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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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White Dudes for Harris

It should be remembered that it was the Democrat party that broke the ice on invoking White Identity Politics directly to muster political support. The Republican party has only ever used proxy rhetoric like "they have to come legally" or "tough on crime", but looking at the recent Convention it's clear the Republican strategy is to go for the Big Tent rather than directly appeal to white voters. It's the Harris campaign that makes the direct appeal to white men, and you would not see an event like this hosted within the Republican party.

This is another indication that we're probably over the hill of Peak Woke that a white identity is acknowledged in a non-critical context:

“There is an epidemic amongst men in this country,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who helped organize the call, told The Hill.

“That loneliness, that anxiety, that disconnection, it gets filled by something. And what Republicans have done an incredible job of, depressingly so, is creating a permission structure that makes it very easy for white men to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace MAGA culture, to embrace this sort of devolution of our politics into something much more crass,” he continued. ...

Nellis, on the other hand, argued that Democrats have been too quick in the past to give up on constituencies that seem out of reach, like rural voters and white male voters.

“We should be fighting for every inch and damn sure know that the Republicans do that. They communicate with every constituency that they can win, lose, or draw,” Nellis said.

“If we could move even a fraction of white men and get them to a place where they feel comfortable with being a part of the multicultural movement that is the Democratic Party, as imperfect as it is a lot of days, that would change our politics dramatically and so much for the better.”

That's a huge shift in messaging from just a few years ago in the midst of the Floyd riots.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-weird-republicans-strange-bizarre-democrats-b2589514.html

Why calling Trump ‘weird’ is freaking Republicans out

Democrats have started pointing out just how strange the former president and his ilk really are. Ryan Coogan explains why this could be the thing that finally gets under his skin – and might help win Kamala Harris the White House

Pure cope and seethe

Tbh I think the use of weird itself is a failure. All of the things they tried in the past — policies, threat to democracy, Project 2025, the economy, etc. have been neutralized more or less. Calling a candidate a threat to democracy after he’s been shot opens them up to charges of poisoning the discourse with violence. Trump isn’t behind P2025, so when they start that, he can simply say “I have nothing to do with that.” Policies don’t work either because most of what Biden Harris tried to do either failed or were unpopular. The economy is a huge loser for Harris because millions of people struggle to afford groceries and wistfully remember the Trump era as the era of cheap food, gas, housing and low unemployment. What’s left is “weird”, up to and including Vance apparently humping a couch. And I just don’t see that landing because it’s a fundamentally unserious accusation that betrays the fact that they have nothing serious to offer. It’s basically an admission of inferiority “look, I know I don’t have many accomplishments, and I know my ideas are unpopular, but those guys are weird and I’m a normal person.”

Coming from the left, I also find this intentional, cynical attempt to negatively label opponents as "weird" rather unfortunate. We've been celebrating weirdos and weirdness, using those exact words, for at least the past 3 decades, probably more. It was part of an explicit effort to raise the status of people who were denigrated by society for not being normal enough, by associating the term with positivity.

And now, it seems that a significant portion of the Democratic machine has turned on a dime to say weirdness is bad, actually, and it's the other guys who are weird, not us. It'd be one thing if these were just off-hand comments here and there, since "weird" still retained a colloquial negative meaning, but the way so many people coalesced around the term within an instant (I personally doubt there was any conscious intentional coordination around the term, which actually makes it worse) is something else. It's got the same energy as "I'm so grateful to the Party for raising our chocolate rations despite our ongoing war against Eurasia."

Coming from the left, I also find this intentional, cynical attempt to negatively label opponents as "weird" rather unfortunate. We've been celebrating weirdos and weirdness, using those exact words, for at least the past 3 decades, probably more. It was part of an explicit effort to raise the status of people who were denigrated by society for not being normal enough, by associating the term with positivity.

Not really. It appeared that way. But in fact, it wasn't. Instead, there were a bunch of shell games played with the words and the referents. Now "weird" no longer referred to "people denigrated by society for not being normal enough", but instead to "people celebrated by society". And the group of people who were actually denigrated by society changed, from e.g. homosexuals to conservative white men (referred to as "squares" in an earlier iteration). Some groups moved in and out, e.g. male "nerds" were first in, and then moved back out as the culture war progressed. Th left going back to the original label used by their longtime opponents looks strange, but it isn't a difference in kind.

but those guys are weird and I’m a normal person

It also doesn't help the online right has just returned the charge with pictures of a Biden cabinet members surrounded by people in dog masks, Harris with a drag queen (or possibly a clearly non-passing trans woman in woman coded dress), etc etc. It is very difficult to celebrate "queer identities" and then call your opponents "weird" when they are, at least publicly quite normie, (with exceptions of Trump's bombastic used car salesman style speeches, which are at least "normal" in the cultural context of people being used to used car salemen).

This is a simple "Only Nixon can go to China" moment. White people have plenty in common with each other groups don't, and America is diverse enough today that if you were to hold a generic "Men for Harris", a very large portion wouldn't be white. White men organizing with each other and enjoying each other's company is a natural organizational unit. But I agree it was held down until now because of progressivism- white men organizing together, even for a progressive cause, would've been too reminiscent of persona non grata groups like the Nazis and KKK.

Today, peak wokeness has passed, and it's now possible for white men to organize. But only for progressive causes, otherwise again it'd invoke too many parallels with some of the most hated groups in American history. Like how no one else but Nixon could go to China, or it'd be too suspicious they could be a commie sympathizer.

I expect wokeness will continue to decline, as people who were willing to give critical race theory the benefit of the doubt see with their own eyes that it's bunk.

The Dems didn't come close to invoking "White Identity Politics" here. What part of the "white dudes for Harris" program said "white people have distinct interests which will be advanced by a Harris administration"? Because if there was one, I missed it.

First up was Jeff Bridges, who joined the stream from a computer chair locked to a deep recline. (“I’m white, I’m the Dude, and I’m for Harris,” he said. “A woman president. How exciting!”)

"You white guys should vote for Harris because she isn't one of you, and thus deserves honors and offices. And besides, we all know that your actual policy wants and needs are never going to be addressed, so why not vote for novelty?"

Then into the rotation went the perpetually nerdy Pete Buttigieg, who did a decent job eschewing his typical didactic, policy-only instincts to match the giddy energy of the moment. (“Men are more free when the leader of the free world supports access to birth control,” said Buttigieg, a sentiment I read as extending the olive branch toward Barstool listeners.)

"You white guys have to vote for Harris because if you don't, other, more important interest groups will screech at you about not getting their way."

Josh Groban followed, helming a contingency of pleasantly washed-up entertainment industry veterans: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Hamill, Josh Gad, and Sean Astin, the latter of whom shared a charming story about the power of nontoxic men’s groups.

"You white guys are completely outmoded and obsolete, but there's a modern program to make you less like your icky selves, and part of that is voting for Harris."

Threaded between them were the likes of J.B. Pritzker and Tim Walz—two progressive, vanilla-pale Midwestern governors—who saluted men who look exactly like them. “When I’m invited to an event called White Dudes for Harris … it doesn’t sound like something I’d usually join, but this is a great cause,” said Pritzker, in one of the more honest moments of the evening.

"I wouldn't normally be caught dead with the likes of you asshats; I actually have to hold on to power and influence. But if you're willing to support me and my causes I guess I won't actively turn you away!"

One of the more interesting aspects about the White Dudes for Harris stream was how all the speakers resisted the desire to scold or lecture the assembled Caucasians about the many, many world-historic crimes they have unleashed upon the face of the earth. The tone was positive and empathetic, confident that white men are capable of goodness—a departure, I think, from the hectoring morality that would go on to doom the momentum of Clinton’s 2016 campaign. The opportunity to extinguish MAGAdom is so enticing that it has purged one of the most self-sabotaging inclinations in the American liberal’s coalition: the fractious adjudication of identity that can too often become a priority over winning elections. The White Dudes for Harris cause grows stronger every day. We are cringe, but we are free.

"You white guys are the forever accursed and attainted children of Cain, a plague of locusts upon all you see! However, if you repent of your heinous sin, abase yourself before the holy Other, and give the proper obeisance and indulgences, then for the moment we will refrain from actively condemning you!"

“Men are more free when the leader of the free world supports access to birth control,” said Buttigieg, a sentiment I read as extending the olive branch toward Barstool listeners.

Would've been too on the nose to have anyone else saying that, wouldn't it?

Non-tradcons might regard this as distasteful, but it's doubtful that anyone who's willing to agree with democrats about birth control/abortion is going to consider the full implications of that statement.

I dont think its a shift at all. Its simply the left employing their usual tactic where when they do a thing its good, but if the right does a thing it is bad. Somebody probably can recall the exact vocab word but its slipping my mid right now

I don't think any of these exactly apply here, but there's

Celebration parallax: "A fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it" or on what normative inferences are drawn from it.

Law of Merited Impossibility: roughly, "That won't happen, and boy are you going to deserve it when it does", which leads to the

Law of Salutary Contradiction: "That's not happening and it's good that it is."

Celebration parallax thats the one!

"(D)ifferent when we do it"

I think the term you’re looking for is “Russell conjugations””.

I think the term you’re looking for is “Russell conjugations””.

That is the broad term, but there is a more specific one I think someone used here recently that I really liked.

I usually see accusations of that phenomenon phrased as "it's (D)ifferent"

I think a lot of the pushback here and from other rightwing online spaces is way too deep in woke/anti-woke culture war slop to really understand how this sounds to normies.

“White dudes for Harris” is full of normie white guys like The Dude, and the conversation reads to other normies as “hey I’m a white guy, I like Harris, and y’all are having fun. Can I take a break from grilling to come help?” Most white normies just don’t really think much about being white and haven’t had their world view poisoned by weird culture war grievances.

The fact that rightoids can’t help but interpret this as some skirmish in the upcoming race war really gives away the fact that the hypothetical White Men For Trvmp movement is a totally different and more sinister phenomenon that people should be worried about.

  • -21

To me it’s condescending and frankly an insult (nb I’m not a white guy). It’s saying more or less that you’re afraid of being less of a man if you support Harris, but it’s okay because these totally normal white dudes (not men, dudes) are pro Harris. You can support her without turning in your white dude card. That’s really a weird thing to say to someone. It seems to imply that white men are deciding who to support solely on the basis of what other white men would think about them for holding those views and not because they actually believe in things.

Imagine a similar ad of “Black guys for Trump”. You’re black, and you would support Trump, but you’re afraid you’ll be less of a black man if you openly support Trump. And since you base your entire political stance on the public opinions of other black men around you, rather than actually thinking about your opinions, you need us to tell you that it’s okay to like Trump even if you’re a black man.

Yet this very forum had multiple posters saying things like "No self respecting man could vote for Kamala after picturing her kneeling under a mahogany desk." It might be stupid but it's an active line of attack against Kamala and her supporters.

In the context of her political career being largely the result of her sucking dick…when slider made the comment I think k he was disgusted about the literal whore tendencies of the potential future president of the US; not that she was a woman.

I'm not sure why that distinction matters, Kamala is the nominee, she did suck dick to get her first political sinecures from which she brought herself up, that attack is being made against her by her political opponents with a particular veilance towards white men, so the campaign must defend itself by appealing to white men and trying to give them permission to vote for Kamala despite her whorish tendencies without feeling like it excludes them from white masculinity. That's the point I'm making. Whether that attack is being made because she is merely a woman, or because or her sexual past, it's the same strategy and the same defense.

Above @MaiqTheTrue says it's odd to "imply that white men are deciding who to support solely on the basis of what other white men would think about them for holding those views and not because they actually believe in things." But the comments about "no self-respecting man could vote for Kamala because she gave a blowjob" are precisely meant to influence one's vote by implying that others will think less of you for doing so. I'm pointing out that this is a normal, and real, campaign dynamic and not some bizarre condescending fantasy.

For what it's worth, and maybe I'm outing myself as a pig here, given the information I don't think I'd ever vote for a woman who we knew didn't give head. If a woman is such a trad moralist that she thinks oral is a sin, what's she doing out of the kitchen? If a woman is such a stuck up feminist that she thinks it's degrading, I sure don't want that kind of man-hater in the white house. I want a president who gives and takes in her personal relationships.

Where is the 'suck dick' thing coming from? Is it just a shorthand for 'had a relationship with Willie Brown' or is there some specific reference I'm missing?

It's been specifically cited in most of the attacks I've seen against her, and I assume it happened because (as demonstrated below) it's the default. There might be a root story underneath where Brown mentioned it specifically, I don't know, but mostly it's just been the attacks I've seen.

I just found this which suggests the source of this specific attack might be a deceptively edited video where her answer to a question about drinking straws is made to sound as if she's talking about oral:

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-kamala-harris-explicit-get-ahead-cnn-interview-real-1734378

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So basically the entire specific claim that "Kamala Harris is a whore who sucks dicks to get a job" is based only on her having been in a relationship with Willie Brown around the time when she got her first notable job, without a clear quid pro quo of any sort being established even in that case (even though it might be considered generally sus)? And people wonder why this might, in fact, just be considered general misogyny?

