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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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There is something I uniquely hate about using “radical wing” as a term. It’s just feels like you are implying they are crazy people.

In Europe the right is rising. But I don’t like calling them “radical”, they would be normies for most of history. Today’s neoliberal establishment of “open borders” were the radicals until about 1980. I feel like labeling something radical is just means to lazily call a side as not worth considering their ideas.

At some point all the political groups have been the establishment and in power. Even the Pride and a lesser extent the pedophiles found themselves in the establishment since 2020 but were far outside of it in 2000.

Especially when the "radical fringe" are actually the majority: https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/192912?context=8#context

For me, it's "extreme/ist/ism." It's the dumbest and most obvious boo-light ever ("anti-abortion extremists! open borders extremists! Tea Party extremism! Extreme political views!"). Extreme relative to what, exactly? I think its use could have been slightly (but only slightly) more excusable a century or so ago when there was a broader social and political consensus, but now those words are just used to exploit the lingering but fast fading memory of Normal and Decent Times in the minds of inattentive readers.

I also hate the term centrists which some people like to claim. It comes off as people who want to claim they are moderate, but I guess I think it can only be has no opinion. The Overton window moves so if you are a centrists I guess you are a npc. Wherever the window is at the moment you’re in the middle. I don’t think it would be a popular political philosophy if you explained it like that.

De Boer might be the only one who actually fits the radical label. But only in the American context. That is the establishment in a few places. I’d probably label him a failed ideology over radical (might even be a maximizing ideology in an AI world since the price system might be replaceable).

If America didn’t have black people Bernie Sanders would probably be the dead center of American politics. And that might actual be the short term utility maximizing position (I think bad for growth, but homogenous tribes like sharing much more with each other).