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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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While I like Scott's article and agree with his position in principle as someone who is pro-civilization, I also like confuciouscorndog's position. Both of them have a good point, but at the end of the day it's a tempest in a teacup by people who are arguing about something that's existed (as Scott admits) for a very, very long time.

This problem will be with us forever. Campaigning for fairness, even though fairness doesn't exist in the real world, always comes across as sour grapes by those currently suffering the business end of the jackboot.

There is no solution. As long as society exists in any meaningful form, and consists of people that we can reasonably consider human, these societies will always self-curate to throw out undesirables, no matter who they are, what they do, or what they provide. "Canceling" has taken many forms through history - if losing your job, home and having your livelihood destroyed is the worst of it I'd consider those bullets mere grazes, even if they weren't sufficiently dodged. The same impulse could go straight to old-school Americana lynchings or ME fundamentalist Islam beheadings.

America gets around this a lot of the time by self-segregation of societies. Red and blue states, yadda yadda. Blue gets more blue red gets more red as people self-select into the societies they fit into.

Solution is the same as it always is; don't be an undesirable in the eyes of those with power. Frequent software updates to stay on top of who's it's okay to despise in your particular society are recommended for personal security reasons. Last I heard the progressive stack are still squabbling over TERFs, they'll consider Trump ascendant a boon because it'll get them to stop bitching at each other for five minutes for the daily orange man bad prayer.