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that attack is being made against her by her political opponents with a particular veilance towards white men

I don't think black men (or any colour of women) are particularly favourable towards people that sleep their way to the top? Indeed, white left-ish men might be the most forgiving demographic I could imagine on this issue?

I’m not upset about a woman sucking dick. I’m upset that Kamala was a whore. And no, she didn’t really pull herself up after that. She got institutional backing but wasn’t some superstar California politician. She became VP due to her skin and shape of her genitals. Now she became a nominee without having to go through an election process.

She basically may become president simply because she sucked some dick, wasn’t a complete flop in far left California, and because of her ethnicity and gender. That’s infuriating. I personally know a number of people more qualified.

Yes, I agree. But right wingers will need to thread that needle. They need to specifically criticize her for sleeping her way to the top and avoid criticizing her for being a woman who has (in 2024 America) normal sex. A lot of the messaging I'm seeing doesn't thread that needle and ends up saying: Give a blowjob, then you're a whore who can't be president. Without properly communicating the extra step of: give a blowjob to secure a political job.

The former is very much either a hatred of women or a form of anti sex criticism that is wildly outside the mainstream. The latter is a legitimate moral criticism and raises doubts about her qualifications.

((For reference: 85% of Americans have ever given oral sex, and the percentage doesn't fall below 2/3 until we're looking at those over age 70. It's a normal sex act.))

Besides, a man who quickly rose through the ranks has likely done something less self-degrading, but more venal, such as assisting in a corruption scheme. Why would I prefer him as a leader?

I'm gonna hit the brakes here, sex for promotion is uniquely bad. Imagine a conversation between a supervisor and a subordinate, she hesitates because she doesn't want to ruin her reputation, he says "Nobody cares about that kind of thing, President Harris did it and look at her now!"

The example it would be setting for the country runs exactly opposite of what feminists have been screeching about with MeToo. If asking for sex for giving a promotion is bad, then giving sex in exchange for a promotion is bad.

If asking for sex for giving a promotion is bad, then giving sex in exchange for a promotion is bad.

As a rule, if a proscribed transaction, such as of drugs, takes place, the law doesn't prescribe equal punishment for buyer and seller. This can taken to the extreme to the Swedish Model, according to which, offering benefits in exchange for sex is illegal, but offering sex in exchange for benefits isn't.

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Normies totally think this is weird and mildly concerning, albeit with predictable partisan valence. They don’t think it’s a skirmish in the upcoming race war, just that it’s a bit… off.

Even grill-pilled people are not that ignorant. No one ever says "hey come over to my house and let's grill some steaks, but only bring white people". That's some KKK shit right there, dawg.

Agreed. As i said in last week's thread on the topic, I don't think a lot the posters here really grasp how unpopular IdPol is outside of Academia and Twitter.

I've seen this sort of thing characterized as "Harris appears to be running for President of Reddit rather than President of America".

Highly-relevant Freddie DeBoer piece on that topic.

Feels like it, considering the ideological capture of the big subs' jannies and the governemnt sponsored shilling (for example Eglin Air Force Base)

I hadn't seen that specific formulation before but it does hit the nail on the head.

Again, though, I think this shows a misunderstanding of the character of this event. It’s a “material that is most relevant to white guys” session, not a “whites only” session.

  • -11

Imagine what would transpire if any organization or group, of any nature, that wasn't part of the Democrat/media complex, tried to employ this kind of framing with this rationale. White dudes for Trump. White dudes who like video games. White dudes who knit. White dudes for literally anything other than simping for a nonwhite female Democrat.

The response from the aforementioned complex would be apocalyptic. There would be immediate cancellation efforts accompanied by thinkpieces attempting to delegitimize the idea that "material that is most relevant to white guys" even exists as a category separate from material relevant to anyone else. They would throw a complete hysterical shitfit.

I deadass dare you to opine otherwise with a straight face.

I maintain that this obsession with race is gross and weird. If my guests bring that energy to my next BBQ, I will pointedly change the topic to the local sports team.

I maintain that this obsession with race is gross and weird.

Not just that, but bizarre and definitely not a good look, and, let's be frank, a little creepy too.

They really ought to read the room.

This is the video itself. It's very boring, and I think intentionally not talking about policy and instead is being very vague. I skipped around and it's mostly normal democrat talking points. Healthcare, abortion, protecting democracy, first woman president, MAGA republicans are evil racists who will do mean things (Mayor Pete literally just says "bad things").

Also, first speaker is in favor of an arms embargo on Israel (that's new!). He's also not White. I'm not a fan of this man.

This is more of the same “you’re weird for caring about this/noticing this” when it is very obviously not just a weird coincidence

It should be remembered that it was the Democrat party that broke the ice on invoking White Identity Politics directly to muster political support. The Republican party has only ever used proxy rhetoric like "they have to come legally" or "tough on crime", but looking at the recent Convention it's clear the Republican strategy is to go for the Big Tent rather than directly appeal to white voters.

No one familiar with the histories of the respective parties should be remotely surprised by this. One of the proverbial "big lies" the Blue Tribe likes to tell itself is that the Republican and Democratic Parties of the mid-19th century are somehow fundamentally different entities from the Republicans and Democrats of today. "Read more early American history" they'll sneer while pointedly ignoring the most pertinent elements of said history.

What would become the modern republican party was founded in the late 1850s and explicitly organized as a big tent coalition of regional religious and business interests who were united in their opposition to slavery and support for westward expansion. The specific policies under debate may have changed over the last 170 years or so but this core of aligned religious and business interests along with it's identity and organization as a "big tent" coalition is still plain to see in the contemporary party. It's right there in the colloquial name of "Grand Old Party".

When pressed to defend this radical separation between past and present, the Blue Tribe response is typically something along the lines of "bUt RePuBlIcAnS dUrInG ThE cIvIl WaR wErE tHe PrOgReSiVeS oF tHeIr TiMe". Even if that statement is true i don't think it matters.

Durring the latter half of the 19th century Slavery was defeated, the West was won, and the GOP began to shift from fighting over territory to consolidating and building upon what they had won. In short while the axioms attitudes and identity of the party remained consistant they became "conservatives" in the sense that they were no longer working to overturn the status-quo they were working to maintain it.

Guys like Glenn Reynolds get sneered at by all "right thinking people" for pointing out that "Democrats are the Real Racists" (and always have been) but when lies are the norm, telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.

In the 19th century racial segregation and discrimination was both legal and popular and this is the status quo that "conservative" Democrats fought to defend before they became "progressives" fighting against the status quo.

In the first half of the 20th, the status quo that "Progressive" Democrats like Woodrow Wilson looked to weaken and push back against was that which had been forcibly imposed during reconstruction and subsequently codified in the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments. While the branding may have changed ("safe spaces" replacing "separate but equal") over the last century the position of contemporary "Progressive" has not. They are still fighting for legalized racial discrimination/segregation against a Republican opposition party.

In otherwords, this is not...

...a huge shift in messaging from just a few years ago in the midst of the Floyd riots.

It is a return to thier normal position after the George Floyd riots and associated fallout/backlash forced the pro-IdPol faction of the DNC to backpedal and "hide thier power" for a bit.

My historical read is that it's more that there's a pretty consistent core around the business/national/religious ideologies and goals around the Republican party, connected to a vision of who are "proper Americans" (which continuously expands as new groups assimilate to Americanness), and the Democrats have then been a looser coalition of those that don't quite fit into the Republican vision at the moment. So in 1800s the "opposing coalition" might include states righters, Catholics and classical liberals, now it would include left-wingers, various ethnic minorities and internationalist business types. In the future the Republicans would probably still develop along organic lines, but the Dems might be something else entirely.

I think that is a fairly reasonable and accurate read.

My point is that the core axioms and organizing principles haven't changed much since the reconstruction period.

No one familiar with the histories of the respective parties should be remotely surprised by this. One of the proverbial "big lies" the Blue Tribe likes to tell itself is that the Republican and Democratic Parties of the mid-19th century are somehow fundamentally different entities from the Republicans and Democrats of today. "Read more early American history" they'll sneer while pointedly ignoring the most pertinent elements of said history.

Oh hey, I feel called out.

What would become the modern republican party was founded in the late 1850s and explicitly organized as a big tent coalition of regional religious and business interests who were united in their opposition to slavery and support for westward expansion.

The modern Republican party was formed from the ashes of the Whigs (who were very much a big and incoherent tent of anti-Jacksonians), and eventually accrued some northern Democrats, along with a substantial share of the Know-Nothings. They weren't initially an anti-slavery party (some abolitionists were Democrats, and many Republicans were anti-abolitionist), though they adopted a harder anti-slavery platform because of the Civil War, obviously. (But even during the war, the "Radical Republicans" who wanted complete and total emancipation and civil rights for blacks were the leftist wing of the party that even Lincoln found difficult.)

When pressed to defend this radical separation between past and present, the Blue Tribe response is typically something along the lines of "bUt RePuBlIcAnS dUrInG ThE cIvIl WaR wErE tHe PrOgReSiVeS oF tHeIr TiMe". Even if that statement is true i don't think it matters.

YeS THat iS bAsICalLY CorREcT. How does it not matter?

I am really not following your argument - you flat-out admit that the GOP of the 19th century was very nearly the opposite of the modern GOP, and then say it "doesn't matter" and this is a "Big Lie" that Blue Tribe tells. Where is the lie?

Guys like Glenn Reynolds get sneered at by all "right thinking people" for pointing out that "Democrats are the Real Racists" (and always have been) but when lies are the norm, telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.

Whereas Red Tribe really likes to bring up that the Democratic Party dominated the post-Confederate South and that most KKKers were Democrats, but sneers at the "Southern Strategy" and the great flipping of the Solid South as if it were some kind of myth. If it were not true that most of the people who voted Democrat before Reagan vote Republican now, then where did all those Democratic voters go and where did all the Republican voters come from? Of the few remaining KKKers today, how many do you think vote Democrat? (Note that I am not saying that Republicans are white supremacists or the party of the KKK, but I am definitely saying that the Republicans and Democrats represent cultural roles and political ideologies that are nearly a reverse of their 19th century incarnations. Just saying "Democrats have always been racists - first they were anti-black, now they're anti-white" is a very weak specimen of the "DeMoCRatS arE the ReAL RaCIsTS!" argument.)

If it were not true that most of the people who voted Democrat before Reagan vote Republican now, then where did all those Democratic voters go and where did all the Republican voters come from?

There was, I know it’s hard to believe, a lot of generational churn from the end of the civil rights act to the present. The south wasn’t more Republican than the country as a whole until the nineties and that was probably due to evangelical Christianity, not race. Even until pretty recently, there were conservative southern democrats winning elections regularly. Louisiana had a pro-life democrat in the governors office until 2022. The most conservative democrat in the house was from rural Texas in the most recent congress.

And I think ‘evangelical Christianity is a coverup for racism’ is a convenient narrative on Reddit, but the reality is that non-Catholic organized religion has been pretty Republican for most of America’s history(republicans win Orthodox Jews and won Muslims while this shift was ongoing), and this is more returning to form than anything else(Catholics shifting right has mostly to do with pelvic issues taking front and center). When you look at actual figures who became born again Christians you tend to see a shift away from racism on a personal level, and the SBC(far and away the largest religious body involved) shifted pretty hard away from its racial history when it embraced evangelicalism. And clinching Republican control over the south was, well, in a lot of cases going on while bush was playing hard to the evangelical base.

Oh hey, I feel called out.

Maybe a little, but you are not the only one nor the most egregious.

The modern Republican party was formed from the ashes of the Whigs (who were very much a big and incoherent tent of anti-Jacksonians), and eventually accrued some northern Democrats, along with a substantial share of the Know-Nothings...

None of this contradicts the claim that...

What would become the modern republican party was founded in the late 1850s and explicitly organized as a big tent coalition of regional religious and business interests who were united in their opposition to slavery and support for westward expansion...

In fact Pam from The Office might even say that they are the same picture.

YeS THat iS bAsICalLY CorREcT. How does it not matter?

It doesn't matter for the reasons I go into in the following paragraphs. To answer your question, "the big lie" is that the underlying axioms and organizational principles of the respective parties today are fundamentally different from what they were before. That the parties today are somehow "the reverse" of what they were in the 19th century. Where as the truth is that the positions of parties never changed, what changed was the status quo.

Whereas Red Tribe really likes to bring up that the Democratic Party dominated the post-Confederate South and that most KKKers were Democrats, but sneers at the "Southern Strategy" and the great flipping of the Solid South as if it were some kind of myth.

It is a myth, the so called "Southern Strategy" is another one of those "Big Lies". Contra the popular narrative Nixon didn't win the 68 election by inviting segregationists into the fold. He won because the Democrats ended up splitting their votes between Wallace and Humphrys and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle found themselves suddenly receptive to Nixon's appeals to "Law-and-order" in the immediate aftermath of MLK's assassination and the associated race riots. Why current year Democrats might want to sweep these associations under the rug is left as an excercise for the reader.

where did all the Republican voters come from?

Reagan won a supermajority by making an effort to appeal to working class Democrats and blacks in addition to the existing Republican base.

