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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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On Sunday I speculated that the Dems will use a George Floyd-like psychological operation to increase Democrat turnout in the election. Today, Kamala issued a statement about Sonya Massey, a black woman killed by police whose body cam footage was released recently:

It might be what she's trying to do, but I'm throwing my hat in into it by saying: it's not going to work. I've seen them whipping themselves into a frenzy for BLM2, and it looked very different. There was something hypnotizing about it. They simply do not have the mana for that anymore.

They simply do not have the mana for that anymore.

Hence why they are tapping more lands of color, so to speak.

Dems have plenty Black mana but not enough White mana. Unfortunately for them Trump has "indestructible" and all the exile effects available that can handle him require W instead of B.

Agreed, in fact I don't know that the summer of love would even have been possible without covid as a preamble. The psychological effects of lockdown were crucial to set the stage, to an extent that I don't think anyone actually expected the outcome we saw.

I don't think we're going to see anything even close to that this time around.

The psychological effects of lockdown were crucial to set the stage

That's not it. Don't ask me to define it, but it really is just "mana". There was no shortage of pre-covid insanity - MeToo, Kavanaugh hearings, The Smirkening, various cancellations of people big and small for the high crime of not thinking Trump is Hitler... Back then progressives were all charged up, and ready to go off over the slightest transgression. Now they're spent. They simply will not be able to whip up enough enthusiasm, even going by pre-COVID standards.

It will come down to TikTok and instagram. Dems lost the Twitter stronghold but if they can shill their narrative on TikTok and insta then they can get a momentum going. I think Gaza also reduces the potency of a Floyd-like defining moment. The problem with TikTok is that it’s difficult to gauge how popular a narrative is because everything is feed-specific. There’s not really a hashtag feature that is universally used and the search function is mediocre. There could be a trending narrative among influential voters and we could have no idea!

Dems lost the Twitter stronghold but if they can shill their narrative on TikTok and insta then they can get a momentum going.

Dems tried to shut TikTok down because of all the Gaza footage that was spreading on there, and Gaza is a toxic issue for the dems - their base hates what is going on but their donors and organisational leadership support everything that's happening. They're not going to have a good time on TikTok and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go after it again.

It will come down to TikTok and instagram. Dems lost the Twitter stronghold but if they can shill their narrative on TikTok and insta then they can get a momentum going.

We'll see, but as far as I can tell, progressives seem pretty burned out at the moment. I don't see them throwing themselves into another riot, especially since the last one - and it's consequences - is still fresh in people's memories. They'll at least need to come up with a new topic to whip up a new frenzy about, but I doubt even that would work.

I think an underrated ingredient is the Floyd video just looking unusually bad, meanwhile this is clearly a case of suicide by cop- tragic, but not indicative of nationwide systemic problems.

I'm not seeing it. You can go back to the old CW threads and see the process unfold - the Arbery Shooting, Central Park Karen... and Floyd (there might have been something in between that I forgot). You can see it wasn't anything about that case in particular. If it wasn't Floyd, they'd just keep looking for cases until they had the momentum. The Riots in Kenosha were over arguably the most unsympathetic "victim" you could find, but people rioted over him anyway.

The Riots in Kenosha were over arguably the most unsympathetic "victim" you could find, but people rioted over him anyway.

The Wendy's guy in Atlanta was possibly worse.