook, it doesn't matter).

Can I ask you to try reading some right wing literature from the late 80s, early 90s? They were also convinced that things couldn't keep getting worse and more degenerate, and that a glorious revolution would happen soon.

They were wrong.

I'm always up for reading, but I did in fact read a fair amount of 80s and 90s right-wing literature in the 90s themselves. I remember quite well the triumphalism of Bush's election in 2000, and the bellicose swagger post-9/11, and how it all went straight to shit in short order, because I lived through it directly. I'm aware of the intellectual failings of Conservatism as a movement, and to the extent that I hope for political solutions at all, those hopes are not based on what is commonly understood by the term "Conservatism". Also, I am neither expecting nor predicting a "Glorious Revolution".

One of our first conversations was about whether you would push a certain button. You said you would, because you wish that button existed. I would not, because I know that button exists, and further that, in a manner of speaking, a small but steadily-increasing number of those buttons gets mailed out to random addresses every day. Against all expectations, I'm hoping that things will somehow calm down before someone decides to press one of them, but if things don't calm down a press seems inevitable. And in the end, I'm okay with that; as a matter of personal inclination, I much prefer this flag to this one.

This is too antagonistic - don't just throw personal attacks like this.

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