A cynic might even suggest that Reagan's success in this endeavor explains both the Democratic party's abandonment of labour-based principals and the increasingly "populist" tenor of the GOP.

I don't think Nixon invited segregationists into the fold and the Republicans suddenly became the party of the KKK. I think Republicans became right wing when they used to be progressive, and Democrats became left wing when they used to be... well, not really conservative but certainly more appealing to cultural conservatives.

The Republicans became the party of conservatives and the Democrats became the party of progressives - which was essentially a reversal of their previous roles. Someone who voted Republican in the 1850s would probably vote Democrat today, and vice versa. Obviously direct comparisons are not going to fit exactly (an 1850s voter wouldn't even understand many of our issues, and many things that were important in the 1850s aren't now). Perhaps it's simplistic to say they simply traded places, but their "axioms and organizing principles" absolutely changed, and in many cases were reversed.

As far as I can tell, your objection to the "myth" (which it is not) that Republicans and Democrats have changed and come to represent very different constituencies (which party attracted black voters from after the Civil War and which party attracted the working class throughout most of the 20th century) is that you'd really like to keep hanging racism around the Democrats' necks, and they'd really like to claim Republicans are now the party of racists. Both arguments are tactical political ones but neither addresses what actually historically changed.

Perhaps it's simplistic to say they simply traded places, but their "axioms and organizing principles" absolutely changed, and in many cases were reversed.

...and I don't think that this claim is borne out by the historical record.

The Republican Party of the late 1800s is a big tent coalition organized around a core of aligned religious and business interests and that remains a fairly accurate description of the Republican Party today. This along with the fact a man like William McKinley (with his rhetoric about unskilled immigration is driving wages down, and advocacy for higher tariffs and lower taxes to promote investment in American business) is not only immediately recognizable as "Republican" within the context of the contemporary parties but surprisingly relevant for someone who's been dead for over 120 years, is strong evidence against the claim that the party's axioms and organizing principles have changed significantly in the intervening years.

I do wonder, did civil war-era Americans even use the "left" and "right" labels? I know that the terminology originated in the French Revolution, so there's no reason they couldn't have, but I haven't heard them used in that context.

I do wonder, did civil war-era Americans even use the "left" and "right" labels?

No. They mostly identified with their party, or occasionally used words like "radical" or other slang terms of the day. I don't think "right/left" became common political labels in the US until the 20th century.

If it were not true that most of the people who voted Democrat before Reagan vote Republican now, then where did all those Democratic voters go and where did all the Republican voters come from?

Exactly. People change their party affiliations over time. Parties change their platforms over time. Ascribing a consistent principled philosophy to a political party, a group that is a Ship of Theseus in both membership and in ideas, is a fool's errand. It would be more accurate to treat the parties as brand new groups every election. Republicans_1984 is not Republicans_2024. And criticizing a party based on the platforms of past parties that share the same name is invalid. It was different people and a different platform.

I don't think you're completely wrong, especially in the mind of the average voter.

sneers at the "Southern Strategy" and the great flipping of the Solid South as if it were some kind of myth.

To the extent that "Southern Strategy" is frequently hung on Richard Nixon in the '72, election, I think it's relevant that he carried every state except Massachusetts and DC: it's not like he needed the South to win the election. Which is doubly ironic to me given the entire Watergate fiasco.

If it were not true that most of the people who voted Democrat before Reagan vote Republican now, then where did all those Democratic voters go and where did all the Republican voters come from?

If nothing else, I think any voters in '84 (the last opportunity to vote for Reagan) are at least very close to retirement now. The average Reagan voter is almost certainly dead.

That the "southern strategy" gets hung on Nixon is one of the ways you can tell that its a lie. Current year Democrats are capital-D Desperate to erace Wallace and the dixiecrats from the popular consciousness lest anyone start asking akward questions.

As Democrats, no, we're really not. We're happy to say unfortunately, when this was more of a racist country, unfortunately due to historical political ties, there was a very odd alliance of African-American's, unions, and racists. Thankfully, we eventually forced them out of the coalition thanks to the works of great men like Hubert Humphrey and so on, but unfortunately for the country, instead of casting them out and refusing their support, the Republican's were happy to allow with these racists, and now, that stain has been shifted to them and creating the festering wound that led to Trumpism.

If nothing else, I think any voters in '84 (the last opportunity to vote for Reagan) are at least very close to retirement now. The average Reagan voter is almost certainly dead.

Damn, man, we GenXers may be aging but we ain't dead yet! (Okay, granted the average Reagan voter was probably a Boomer - but they're not all dead yet either.)

Only about 2 years of Gen X would have been eligible to vote for (or against) Reagan.

“There is an epidemic amongst men in this country,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who helped organize the call, told The Hill.

The "masculinity crisis" is probably down mostly to the traditional foundations of masculine identity, what distinguished it fundamentally from femininity going back several thousand years at least, e.g being physically powerful and being good at killing people/animals are less and less relevant than ever in industrial and post-industrial society and are only going to become more so.

Probably not actually "fixable" short of a Kaczsynskian collapse of civilization and why all proposed solutions whether they be left-wing "build a positive masculinity" stuff or right-wing "retvrn" will fail.

Satiate this with combat sports? A young man might feel generally better if he goes to a martial arts gym twice a week. I sure did.

Nothing has been hit as hard with the istphobe hammer than groups of men trying to compete with each other in physical activity. The horse's mouth will plainly tell you that such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right.

There is even some truth in this, in that such groups of competitive men would eventually tend to build enough rapport to collectively seek their own group interest. And fix society in the process I might add. But there is no world where intersectionals can tolerate such organization if they want to keep power. And so they can't solve this problem.

Literally who cares what anyone else thinks. If society at large is having a masculinity crisis that likely includes many men who speak on TheMotte. Average testosterone levels have dropped dramatically since the 1980s. Frequent time sitting at computers does us no favors in this regard. Taking up a martial art is one of the best things a man can do to counteract this trend. Learning to be cool-headed in direct physical confrontation goes a long way toward establishing an emotional base for further success.

who cares what anyone else thinks

I'm not saying you should not still do it, but you should mind that people are trying to prevent you from doing it. Otherwise you will end up win weird places, asking yourself how that happened. Ask Enrique Tarrio.

By all means grow stronger and more connected as much as you possiblity can. Just don't advertise it to the Eye of Sauron.

Nothing has been hit as hard with the istphobe hammer than groups of men trying to compete with each other in physical activity. The horse's mouth will plainly tell you that such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right.

I am not aware of this being a significant factor at all. Who is saying this and how many people are listening to them?

MSNBC, for one.

The Guardian, for another. Does that count? I understand they're very well left-leaning, but it's atleast a glimpse into what left-leaning individuals are telling each other.

Here's an older opinion article that shows it's not a new trend. A single data point, sure, but a data point is a data point.

Funny enough, this seems to be a theme for her. Here's a much more recent article from the same individual. Money quote: 'The more self-actualised you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people’s problems on their failure to be as healthy as you.' Interesting take, I'll admit.

Was the MSNBC article mocked? Yes. But it's telling it was voiced at all; liberals tend to be more insular with little understanding of how conservatives think. The concerning part isn't wether it's true or not(color me skeptical), the concerning part is that liberals are telling one another that this is a thing.

And the political divide widens.

In the MSNBC article, maybe some dog-whistling there (e.g. "Physical fitness has always been central to the far right.") but that's not the same as saying that "such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right".

The Zoe Williams articles are closer, though it's "more right wing" rather than "white supremacist". (She confesses to having recommended "every activity and pursuit, every wellness wheeze and rejuvenation exercise the modern world has dreamed up.") And I doubt that she is a sufficient influence to stop "A young man [feeling] generally better if he goes to a martial arts gym twice a week." (The original controversial claim by @TIRM.)

My general model of happiness is that it directly or indirectly comes from hard work to pursue goals that are subjectively meaningful. Exercise slows ageing, helps protect against horrific fates like dementia, aids one's sex life (even if partnered) and many other benefits. A major problem, though, is that it's tempting and popular to think that happiness comes from ease and choice, rather than from striving. Happiness from ease and choice is largely an effect of relaxing from mental and/or physical striving...

Huh, that does sound a bit fascist, I admit, but I am happy to agree with fascists on that much.

The MSNBC article has a photoshop of a German youth rally throwing Nazi salutes with the subtitle 'Physical fitness and violent hypermasculinity have always been central to the far right' as a header to said article.

That's less a 'dog whistle' and more an airhorn going off behind you.

You won't hear me argue against the benefits of exercise, though.

The MSNBC article has a photoshop of a German youth rally throwing Nazi salutes with the subtitle 'Physical fitness and violent hypermasculinity have always been central to the far right' as a header to said article.

That's less a 'dog whistle' and more an airhorn going off behind you.

It's association, but association is not always dog whistling. "Punk rock is an important part of skinhead culture" doesn't imply "Punk rock is a skinhead thing."

I think the istphobes are a small and frankly irrelevant faction. They make a lot of "X is racist/white supremacist" articles. But I have as yet to see the consequences in real life. And I work for a woke corporation.

I may be lucky in some sense not being woke-policed too much. Or maybe the median working professional can say he likes going to the gym and practicing jiu-jitsu and no one has a negative word against it. I've never seen pushback outside of loony articles about how being fit is the fascist aesthetic.

You haven't seen pushback because you're not organizing youth clubs around the practice that may have any political salience.

People who do make the connection and actually try to give people structured lives based on this stuff get shellacked in the media. Who can forget what happened to Peterson for suggesting exactly this?

I think that Jordan Peterson was shellacked for things other than "men should be physically active". I am in the UK, not the US, and certainly not in the deep Blue parts of the US where wokestupid dominates the culture, but over here youth sport (for both sexes, and people are entirely comfortable with the fact that you get more natural interest from boys than girls) is a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue and the main reason why we don't get more of it is that it is politically impossible to say no when some idiot says "Did you know that you could divert even more resources from actually providing youth sport to generating a paper trail proving that the parent-volunteers aren't paedophiles?"

It's a matter of the cart and the horse. To achieve what you suggest, it'd first be necessary to socially normalize the practice of groups of young single men banding together and visiting martial arts gyms that exist to serve only them. Which...well, I think you get my point.

The "masculinity crisis" is probably down mostly to the traditional foundations of masculine identity, what distinguished it fundamentally from femininity going back several thousand years at least, e.g being physically powerful and being good at killing people/animals are less and less relevant than ever in industrial and post-industrial society and are only going to become more so.

Except

  1. It isn't. There are lots of jobs where physical strength matters, and they're very gendered male. The trades are male. Some physical jobs that aren't as obviously about strength, like drivers, are also very gendered male.

  2. There's differences that show up in the modern age too. Engineering is predominantly male (though not as male as the trades), despite vast effort made to change that. But do men get credit for this? No, we get rhetorically beat up for it.

It's not men who need fixing. It's the people who insist on refusing to acknowledge anything positive about masculinity.

There are lots of jobs where physical strength matters, and they're very gendered male.

There are a lot less than there used to be and will probably be even less going forward.

There's differences that show up in the modern age too. Engineering is predominantly male (though not as male as the trades), despite vast effort made to change that. But do men get credit for this? No, we get rhetorically beat up for it.

Yes, there are other sex differences. But upper body strength, and what flows from it like fighting, killing, other feats of physical strength was for a long time the single most important sex difference. It absolutely dwarfs most others, even if you assume all other sex difference are 100% innate. Its shrinkage as a relevant factor in modern society is hugely impactful and probably couldn't be otherwise.

A huge portion of the seething over women having "fake email jobs" and what have you probably comes down to the fact that a huge portion of men also have "fake email jobs" nowadays. You can say "well the majority of cutting edge research in XYZ field is still done by men" or whatever, but that's a tiny proportion of all men so it doesn't really matter for the average person. It used to be the case that a miner or a steelworker or farm laborer could tell himself he was doing a job only a man could do and that was a source of pride and identity for him, though even by the 19th and early 20th century the anxiety about the softening of manhood was already well-advanced, evidenced by all of those intellectuals who argued that regular warfare was necessary to maintain racial/national virility. But nowadays a guy who works as a cashier at wal mart or does some rote office job understands full-well that a woman could do his job just as easily and it probably grates psychologically.

This reminds of the study (don't have the link, sorry, it's quite some time ago) that claimed to show that men resent and feel threatened by female success, and that this is a large part of successful womens' struggle with dating, based on the fact that men are much less attracted to successful women.

The numbers? Seeing a highly prestigious/high earning job such as CEO increases a woman's chance to consider dating that person by something like 50%, whereas men give only a 10% premium. On the other hand, seeing someone with a less prestigious/lower earning job than them reduced the chance to consider dating that person for the majority of women to near zero irrespective of other qualities, while men only gave a 20% penalty or so.

In other words, men just don't consider women's jobs as super-important either way. Only a minority of men resent that "a woman could do this". It's women who look down on male cashiers so much that they'd never consider dating one.

But as usual, everyone tries to find a way to blame men.

Whether women wanna date men who make less money than them is a totally different question from whether the disappearance of traditionally masculine jobs from the economy contributes to a crisis of masculine identity.

  • -10

If your post was entirely about how men just really like building, fighting, hunting, etc. and that modern jobs simply fail to fulfill some primal male urges I'd completely agree! Though I'd add that modern jobs struggle to sufficiently fulfill many primal female urges as well.

But a large chunk of your post was about how men resent certain female jobs and in particular resent doing jobs if - and because - a women can do them. This is a fairly common claim I hear, and it's in my view an inversion of reality ; It's primarily women who resent men doing a job they can do themselves, similar to how the average man does not resent successful women, but successful women resent the average man.

Though I'd add that modern jobs struggle to sufficiently fulfill many primal female urges as well.

I'm not sure this is accurate. Many female jobs: Nursing, Teaching, HR, etc. seem to scratch feminine itches and are either high status or have significant social support for arguing they should be high status.

In contrast the male jobs are very much low status, and status is an important part of scratching the male itch.

I don't think it is, mostly because one of the main reasons why there exists a crisis of masculine identity is because without provider-type jobs, women won't mate with men. It's less about miners and steelworkers vs fake email jobs, and more about provisions and providers vs children and child-rearing. Women have been moving away from producing children and spending time rearing them, and instead have been joining men in producing provisions (money) and spending time acquiring them (jobs). Men cannot and will never be able to make new children. They can raise them, but they are not suited for it, certainly not for the first year, likely more like two or three.

The elephant's tail is completely different from the elephant's nail, so I will grant you that the two questions are, in fact, different. That doesn't address either issue, and deliberately ignores the ways in which they are connected.

There are lots of jobs where physical strength matters, and they're very gendered male.

But these jobs are proportionally much more scarce than 50 or 100 years ago.

There's quite a few "stereotypically masculine, requires physical strength" jobs that having hiring shortages right now. Construction labor, Garbagemen, police beat cop in cities, and Army grunt (not West Point officer) to name a few. This suggests that it's not like those jobs have completely disappeared leaving manly-men with nothing to do, it's that those jobs are now so low status that no one wants them.

"Everyone knows" that the way you make good money now is to study STEM or business and get a while-collar job, even if what you really want to do is use your muscles in the real world.

I can't help but notice that three of the four jobs you listed are public sector jobs, which may have something to do with them being low status.

"Everyone knows" that the way you make good money now is to study STEM or business and get a while-collar job, even if what you really want to do is use your muscles in the real world.

They're not wrong. If you can do the work you can make a lot more money in computer programming or finance easier than you can in the trades. It's not impossible to make big money in the trades, but sometimes it requires connections (they don't hand out those $400k/year backup crane operator jobs to just anyone), and when it doesn't it still requires business skills as well -- you have to run your own operation and have employees.

The stereotypically masculine jobs with hiring shortages now tend to either have cyclical employment (like construction) or be shit for other reasons (including being very low status and/or low pay, or all the baggage of the military)

This is discounting the fact that we can totally be post-industrial and back to virility and violence.

Indeed this is what most critiques of traditionalism and twitter emulators miss when they caricature it as RETVRN. Tradition is never going back to the past, going backwards or trying to literally go back to past glories, and whenever it is that it fails. Because it is impossible to turn back entropy, because we are not people of the past, we have neither their virtues nor their vices, neither their innocence nor their wisdom.

What tradition is is acknowledgement of eternal truths and their practical, moral, social and metaphysical requirements.

In this case, the fiction you, and modernism, sells of a peaceful society created by industry is a blatant lie. One all too evident now. We do not live in peace, we do not live in civilization, we have only grown more base and brutal with the advent of plenty and the inevitable cthonic pull that came with it. That brutality is sheathed in nice even language and plentiful fast food and video games. But even those are fading and drifting out of grasp under the current of debt, slowly but inevitably moving away like the ship of a lone sailor who dropped overboard and has to resign himself to drowning.

What is more cruel and violent than the plain imposition that you will never own your home, you will never have a loving wife, you will never have a loyal husband, you will never sire children and all you will ever do is pay for pensions working a job you hate while your black rectangle beams images of happier people into your mind as everything in your vicinity including your own life gets slowly but surely worse in every regard. Perhaps the threat of the punishment that awaits you if you dare to contest such a fate?

Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort. But alas, the choice between annihilation and annihilation is not going to tame the youths spirit for very long.

Is is entirely predictable that such an age should be dominated by feminine thinking and modes of existence. But no age is eternal and the troubles created by the desolation of all social structures that require will necessarily wreak the advent of a new age of conquest and grandiose virility.

Our bandit hordes are already here. The warlords that will tame them have already been born. And when they do, earthly notions of equality, sameness and tolerance will go with them.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.

I will ask again: can you list societies that had slaves treated better than modern man?

I could, but you'd just go ahead and ignore my caveat because you don't understand anything that is not material comfort.

So you simply are unable to substantiate your bullshit and insane claim how supposedly slaves were better treated than people nowadays.

Even to let other people (not me) to judge it and potential admire your great examples.

For future: making less overly strong claims could be much better tactic and let you argue without blatant lying.

Also, not having delusions that specifically me would be lord and king that subjugated others is not the same as understanding only material comfort.

Your understanding of antic civilizations and feudalism seems to be mostly based on 1700 bourgeois propaganda.

Go read about Antic Greece, Medieval Europe or modern warlord era China. Then we can have a productive conversation instead of you regurgitating Liberal memes.

Before taking advise from you on this I await examples of societies that:

  • had slaves
  • treated them better (in your opinion) than societies treat modern people now

For best effect: in which society that existed in past you would prefer to be enslaved over living your current life?

mostly based on 1700 bourgeois propaganda

"slavery bad" is opinion fairly widely shared, if you want to argue that slavery is better than freedom then I await your examples

"slavery bad" is opinion fairly widely shared

By Liberals and their successors only. Slavery has been widely considered a just or necessary practice before the Industrial Revolution. Aristotle famously makes a convincing argument that without it, progress is impossible.

I don't support it myself since we have machines now and I generally agree with Liberals directionally when it comes to the individual. But they do overstate their case for political reasons. That much is clear.

in which society that existed in past you would prefer to be enslaved over living your current life?

I don't believe in Rawlsianism, but let's consider Rome.

Most household and business managers and agents were slaves, and they were even a preferred caste in banking and accounting, and quite common in intellectual pursuits. So I'd probably fall under that category in that society anyways. And my life would be less constrained in some ways and more constrained in others. In

The most brutal accounts revolve around what one would predict: agriculture and mining. But they don't strike me as less exploitative than the treatment of nominally free workers in the 1800s. In fact it is often remarked upon by contemporaries of the Industrial Revolution (such as Marx as I mention previously) that the incentives of capitalism are actually worse for the underlings than those of slavery.

A slave you have to feed and shelter all year and throughout his life lest you eat into your investment. An employee you can and should dismiss if they are not making you money. To be fair, abandonment was also an issue with slavery, but in Rome it was specifically made illegal to reclaim abandoned slaves because they system relied on these incentives. The lumpenproletariat is a uniquely modern issue.

From the point of view of the middle class, slavery is an indignity for obvious reasons: it refuses them bluntly access to higher prestige, certain professions, and general control over their personal life that they could fully enjoy given their means.

But for the lowest of the low, for those people for whom getting a meal is not a given, which is what led us down this path of discussion, rights and dignity are not those prized treats. And selling themselves into service can actually be a good deal.

This is the real charge against modernity that communists and other successors of Liberalism successfully accuse it with. That those nice ideas of individualism and freedom are only good for those that already had the means to enjoy them and that removing the other forms of bonds society used to run on makes all the miserable untied to the now free individual.

Being more free and having more rights is not necessarily in your interest.

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Don't worry too much about it, a lot of this lot are wanna be religious fanatics that don't have the courage of their convictions and authoritarians that don't have the power to actually impose their will on people. Just par for the course. The only power they have is a downvote on a fringe website that is slowly turning into stormfront.

Oh, I do not worry about it at all.

It is more that I am poking at this as I am curious is there any self-consistent and reality-adjacent vision of world there.

As far as hot takes go "live as modern man is worse than living as a slave in some societies" is quite out there so I keep wondering how they managed to justify this.

But sadly*, it seems that even they do not really believe in this as they keep trying to backpedal and limit claim to lumpenproletariat at most.

*for the expected return on discussion, for themself and world in general it is a good thing that it was just shitposting.

What is more cruel and violent than the plain imposition that you will never own your home, you will never have a loving wife, you will never have a loyal husband, you will never sire children and all you will ever do is pay for pensions working a job you hate while your black rectangle beams images of happier people into your mind as everything in your vicinity including your own life gets slowly but surely worse in every regard. Perhaps the threat of the punishment that awaits you if you dare to contest such a fate?

For example an armed mob* coming to your flat, stealing all your stuff, burning building where you lived, maybe also raping you and enslaving? Or just flat-out murdering you for one reason or another?

*with uniforms or not, there are variants of it from Hutu, Hitler and Pol-Pot through Red Army to basically all factions in Syrian War

Also, while you describe pretty fucked up society, basically nowhere situation is as bad or mandatory. And places where situation is worse - that is because they have far too much of virility and violence.

We do not live in peace, we do not live in civilization

Oh, go away with such redefinitions. Or at least propose new ones to allow distinguishing Los Angeles from what happened in Aleppo and Mariupol and Grozny.

And "civilization" surely includes polities where government did horrible things, if rulers decided to enslave/murder 10% of population it does not imply that we do not live in civilization. In fact civilization is needed for major projects, including "hey, lets murder 10 000 000 people".

You are complaining about badly setup civilisation, if someone promised you that civilisation is cuddly or nice to all population - then you should read something about world.

Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.

Which ones you think that fit? For me at least "being enslaved" seems to make it basically impossible. And just lack of material comfort AKA starving to death if things went wrong is in a fact major issue to people. Maybe I am extrapolating too much, but I really appreciate that starving to death is not a real risk to me.

This is discounting the fact that we can totally be post-industrial and back to virility and violence.

Yes, we can. At cost of things getting far worse. No idea why this would be preferable - I would prefer neither, but I will take fucked up dating market over being murdered by rampaging vikings or starving to death or being oppressed by feudal lord worse than being oppressed now.

I guess that some people imagine themself to be doing the looting and raping or ruling as new lords. In such case, I wish them utter failure of all their plans and deranged imaginations.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

I hope this will not happen in lifetime mine, my children or grandchildren - as plan minimum.

For me at least "being enslaved" seems to make it basically impossible. [...] I really appreciate that starving to death is not a real risk to me

Free men are not guaranteed food and shelter.

At cost of things getting far worse.

Worse for who? At cost to whom?

Your personal welfare is immaterial if it's creating people with nothing to lose. And I'm not saying this because I enjoy that this is the case, but because it's the plain truth.

Empires have a natural tendency to do this which is why they're precarious affairs that always seem to create feudal societies in their wake once the source of the advantage that saw them rise dries up.

This is what is happening to our society. You may not live to see the most dramatic of consequences, you may even be able to shelter yourself from much of it, but you are living the consequences all the same.

Free men are not guaranteed food and shelter.

Really? That is supposed to be benefit over modern citizen?

For start, slaves were not guaranteed food and shelter.

And maybe technically free men are not having such guarantees nowadays, but in practise they have them.

In functional modern societies free men get better food and shelter than slaves in past, even utterly useless ones and criminals. Maybe being slave in some societies was better than being beggar in modern Somalia and Syria but only for some of slave-owning societies.

Minimally competent free men get vastly better food and shelter.

Of all things, social support is not thing that was better for slaves than typical people nowadays. You even initially excluded "that are not commodified material comfort" from supposed benefits.

Worse for who? At cost to whom?

For anyone not preferring to risk dying from starvation or from raving bandits or being brutally oppressed by local lord.

For whom "post-industrial and back to virility and violence" would be better?

For start, slaves were not guaranteed food and shelter.

This was broadly understood for thousands of years to be the one advantage of servitude and the one disadvantage of freedom. People with no duties to others are offered no protection.

For whom "post-industrial and back to virility and violence" would be better?

Free men.

Are you aware about food production nowadays and how it compared to past? And how starvation used to be far more common?

You even claim that benefit of slavery is that you were more likely to eat.

Free men.

Who you count here? Noble elite class? Rampaging neovikings? Starving peasantry?

Yes I am indeed aware of the industrial revolution.

Who you count here? Noble elite class? Rampaging neovikings? Starving peasantry?

Anyone who is capable of violence and not beholden to a master usually has a lot to gain in feudal transitions.

Think of Li Zongren and his men, and all his and their peers.

Of course this is also risky, but that's the nature of such times.

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Marriage (and therefore childbearing)is definitely delayed. The homeownership story is more complicated: https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-rate-home-purchases/

But, aren't you French? Maybe France is just worse in this respect (though this proves it's not inherent to modernity, it is merely a policy question).

France has 60% out of wedlock births- amusingly, this is a piece of evidence against the thesis of the French fertility advantage being mostly Mohammedans.

This might be mitigated if Muslims are less likely to go through the civil marriage process in comparison to other groups. I have a friend from a German Evangelical free church that's not integrated with the state like the mainline Lutheran and Catholic ones, they refuse to register their marriages with the local magistrate and therefore their children count as born out-of-wedlock in the eyes of the state.

How so? Is out-of-wedlock childbirth super-haram in Islam?

What is more cruel and violent than the plain imposition that you will never own your home, you will never have a loving wife, you will never have a loyal husband, you will never sire children and all you will ever do is pay for pensions working a job you hate while your black rectangle beams images of happier people into your mind as everything in your vicinity including your own life gets slowly but surely worse in every regard. Perhaps the threat of the punishment that awaits you if you dare to contest such a fate?

Being eaten by wolves. Having your head bashed in by a rival war party. Pretty much any given day in the life of a pre-modern man. On feast days Russian peasants used to get drunk and beat each other senseless for fun, and then go home and beat their wives. This is just "words are violence" but right-wing.

Actually none of what you describes strikes me as a fraction as unpleasant as the life of the average person a few centuries ago, which is probably why humanity collectively abandoned that lifestyle as soon as it was materially feasible. "A job you hate" is not fun but it's probably more fun than starving to death because there was a bad frost and the crops all died.

As for "everything slowly but surely getting worse in every regard" idk what specifically you have in mind but most right-wing complaints about everything getting worse are just tautological complaints that everything is getting less right-wing which naturally isn't convincing to anyone who doesn't already buy into all right-wing premises.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

It hasn't. Cyclical theories of history were always bullshit, though they may have been facially plausible in 1800 . Humanity is in entirely uncharted territory. The past offers no lessons, because it actually is different this time. Modern people aren't 16th century peasants. They aren't even 20th century proletarians.

All of the "weak men strong times" stuff, the idea that the stultifying atmosphere of modernity will ultimately lead to some great revolt for the restoration of meaning, virtue, whatever, none of it has any contact with reality. Angsting about meaning is itself a luxury available to the excessively wealthy, as everyone is in modern developed countries by western standards. Approximately nobody is going to forsake material comfort to embark on some great vitalist crusade, because material comfort is what most people actually care about first and foremost. Even people who are "struggling" today live like kings compared to the average person 100 years ago, let alone 200.

It would take a total collapse of industrial civilization to produce the global warlordism that you dream of, and that's possible, though I don't think it's very likely.

I don't even know what "we can totally be post-industrial and back to virility and violence" would actually even look like in practice. Like a based fascist party takes over the US tomorrow and then, what, invades Mexico for fun? Resurrects gladiatorial combat? Nukes China?

I remember when right-wing twitter personality Alaric the Barbarian made a post about how young men need GREATNESS and ADVENTURE and should not settle for the drudgery of living in suburban Indianopolis and someone reasonably said yeah posting photos of Greek statues and larping as a Germanic warlord is cool and everything but what actually are you concretely suggesting people do and he replied uhhh run for dogcatcher.

Not to get deeply entangled in this discussion, but I suppose the steelman to IGI is that the material improvements that we live under are far from permanent, and could well disappear before we realize it, and suddenly we find ourselves back to the brutal state of affairs known to the past.

Consider Mad Max, a media franchise that remains fairly popular today despite the original film being more obviously inspired by the Oil Crisis (a temporary shock that helped spur us into changing our ways), and the sequel defining the post-apocalypse tropes that made it so influential, despite it coming out at a time when the Oil Crisis was likely abating, if not already ended.

The Curse of Plenty, the thing that gives rise to the narrative of "good times create weak men," is a trope we see in fiction and in real life. We go from rags to riches and back again, just as ancient religions had ways of saying that we come from nothing and eventually return to nothing.

I do personally feel that we had a peak of "goodness" in recent decades that may well have been an anomaly, and that the "dreamtime"/whalefall (to borrow from Scott) is well coming to an end. We can only hope that things don't snap and break apart once all the slack is gone.

Not to get deeply entangled in this discussion, but I suppose the steelman to IGI is that the material improvements that we live under are far from permanent, and could well disappear before we realize it, and suddenly we find ourselves back to the brutal state of affairs known to the past.

Well I don't disagree with that proposition. Does anybody? What is supposed to be drawn from that? Yes if we were reduced to the material level of the 15th century we would probably live similarily to 15th century people. But so what? What is the use of pointing out such a banal fact?

Perhaps to point out that we don't actually have that much logistical distance from the 15th Century? Our technology and our logistics support each other in an interlocking balance, and certain things cannot be sustained without other things.

ETA: That being said, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to answer where I think we'd end up in the event of a global collapse, I think our tech level might be dropped down to possibly 18th-century levels, assuming that electricity somehow becomes unreliable or scarce alongside fossil fuel.

Not to get deeply entangled in this discussion, but I suppose the steelman to IGI is that the material improvements that we live under are far from permanent, and could well disappear before we realize it, and suddenly we find ourselves back to the brutal state of affairs known to the past.

And there are places where they mostly disappeared, for one reason or another.

And actually we are not so far away from crucial infrastructure being disrupted (one way or another - regulations, armed sabotage, outright war) and ending with no cheap electronics, power shortage, major famine.

To take extreme but possible example - nuclear war will not kill everyone (far from it) but would wreak things for survivors. Full scale exchange would have death toll in billions and would decisively disrupt pretty much anything.

Serious pandemics are possible and after COVID it seems clear that more lethal pathogen would be a massive problem.

And so on.

You undervalue the past. True, we stand on untrodden ground. Never before has even this conversation across who knows how many miles been possible, for one. And yet, I do not think it is utterly uninformative. The world will not repeat itself, but you may see some pattern here or there crop up again.

I think you also undervalue whatever is not material comfort and progress. Our social relations make up a huge portion of our lives, and that is not so unambiguously better. Further, it is just not the case that everyone, everywhere, at all times, really cares only about material comfort. Your tacit assumption as much is, I think, part of our milieu. The continued existence and growth of the Amish are a living monument, I think, that people do not all value a comfortable life.

What would a society that cared about these sorts of things (social goods) do? Encourage marriage and children. Encourage general integration with society, especially in person. To the extent possible, reduce welfare and dependency. Reduce profligacy; promote austerity, at least in regard to economic activity devoted to comfort. As to government action, reduce spending, especially on welfare; seriously consider taking an economic hit to start to work on the debt. Make people responsible for things, instead of hiding it behind bureaucracies. Ideally somehow figure out how to stop being so wasteful in military spending, while also being more prepared to handle powerful actors. Actually put a stop to the Houthis messing up global shipping.

I think your final paragraph, from a brief glance, might have misunderstood what he is doing. He seemed less to be setting out an ideal of "this is the life to which we must retvrn" so much as saying that the right does not encourage certain sorts of ambition enough, and so large classes of society have been ceded to the left. This is correct, and has been noted by left-leaning commentators. He prescribes not settling.

That said, you have a point—no one really has a vision of what things should be like. I think the desire for some sort of action and striving that you point to and question has something to it—Aristotle was gesturing at something real when he characterized eudaimonia as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue—but it must be to some end, some purpose. This, I think, is where a lot of people see value. In the struggle, in their achievements that they have toiled over and after—that, they can be pleased with. People value being relied upon, necessary, to be making a difference. We are often happier in the breathless pursuit of a thing than in the possession of it. But the solution is not toil for toil's sake, as you rightly seem to gesture at. We do not value pointless work. And there hardly seems to be any terminal value that people are content with. Science fiction, I suppose, will often seek endless exploration of the universe. But why? To what end? Because we couldn't think of anything better to do? What is the chief end of man?

Ecclesiastes is a good book.

Actually none of what you describes strikes me as a fraction as unpleasant as the life of the average person a few centuries ago, which is probably why humanity collectively abandoned that lifestyle as soon as it was materially feasible.

You have no experience of the life of the average person a few centuries ago. You don't even have stories of that life. You have a small, curated selection of those stories provided by a small collection of people, almost all of which likewise had no experience of that life. Biasing that sample for personal or tribal ends provides obvious utility, and it is trivial to observe that such biasing efforts are endemic.

We have actual histories, songs and stories from people a few centuries ago, and even from many centuries ago. They do not demonstrate a life-experience of unending hell-misery, but rather an existence very like our own. Their concerns were similar to ours. Their joy and suffering was similar to ours. Nothing fundamental about human nature or the human experience has changed in any way since at least the invention of writing.

They do not demonstrate a life-experience of unending hell-misery, but rather an existence very like our own.

This is largely because "man is a creature than can get used to anything". Even today, Guatemalans are only 0.44 points out of 10 less happy than Americans (yes, you can quibble about the exact measures, but the phenomenon is robust to the choice of measure). I'd sure as hell prefer to live in America than in Guatemala, even though if I lived in Guatemala all my life I probably wouldn't mind it too much.

An argument which applies equally well to IGI’s catastrophizing. The songs and stories of 50 or 500 years ago were relatable; shouldn’t we expect the same in another 50 or 500?

We should. How is that incompatible with the following?

Our bandit hordes are already here. The warlords that will tame them have already been born. And when they do, earthly notions of equality, sameness and tolerance will go with them.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

Compare that to this comment:

Yes, our ancestors were "like us" insofar as they loved their friends and families, liked to tell and hear stories, enjoyed food and sex, and feared death, but that's a pretty sparse overlap in my opinion. Outside of a tiny handful of intellectuals and philosophers, you probably wouldn't be able to hold any kind of real or meaningful conversation with a 16th century German even if you could speak his language perfectly, and you wouldn't want to anyway because he might crush your skull.

The difference seems pretty clear to me.

The conditions of life in say, tsarist Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries to give one example are pretty well recorded, and they were not vastly changed from those in the 18th or 17th centuries. The vanishing of the traditional agricultural lifestyle is quite recent in historical terms, and it still persists to some extent today in certain countries. So we actually do have a pretty good picture of what pre-industrial life was like.

We have actual histories, songs and stories from people a few centuries ago, and even from many centuries ago. They do not demonstrate a life-experience of unending hell-misery, but rather an existence very like our own.

Naturally, they didn't know anything else. If you lock a kid in the basement from infancy and beat him five times every day of the week and only once on Saturday and Sunday, the weekend is gonna look pretty awesome to him, but most people who weren't raised in a basement wouldn't find being locked in a basement and being beaten once a day on weekends very fun.

Their concerns were similar to ours. Their joy and suffering was similar to ours. Nothing fundamental about human nature or the human experience has changed in any way since at least the invention of writing.

You severely underrate how alien these people were. There's pretty good evidence they were practically incapable of abstract thought or logical exercises that would be easy for a small child in the modern United States (this being in reference to the great mass of common people, obviously, not a very small educated elite). You may be familiar with A.M Luria's study of Uzbek peasants as late as the 1920s and 30s as it's made the rounds in rationalist and rationalist adjacent circles. This was not because of any genetic inferiority, but because their world was so founded in the immediate and concrete that a basic "if A then B" syllogism was beyond their grasp. They were also shockingly violent. Besides their regular wanton cruelty to animals for practical reasons as well as for amusement, they were basically always ready to fight and kill each other over the mildest of slights. Sicilian immigrants to the US as late as the 20s, coming from one of the most backwards and least industrialized regions in Europe, had an astronomical murder rate because stabbing somebody in the throat for cheating at cards or hitting on your sister was just totally normal to them.

Yes, our ancestors were "like us" insofar as they loved their friends and families, liked to tell and hear stories, enjoyed food and sex, and feared death, but that's a pretty sparse overlap in my opinion. Outside of a tiny handful of intellectuals and philosophers, you probably wouldn't be able to hold any kind of real or meaningful conversation with a 16th century German even if you could speak his language perfectly, and you wouldn't want to anyway because he might crush your skull.

You may be familiar with A.M Luria's study of Uzbek peasants as late as the 1920s and 30s as it's made the rounds in rationalist and rationalist adjacent circles.

I am, but would appreciate either elaboration or a link to what you consider the strongest version of the Luria argument. I remember it being profoundly unconvincing, but I'd like to read it again to be sure I'm not missing something. Specifically, I understand the general form of the "if A then B" that was supposedly beyond them, but I'd like some detail on exactly what consequences you expect to derive from this claim, such that you think the absence of this ability would make their thought alien to me. How were they actually different in their lived experience, in their life choices, in how they acted and what they did?

Besides their regular wanton cruelty to animals for practical reasons as well as for amusement, they were basically always ready to fight and kill each other over the mildest of slights. Sicilian immigrants to the US as late as the 20s, coming from one of the most backwards and least industrialized regions in Europe, had an astronomical murder rate because stabbing somebody in the throat for cheating at cards or hitting on your sister was just totally normal to them.

None of these features seem alien in any way. Widespread examples of all of these characteristics are available in the modern world, and in America even, not to mention many other examples of behavior I find equally deplorable or abhorrent in many other varieties. None of this is even close to as alien as, say, the Apache or Comanche, and I would not describe them as bizarrely alien.

Yes, our ancestors were "like us" insofar as they loved their friends and families, liked to tell and hear stories, enjoyed food and sex, and feared death, but that's a pretty sparse overlap in my opinion.

To be a bit more specific, they were "like us" in that they had exactly the same vices and virtues as we have, in roughly equal proportions; only the detail of how these were expressed culturally seems to differ. Further, they had most of the same major life experiences, and those we do not share have close analogues. I see no way to couch this as "a sparse overlap". I can read their stories and immediately grok the ideas behind them, and find them familiar to me. I'm pretty sure they had bullying, crushes, sweethearts, rivals, hated enemies, ambition, jealousy, deceit... I am confident they had people essentially like me, and people essentially like you, in short.

Outside of a tiny handful of intellectuals and philosophers, you probably wouldn't be able to hold any kind of real or meaningful conversation with a 16th century German even if you could speak his language perfectly, and you wouldn't want to anyway because he might crush your skull.

I would love to do so. And I do not particularly doubt that I would be able to do so. As for crushing my skull, I suppose you are doubling down on the incomprehensibly violent nature of the 16th century German peasantry; the "astronomical murder rate", the stabbings, the honor killings and so on. Truly, how could anyone communicate with such alien savages?

Well, here's the first graph result for the search "murder rate 16th century germany".

By the 1600s, the Germans are down to around 10 murders per 100,000, and the dread Italians are around 35. At that point, the 1600s Guido Menace would have moderately less violent that American blacks in the 2000s, and moderately more violent than those same blacks in the 2010s. I'd guess the Vile Huns were somewhere roughly in the ballpark of Appalachian whites from the same era. American blacks, in any case, are likewise not entirely unfamiliar with domestic violence, or indeed with animal cruelty for sport. And they're like this in the modern world with all the blessings of modernity, not least of which is a system of truly remarkable trauma medicine to turn 1600s murders into mere 2000s woundings. I used to work with a lot of underclass Blacks in an underclass job. Was I likewise underestimating how "deeply alien" my black coworkers were, or are these feelings of alienation reserved only for the distant past?

The disparity between your claims and the immediately-available evidence is confusing to me, to the point that I worry I'm reading the charts wrong. Is there something I'm missing here?

In any case, humans do heinous shit, always have and always will. None of this is new, or indeed old and forgotten, but rather simply is. None of it is incomprehensible. I imagine German or Italian peasants would be horrified by a description of American abortion practices, or OnlyFans, or Pride Parades, or indeed any number of our other modern abominations, but in fact none of that is new in its fundamental essence either.

Nice hat... strikes again (the 'first graph result' link is borked)

thanks. replaced it with another source of the same chart, should be working now.

I am, but would appreciate either elaboration or a link to what you consider the strongest version of the Luria argument.

I don't really know what I'd call the strongest version of the argument, as I don't think Luria really was making an argument (well he was, but the argument was that socialist development was raising the mental level of the peasantry which is not really interesting) so much as just collecting data. But in any case here's a summary of the research. Here is Russell T. Warne describing a study in Africa which showed the same phenomenon.

ut I'd like some detail on exactly what consequences you expect to derive from this claim, such that you think the absence of this ability would make their thought alien to me.

That's a matter of taste. I would find it extremely frustrating and yes, alien, to hold a conversation with someone who was incapable of entertaining a hypothetical.

None of these features seem alien in any way. Widespread examples of all of these characteristics are available in the modern world, and in America even,

Killing somebody over a card game or killing a cat for fun are pretty alien to me. If someone did either of these things I would stay far away from them and consider them dangerous and anti-social, as would everybody else I know. Some people do do these things even today in the modern USA and they are generally considered to be acting in an extremely aberrant and objectionable way.

None of this is even close to as alien as, say, the Apache or Comanche, and I would not describe them as bizarrely alien.

I would. The Comanche used to teach their children how to torture prisoners of war to death. That is bizarrely alien to my experience and I think it probably is to yours as well.

To be a bit more specific, they were "like us" in that they had exactly the same vices and virtues as we have, in roughly equal proportions; only the detail of how these were expressed culturally seems to differ.

That's burying the lede pretty hard. The details of how base emotions, most of which are shared even by non-human animals, are expressed, are very important.

I'm pretty sure they had bullying, crushes, sweethearts, rivals, hated enemies, ambition, jealousy, deceit...

Wild animals above the level of insects have all these too. Maybe not jealousy.

Truly, how could anyone communicate with such alien savages?

You're the only one using the word "savage." They were different from us, which doesn't necessarily make them worse or better. I'm not even passing judgment. I wouldn't wanna live like they did, but that's just my personal preference, being as much a product of my environment as they were.

By the 1600s, the Germans are down to around 10 murders per 100,000, and the dread Italians are around 35.

Compared to Germany's rate of 1 per 100,000 today, I would call that shockingly high.

At that point, the 1600s Guido Menace would have moderately less violent that American blacks in the 2000s, and moderately more violent than those same blacks in the 2010s. I'd guess the Vile Huns were somewhere roughly in the ballpark of Appalachian whites from the same era. American blacks, in any case, are likewise not entirely unfamiliar with domestic violence, or indeed with animal cruelty for sport. And they're like this in the modern world with all the blessings of modernity, not least of which is a system of truly remarkable trauma medicine to turn 1600s murders into mere 2000s woundings. I used to work with a lot of underclass Blacks in an underclass job. Was I likewise underestimating how "deeply alien" my black coworkers were, or are these feelings of alienation reserved only for the distant past?

I can't speak to that specifically, but yes there are pockets of life in modern society which are extremely alien to me. I have also interacted fairly extensively with "underclass" people, or at least people from a different social class than me, mostly whites and Mexicans (including some who have spent time in prison for violent crimes). Yes I have found their experiences and backgrounds very alien to my own, to the point where it was often difficult to find the common ground necessary for any kind of fruitful conversation. The feeling was mutual, and I imagine it would be even more the case with a 17th century peasant commune.

I imagine German or Italian peasants would be horrified by a description of American abortion practices, or OnlyFans, or Pride Parades,

No doubt.

I live in a modern-ish suburb. My parents come from flatland hillbilly/swampbilly backgrounds with extended family members who have committed what would be felonies(mostly kidnapping) if they happened outside of deep deep rural areas to enforce family honor in the 21st century, seriously expect us to respect their disownments over religious issues, and other such clannish behavior. I'm not underclass but I've lived among them and seen the way they behave.

People underestimate the cultural gaps among a single ethnicity in the same part of the country in a single year, let alone across centuries and continents.

You're a 21st century aristocrat expounding on the idea that you wouldn't get on with 16th century outlaw bikers. This is not the argument you think it is.

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Their joy and suffering was similar to ours. Nothing fundamental about human nature or the human experience has changed in any way since at least the invention of writing.

Hmm, my grand dad was basically a subsistence farmer, and while it wasn't universally miserable of course, it was certainly a lot more stressful and worrisome than his kids becoming trades people. He had to spend more time tending the farm to get by than he would have in a normal job by a long long way. And that was with fertilizer and a tractor.

The further you go back, the more labor was required to do any basic task. Certainly they still took joy in what they could, but they did so with aching joints and bowed backs.

There is a reason in the rust belt than when you ask many miners do they want their sons to become miners they say no. Because they know it is a crippling, dangerous job. They want to send their kids to college so they can work in an office and not have crippling lung diseases and missing fingers.

In other words we don't have to look back hundreds of years to see that things are better now. We can see it in one or two generations back. Or you can go to see subsistence farmers in China. Humans haven't changed, but the amount of work and danger it takes to live is significantly less than it was. Technology has made material differences to people.

Now perhaps there is an argument we waste that saved time and energy in frivolous ways. But we have it to waste. They might not have had unending hell-misery, but they certainly had more hell misery in a very material way than almost any modern Westerner.

By the end of his life, my grandad in his 60's couldn't walk, was blind in one eye and the massive strong hands that could pull a calf from a cow or wrangle a sheep were gnarled and twisted with arthritis. He was in constant pain. He refused to let his kids take over the farm, because he wanted better for them. His kids are older than he was when he died and they are all much healthier than he was at the end. The human experience really has changed. Our bodies can only take a certain amount of wear, and certainly many technologies since writing have reduced the amount of wear we need to put them through.

Just because lives weren't unending hell misery and that people made do with what they could, does not mean that the very real and material benefits of human endeavour have not improved the human experience.

The further you go back, the more labor was required to do any basic task. Certainly they still took joy in what they could, but they did so with aching joints and bowed backs.

And we do so with mental illness, narcotics abuse, depression and loneliness. They were happy in different ways and miserable in different ways, but I'm not convinced they were actually fundamentally more miserable than we are in any meaningful sense, or happier either for that matter. Which is better: to lose some of your children, or to never have children at all? The former seems much superior to me, and claims to the contrary seem naïve.

There is a reason in the rust belt than when you ask many miners do they want their sons to become miners they say no. Because they know it is a crippling, dangerous job.

I'm pretty sure those miners thought that their sons could have all the good things of their own life and none of the bad things, with the idea being that the bad things wouldn't simply be replaced by other bad things. But it seems to me that, in fact, they were. Less aching joints and bowed backs. More meth zombies and fentanyl corpses, suicide, mental illness, deep alienation and so on. I am not convinced that the former outweighs the latter.

Just because lives weren't unending hell misery and that people made do with what they could, does not mean that the very real and material benefits of human endeavour have not improved the human experience.

Life has obviously changed in many ways. There are fewer of old bad things, and more of new bad things. There are likewise fewer of old good things, and more of new good things. Your argument is that there's more units of good and fewer units of bad on net, and if that's your honest impression, fair enough, but it is certainly not mine. I've had a lot of changes in my own life, and a considerable amount of both pain and joy; I note that the sources of both were generally things that were not in any meaningful sense novel. The ways I've been miserable were ways that were, in all essential particulars, available to people five thousand years ago, and likewise for the ways I've found joy. Is it truly different for you?

I'm pretty sure those miners thought that their sons could have all the good things of their own life and none of the bad things, with the idea being that the bad things wouldn't simply be replaced by other bad things. But it seems to me that, in fact, they were. Less aching joints and bowed backs. More meth zombies and fentanyl corpses, suicide, mental illness, deep alienation and so on. I am not convinced that the former outweighs the latter.

While fent and meth were nonexistent in that era, suicide, mental illness, deep alienation, and so on were not. Nor was alcoholism, which wrecks you perhaps somewhat slower than fent or meth, but just as well.

I would suggrst the main difference is that 5000 years ago, you had no choice but to endure the bad things. You couldn't avoid that your life and work and having kids was dangerous. They were inescapable. Today many people can still have the good, having kids and the like, but don't become fentanyl addicts or require mental health care..Many. many millions of people fall into the bracket and have the old joys, less of the old miseries and not much of the new.

Now at least we have that option. You've never taken joy in a truly great book, or video game or movie? Or learned some new thing about the world? Not only would those not exist 5000 years ago, you would not have had the time to enjoy them compared to today.

It seems to me that we have greatly expanded the access of good things, reduced the number of bad things..and yes we have created more bad things, but if my choice is being crippled or having to deal with the ennui of a pointless office job. One of those is worse than the other. And one can be fixed by switching jobs, or homesteading or becoming a lumberjack or whatever. You can do that and still benefit from the good things about modernity.

Thats the key diffetence to me. You can have kids and most of them won't die, nor is your wife at much risk in labour. You can live in a small close knit community. The old joys still exist. And you can not indulge in drugs, you can still worship your God or gods, you can still tell stories around a fire in the woods. Or take your kids fishing.You can just do it with a full belly instead of empty, where your life does not depend on it.

What joys of old have we truly lost? You right now can choose to do anything your forebears did. You just have a lot more options as well. You can farm, and find other like minded people. You can opt out of almost all of modern society if you wish and in varying degrees. Thats why today is better. You have that choice. 5000 years ago you did not have the option of choosing modern devices and medical care and knowledge. Today you can buy some land and a horse and choose your level of advancement. Amish? Or Mennonite? Kacyzynki or Musk? You can choose to have your family live without a washing machine or an oven or a TV. You can choose to be a farmer or to hunt for food, or pick up road kill. All of these things are possible right now today.

Actually none of what you describes strikes me as a fraction as unpleasant as the life of the average person a few centuries ago

Because you have a solely material understanding of what is good. This is the only charge against the Enlightenment that sticks, and yes it sticks just as well when Marx says it than when Evola says it. The life created by the unrestrained mercantile impulse is inhuman and torrents of blood have already been unleashed to tamper its excesses or realize its promises. All in vain so far.

If you refuse to see the problem and desire to place you head in the sand of "our system is the best to the exclusion of all others" I have nothing to say to you. Conservatism of this sort is the ideology of the damned. Change is an eternal constant that will sweep such views as it has any others.

what specifically you have in mind but most right-wing complaints about everything getting worse are just tautological complaints that everything is getting less right-wing

This is a specious argument. Morality is necessarily partial.

I can give descriptive accounts of many things, but they don't cross the is-ought gap. And any crossing is going to engender such partiality. Good that it does, because that is how we can recognize good from evil.

When Ted complains that the world is crushing the freedom and actualization of the individual, you can decide to call this right wing and oppose this slander of the industrial system because it's not fair on abstract power structures. I choose to recognize that it is true and should inform the conduct of moral men who interact with industrial society, because I'm constitutionally biased in favor of individual human welfare and I think people who aren't so biased are morally deficient.

We can still discuss descriptivisms of course.

Cyclical theories of history were always bullshit

I'm still waiting on serious refutations of Spengler, Sorokin, Glubb or Toynbee. Hell, I'm waiting on anybody to even attempt refuting Vico with any real arguments.

All that the literature shows is sneers, sweeping under the rug of political convenience and displeasure at the reality of historical patterns in the favor of a biased form of relativism that changes its favor with the winds of power. Hard hitting philosophical criticism I have not come by yet.

Vico is right. And people who dismiss his insight are behaving like creationists who cling to specific dismissals, attempt to refute specifics individually without considering the whole or grasp at epistemological traps to refuse to acknowledge the plain truth because the big picture shatters their own personal intuitions. When they don't just lie that is.

All Empires collapse. All Empires think they are eternal. You are not special.

It would take a total collapse of industrial civilization to produce the global warlordism that you dream of, and that's possible, though I don't think it's very likely.

I disagree, mainly because you are taking my words too literally and envisioning warlordism in a sense that you would historically recognize. Much like the people who are waiting in vain for a civil war complete with banners and uniforms will remain in wait forever. Things are not this way anymore. And yet they are eternally the same.

But even if we are to take such literal interpretation, it doesn't necessitate at all collapse of civilization. Not by a longshot. And you'd know this if you had lived in politically unstable countries as I have.

Lybia has electricity right now. It also has (marginal) slavery and no monopoly on violence. What would collapse in more violent circumstances is the current order of power. Institutions at large needn't be as radically affected as you seem to think.

Because you have a solely material understanding of what is good.

Why shouldn't I? I don't believe honor, glory, virtue, or tradition exist as real transcendentals beyond the human mind, and I place no value on them. They are only fictions whose persistence is simply because they produce a pleasant (and ultimately, physiological and material) sensation in the bodies of those who cling to them, and because they are useful tools to organize society in a way that also produces pleasant (and again, physiological and material) sensations in those same people. This isn't really an argument against liking those fictions, there's no rational argument why someone shouldn't, but there's no rational argument why someone should either, unless they already do. I believe the same thing about fictions from the opposite side of the aisle like freedom, democracy, equality, and tolerance, but you probably agree with me on that.

This is the only charge against the Enlightenment that sticks, and yes it sticks just as well when Marx says it than when Evola says it

I don't think Marx ever made that charge.

The life created by the unrestrained mercantile impulse is inhuman and torrents of blood have already been unleashed to tamper its excesses or realize its promises.

Inhuman meaning what? "The life" by which I imagine you mean the general state of society over the past several centuries was certainly created by humans, what exactly makes it inhuman? Is it just a personal distaste for it?

When Ted complains that the world is crushing the freedom and actualization of the individual, you can decide to call this right wing and oppose this slander of the industrial system because it's not fair on abstract power structures.

I oppose it because I think talk of freedom and actualization is mostly gobbledygook, like the aforementioned honor and equality and tolerance and glory. What Kaczynski is saying when you strip it all away is just "I don't like industrial society because it makes me upset" which is fine, but it doesn't make me upset, so we've reached an impasse, because I can't imagine any argument which would cause me to privilege what makes Ted Ted Kaczynski upset/not upset over what makes me upset/not upset.

Vico is right. And people who dismiss his insight are behaving like creationists who cling to specific dismissals, attempt to refute specifics individually without considering the whole or grasp at epistemological traps to refuse to acknowledge the plain truth because the big picture shatters their own personal intuitions.

Well I've never read Vico and didn't know who he was before you told me. The "Course of Nations" section of The New Science on internet archive is only about fifty pages; can I get away with reading that or do I have to read the whole thing? What specific insights did he have that have yet to be disproven?

I don't believe honor, glory, virtue, or tradition exist as real transcendentals beyond the human mind

Sure. But that's not the only perspective, and it doesn't have a serious claim to universalism or consensus.

I disagree. And I think this part of the modernist position robs people of something important that is an inherent part of the human condition. I don't really think we can convince each other on that point.

I don't think Marx ever made that charge.

Marx's specific criticism of capital is that it blew up the old ways of being without placing any guardrails on Greed and immiserated the lower classes by turning them from peasants with a manner of dignity into the miserable cogs of the capitalist machine. His will is explicitly to craft a religious weapon to realize the promises of the liberal bourgeoisie against their will.

Communism does not see itself as reactionary because it embraces Hegelian dialectics, but it is originally and specifically motivated by the failures of the Enlightenment to realize the idealized vision of modernity that would liberate all.

Read Rousseau and then read Marx. It is clear as water.

Inhuman meaning what?

Read the Autonomy and Surrogate Activities sections of ISAIF and you'll get a precise idea what I mean. Man wasn't meant for email jobs. To cater to your materialism I would say that man is not adapted to such things because they are too recent. Memetic evolution has outpaced biological evolution by too much and created too much tension in its vessel.

I do not take the suffering of humanity for millennia to adapt to the specific needs of society to be a reasonable course of action. Tradition holds that society should conform to us and our nature in its design. The precise opposite of progress politics which is always looking to create New Man.

I oppose it because I think talk of freedom and actualization is mostly gobbledygook

Well then there is very little for us to agree on. I can't really convince you of a visceral feeling. Explaining freedom and actualization is like explaining a joke or an artistic experience, it's only ever indirect unless you've felt it.

Build a table from scratch until you get a result you like, and then tell me that the feeling you are getting isn't real and what really matters is what's in the spreadsheets with a straight face. I personally regard that faith in numbers and quantity to be the absurd superstition.

can I get away with reading that or do I have to read the whole thing? What specific insights did he have that have yet to be disproven?

it would be best if you could read some of the scholarship around him, but ultimately if you draw out various theories of cyclical history (including the authors I've listed and others) you get overlaps that all fit into Vico's theory, which I would say is the most complete one. He doesn't go into some of the specifics other authors do (such as how collapse happen, or who founds civilizations or others minutiae), but his own broad theory is the matrix of all cyclical histories hence, and it is all very solidly supported by further scholarship on the topic. And unlike with Spengler, you don't need to read tomes of German poetic prose to get to the point. Italians really are underappreciated in their philosophical clarity.

I'm not sure his style will appeal to your materialist biases however, Sorokin's Social and Cultural Dynamics or other modernist instances of the idea may be more your speed.

I do not take the suffering of humanity for millennia to adapt to the specific needs of society to be a reasonable course of action. Tradition holds that society should conform to us and our nature in its design. The precise opposite of progress politics which is always looking to create New Man.

Once upon a time, a man lived in a valley between two cliffs. The valley was carved by the river that flowed in that place for millenia. So taken was he by the beauty and glory of what nature wrought that he set off to carve another such pair of cliffs and dig another valley.

"You fool," said his fellow villagers, "you absolute buffoon. You can't replicate nature. Even if our entire village moved to the spot you picked and toiled for generations, it would take centuries to approximate it, and then, without the river there to keep carving the path, the cliffs would collapse and undo all our hubris anyway."

A few millenia later, another man in an entirely unrelated place invented dynamite.

A very modernist tale. It has all the features of that metanarrative. Ayn Rand, Thomas More or Karl Marx could have written this, and in a way they did.

I am, as a westerner, obligated to hold dear this Faustian impulse to reach for the infinite at any cost. But as with any impulse it becomes insane when it goes too far.

The XXth century should be informative enough to those who do not fear looking at it as to the limits of Faustianism. When you seek to change your own nature to perfect it and put yourself in the place of God, all you reap is horror. This is why Faustian civilization is only stable when it is under the dominion of its own religion in Christianity incidentally, because it nails down some sense of humility into western man.

Kill God, and as Nietzche prophetized, you will bathe in the blood of millions.

Marx's specific criticism of capital...

I think this is mostly accurate but the main thing that separates Marx from the reactionaries is that he believed that fundamentally the liberal bourgeois revolutions and the transformation of the peasantry into industrial proletarians was ultimately a good thing.

Read the Autonomy and Surrogate Activities sections of ISAIF and you'll get a precise idea what I mean. Man wasn't meant for email jobs. To cater to your materialism I would say that man is not adapted to such things because they are too recent.

I do not take the suffering of humanity for millennia to adapt to the specific needs of society to be a reasonable course of action. Tradition holds that society should conform to us and our nature in its design.

What I believe Kaczynski misses here is that the humans of industrial society are not the humans of pre-industrial society. Even if we assume a pre-industrial hunter gatherer would give an "8" if asked "how fulfilled are you?" and a modern office worker would give a "5," that doesn't mean the office worker would report an "8" if made to live the life of the hunter gatherer.

I also don't buy that humanity at large is "suffering." In some ways, sure, but this suffering is not particularly greater than the suffering has ever been. How would this would even be measured in theory?

Build a table from scratch until you get a result you like, and then tell me that the feeling you are getting isn't real and what really matters is what's in the spreadsheets with a straight face.

Spreadsheets are not enjoyable and there are other things I find enjoyable like reading, exercise, or wasting time on the internet. If you want to call that actualization you can, but there's nothing special or essential about this feeling. Probably some people do like spreadsheets. "People have to do unpleasant tasks" is not a unique flaw of modernity. I think I would feel much less actualized if I was an illiterate farmer who never got to read an interesting book in his life. The oppression of nature is not preferable to the oppression of industry and the modern state; it's much worse.

I'm not sure his style will appeal to your materialist biases however,

I don't really consider myself a strict materialist. There are obviously some immaterial entities that exist like numbers or logical laws and maybe even more, which is why I don't even consider myself an atheist, but I don't see any reason to include human ideological constructs like the ones I've mentioned in that category.

the main thing that separates Marx from the reactionaries is that he believed that fundamentally the liberal bourgeois revolutions and the transformation of the peasantry into industrial proletarians was ultimately a good thing.

Notably, traditionalists mostly believe these revolutions, though massive tragedies, to also have been inevitable.

This is where linear and cyclical time meet. Change is the constant and all regimes are transitory. Hegel things we are synthesizing the perfect regime through these transitions, Calvin that we are descending to the depths of sin until redemption, and Aristotle that we are just playing out endless seasons.

Change is a good thing. It is good that winter follows autumn or summer would never happen. But winter is still harsh and terrible.

the humans of industrial society are not the humans of pre-industrial society

I don't think you can make a convincing argument that this is true. Evolution on the genetic level is not that fast, and we can see in all the pathologies of modern life precisely the maladies of people who have crafted en environment they are not suited to both psychologically and physiologically. This is what Ted denounces, that we made our bed of autism and tooth decay and are decided to invent and sell solutions to the problems we created that only make us less adapted to our environment. And Land may be right that really we are terraforming Earth for something else. But that something else is not humanity.

I don't like that. I think we can have technology without this problem. And that the way to do this is to reembrace what we have always done to moderate the excesses that have led us here and embrace a wholesome view of our nature.

there's nothing special or essential about this feeling

I couldn't disagree more. You may as well say there is nothing special or essential about the feeling you get when you are interacting with a great piece of art.

There are obviously some immaterial entities that exist like numbers or logical laws

So you are a Kantian of sorts. What is then your stance on Natural Law?

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Except that every civilization that has fallen in the past believed exactly that about themselves. The Romans believed themselves civilized and different from the barbarians of the past and those current barbarians around them. The Greeks thought the same of themselves, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Turks, etc. if you’d have walked the streets of any of those cities, they would have been pretty sophisticated and full of well educated people with a good bit of division of labor, lavish entertainment systems, good roads and communication systems. We can do what they did with muscle power by using machines. We have electricity and computer and robots — which we use to do what the Romans did with slaves.

And I think honestly that no civilization, even one a million times more advanced than we are today is exempt from history. History doesn’t stop, and a civilization that ignores reality long enough will find itself again facing the iron laws of physics and mathematics and biological realities. And this is the fundamental problem that civilizations face— eventually you build up a system that doesn’t work when pushed up against reality.

Except that every civilization that has fallen in the past believed exactly that about themselves. T

The ancients had a pretty fatalistic view of history. They tended to view themselves as degraded versions of their ancestors, hence the stories of bygone golden ages. The idea of eternal progress is largely a Christian one. Furthermore the life of the average Roman was closer to the life of an Egyptian 1000 years earlier or a medieval 1000 years later than any of them are to the life of the average US citizen in 2024. It really is different this time.

Obviously modern civilization will not last forever, just because nothing does, whether it degrades into something resembling a past state or advances into something else. But that doesn't really make the fate of the Romans or the Turks instructive.

The idea of eternal progress is largely a Christian one.

It is?

It's not unique to Christianity, but the Western form of linear history which seized the minds of Whigs and the like definitely sees its origins in Christian metaphysical views of time contained between Genesis and Judgement Day.

Though interestingly, in the mind of Christians that linear progression was very much not eternal or infinite, this world will exist for a finite amount of time until His return. The advent of secularism didn't destroy these metaphysics but judgement got replaced by apotheosis and the awesome power of the machine convinced many they were on a road to a heaven on Earth.

Saint Thomas More was not a Buddhist.

The western form of linear time does not solely see it in such things. If the point is merely the linearity (as opposed to cyclicality) of time, you see that in the sentence immediately prior to that I quoted before. If the point is that it's linear with a good ending, well, that is a little better of a match, but Christianity is decidedly unclear about whether things will be getting better or not prior to the return of Christ. On the other hand, you can see a sort of enlightenment-style linearity in Aeschylus' Oresteia, several hundred years before the coming of Christ, where the cyclical vengeance of the furies is tamed and put an end to by the enlightened and civilized gods of Athens.

Of course, I don't imagine Aeschylus was the direct precursor of modern progress—I think that's probably closer to being a result of technological growth and advances in scientific knowledge giving people the often accurate sense that they knew more and could do more than all who came before them.

I work with quite a few young men. They generally have girlfriends. The older ones (let's say 30+ years old) generally have wives and own a home. A few even have children.

There's some subset of sad incels. I somehow don't personally know them. The median young man I know seems to have little despair.

You're not the first one to make a comment like this on this topic, and I think it's pretty clear that this type of anecdotal analysis just doesn't work for something like this due to the availability bias. How many young men do you socialize with that are so isolated and lonely that they never socialize with anyone? How many do you work with who don't even go out of their home to work at a job? Obviously, definitionally zero. The types of people being discussed here are specifically the types of people who you wouldn't notice in everyday life.

Yeah, it's like the "I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon" sentiment back in the days (I know the quote isn't technically real, but anyway). This isn't meant as a dig at the original commenter; this is a simple facet of social life anywere. I'd also add that despairing men have all the reasons in the world to hide their despair in meatspace. Of course we see little of it. Also, the stats prove that the ratio of single, unattached men is growing.

It's hard to get a good grip on statistics in so manipulated an epistemic setting as ours, but given what does get reported, I'm going to go on a limb and say that the median young man you know isn't the median young man. Otherwise those reported rates of celibacy are either impossible or men are mysteriously under-reporting relationships.

To say nothing of home ownership rates.

The median young man I know is struggling to get by and largely celibate. But then again he's also highly likely to be a homosexual and have a specific set of religious beliefs and hobbies, because nobody's friend circle is representative of the population at large.

Besides, friendless people have literally p = 0 to be your friend by definition.

Considering that the numbers that initiated the "sex recession talk" were still at sexlessness for young people (ie. sex less often than monthly - even that would include many people that would not be "true incels") being around 30 % among young people, it would imply that the median young man is indeed having at least some sex and the median young man you know not being as representative as the median young men /u/TIRM knows (or, indeed, the median young men that I know).

Broadly agreed. At this point in my life the people I know are largely other parents that I meet through some school or child event or my coworkers. And we are mostly a cabal of tech workers.

So selecting for employed engineers, they date around in their 20s and settle down early to mid 30s. Broadly speaking. I know some these people recently bought properties with their spouses or fiances, etc. Multiple coworkers have in the past few months aged into the "get married and buy a place" stage of life. No kids yet from this group, incidentally. Good thing my Chinese coworkers are picking up the slack in the having children department.

The couple of hopeless dweebs I know (no offense, decent guys and coworkers, but being realistic here) are Indian immigrants. They both got wifes with a little help (coercion? hard boot on the ass?) from their families.

If we made some horribly unrepresentative polling of just my experiences, I'd say young people do nothing but work and date and eventually marry. And I would list off examples to support that.

I don’t think it’s un fixable. It’s just that we need to build those things into society in a constructive way rather than decrying any visible manifestations of masculinity as fundamentally disordered. There are lots of options: full contact sports, hunting, martial arts, perhaps in the near future space exploration or building undersea colonies. Telling a boy with a bent toward masculinity to play rugby or take karate channels the energy into things that are good for male bonding and health.

All that stuff is good, but none of it can really replace the visceral knowledge that you are directly responsible for keeping yourself and your family alive, which was reality for the vast majority of men for the vast majority of history, but no longer.

Perhaps something like William James’ “the moral equivalent of war”

There's been a marked shift to the right for young men in the past couple of years, while women have gone in the other direction. It can't all just be the industrial revolution.

According to Gallup: U.S. Women Have Become More Liberal; Men Mostly Stable.

It can't all just be the industrial revolution.

"The story goes like this..."

What we are seeing now is the culmination of the commodification of sex and the relations between the sexes which started long ago but could not get fully in stride before the invention of the pill, hormonal therapy and the ideological advances that allowed for the deterritorialization of all sexed institutions (including marriage, youth clubs, and anything in between) and of sex itself.

Capital/Industrial Society/Modernity couldn't do this without the Internet. Now it has done it. And here we are.

the pill

How big of a shift was this actually?

Like it wasn’t the first birth control method, and social acceptability of contraception started to increase with the lambeth accords. It seems like the pill was left of a shift and more of a stepping stone along the path.

Some argue other inventions before it were more impactful, but all I've seen were in the same vein and pursuing the same ultimate goal.

I'm not sure that contraception for unmarried people was within the Overton window until after the pill. And while the timing method works well, it requires diligence.

Also the behavioral changes of hormonal birth control might be pretty impactful.

Contraception for unmarried people wasn’t socially accepted in 1960 either.

There's been a marked shift to the right for young men in the past couple of years

Eh, I’m not convinced. It looks like they just haven’t gone as far left as the women have; that’s different from shifting to the right in absolute terms

There has definitely been a bit of a shift recently (combined I'm sure with a great deal of power-level-hiding) but the median man seems mostly demoralized and indifferent to political issues, and more focused on his own life and interests. That's just the feeling I get from the stats and my own anecdotal experience. Women more universally seem to have a stronger sense of political identity, whether to the left or to the right.

There’s no shift in the messaging, it’s explicitly telling white men kneel. Note that in the equivalent for black dudes, they are referred to as men. White men are not allowed to be referred to as “men”, that would be too masculine = dominant. They are being put down and infantilized, and then told to smile about it. This is obvious and transparent in all subtext.

Hell, just note the pettiness in this quote:

Bannon said to beat Trump and overcome his support with white men, Harris is going to have to generate excitement among other demographics, including white women, young voters, and Black voters.

This isn’t a direct quote from any dem representative, but The Hill is obviously dem aligned and it’s just so ironic in its utter disrespect. This is what they really think.

They are following the AP style guide on capitalizing "black" and not capitalizing "white". The petty disrespect is official policy among those types.

Yes, that’s the point. I only have terrible things to say about white men who are complicit in this, so I’ll hold my tongue.

I have sneering contempt for journalists and don't much like how they are held in generally high regard. In America they are almost all partisan advocates for their fringe progressive view. Of course they make a style guide that is pure culture warring.

I am certainly not saying Harris' campaign is pro-White, but it's the introduction of White identity politics into mainstream politics. And it's not going to go away, and it's the Democrats who have introduced it first.

I don't see this as having much to do with wokeness or identity politics (at least from Harris' end). I think this has common elements with the various Latinos/Blacks for Trump groups, with the main parallels being:

  1. Defiance: A way to say "fuck you, I'm going to vote for the guy/gal you're all telling me is racist/hates my ethnic group"
  2. Image laundering: A way of communicating that someone is less scary or hostile to your particular group than they're presented as being.

It is in a critical context. It's shaming all the evil White men that don't want to castrate themselves and betray their race, and promoting those that do as virtuous.

This is not a reduction in wokeness. You can have segregation from the right or the left. Frankly the ‘white dudes for’ framing makes it sound like all these people have dreads and are seriously considering Veganism. White male Allie’s have a spot in the progressive stack and Harris is going whole hog on progressive stack separation(doesn’t she have an AAPI men for Harris event later this week?) is a questionable decision, but it’s not anti woke.

This is the WhitePeopleTwitter effect. Reddit had a popular default sub called BlackPeopleTwitter where everything was positive and pro-black. In order to be an approved poster (?) you needed to prove you were black, unless you were an attractive white woman. Sensing the possibility of a white version popping up, they preemptively made WhitePeopleTwitter and used it to de-potentiate and emasculate white identity. So BPT gives positive valence to blacks, WPT gives negative valence to whites and white identity (intermixed with some humor). I just checked WPT, and the first post is Kamala Good Trump Bad, and the second post is telling everyone to call Republicans weird (a very interesting strategy which deserves its own post, hopefully someone writes it out, but it is the perfect minimization of the entire progressive strategy for years). The third post is actually about white dudes for Harris! The fourth is GOP weird and racist, the fifth is GOP weird. On BPT, the first video is “cool black people interrupted by annoying white women! Colonizing their space”.

Social engineering slop, all of it, certainly. But it works! You want whites to have a negative response when they think about their own group; that is, if you want to subjugate and destroy them. Replace their heroes with black drug dealers who rap and demean their women. So for Kamala, it is helpful to broach the topic of white identity insofar as it is used to vote for a black-indian woman. In the same way, in the corporate world you are allowed to acknowledge you are white when you at DEI training.

There is a double edge to the nihilistic view on race that whites are allowed to have. That being as soon as someone flips the narrative on its head, you are greeted with all the same nihilistic arguments facing any other ethnic group. Best exemplified in the 90's era rhetoric of 'everyone is racist'. It deflates the whole victimary discourse and drives it towards whatever pit of nihilism awaits it. Further than that, if you set up teams, it's only a matter of time before someone starts to genuinely root for theirs, even if it's the designated bad team.

People against European-white ethnocentrism, like Jordan Peterson, saw this coming a mile away and have spoken about the dangers of invoking any sort of ethnic identity for European-whites. Instead preaching the universalist individualism stuff.

There are multiple reasons for doing this if you are against positive white identity in general. The most obvious being that if you ever lose the reigns on that particular horse you might not get it back. Even if it's all supposed to be negative, you might end up with an institutional structure where the power ladder you have to climb drives you towards ethnocentric action in favor of whites. It might seem impossible today, but give it a generation or two and you have no idea what priors the youngest generation has.

On top of that, having white people not think about themselves in collective terms is simply better. You can just tell whites to not commit to any rational group action and they wont. They will seemingly buy into any individualist ethos regardless of how obviously stupid and suicidal it is. Just wrap it up in some novelty and have it appeal to their vanity and off they go. There is no risk there. Comparatively, even with a negative identity, there is always risk that some pathological nerve gets struck one too many times which, as mentioned prior, can easily spread. I'm worthless? We are all worthless. You are worthless.

Nellis, on the other hand, argued that Democrats have been too quick in the past to give up on constituencies that seem out of reach, like rural voters and white male voters.

Reminds me of this Hillary moment from 2008 that caused some debate back then but seems largely forgotten now.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Fair chance that was her husbands doing. I remember a similar anecdote from the 2016 campaign where Bill, allegedly, admonished Hillary's lack of attention to the rust belt. The anecdote was given to exemplify the reigning political strategy for the Dems at the time. That being the 'Coalition of the Ascendant'.

To be fair to Hillary, her husband signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which allowed states to decide whether or not to allow same sex marriage. Whilst Hillary used gay men getting married in her commercials. So it might not have been that crazy of an assumption to make to say that 'times have changed'.

working, hard-working Americans, white Americans

Funny slip of the tongue right there.

Couple of thoughts:

1: Perhaps the DNC only cares about white men insofar as it helps Kamala get elected, no more no less.

2: I think that the whole "white cops bad" angle of police violence died once we had several high-profile incidents involving Black police officers, such as Tyre Nichols.

I think it ebbed a bit, but even the Tyre Nichols case was immediately framed as black cops learning the ways of white cops.

Furthermore, I doubt most people even remember the name 'Tyre Nichols', whereas 'George Floyd' and 'Eric Garner' will still be regularly invoked due to how they were branded on our collective consciousness.

Hlynka can't stop taking W's, it seems.

This strikes me as a bizarre decision by the Harris campaign. Who knows, maybe I'm the brainlet here, but as a white dude, after 10 years of being shat on, this feels like pretty transparent opportunistic pandering. I'm actually very curious what our resident progressives think about this maneuver. Is Kamala fixing your race- and sex-segregated problems appealing to you?

I mean, I'm progressive and I acknowledge the nuance in gender and race issues in our country. Race isn't a monolith. Gender is not a monolith. I would reject any fellow progressive's premise that every white person is inherently racist and that every man is anti-feminist, simply because there is a non-zero amount of white people who aren't racist and a non-zero amount of men who are anti-feminist. There are white people on the right who aren't racist, there are Black people on the left who are racist. There are conservative feminist men and liberal misogynist men. There are non-straight conservative black men, and straight, liberal white men.

The list goes on. People don't ever fit neatly into specific boxes. The whole point of progressivism, to me, is to allow for intersectionality so we can have collective conversations about how to make our country better.

The list goes on. People don't ever fit neatly into specific boxes. The whole point of progressivism, to me, is to allow for intersectionality so we can have collective conversations about how to make our country better.

Could you say more about how you believe intersectionality contributes to this? It doesn't seem obvious to me that such useful conversations are in any way impaired without it. It even seems like it could actively contribute to putting people into their intersectional "box," rather than allowing them to, well, not fit into a specific box and have their specific individual experience valued as such.

Sure. Intersectionality affirms the lived experiences of every stakeholder in a decision-making process. While there could certainly be overlap, even a large overlap, between two different people's shared experiences, it is important to also seek out the nuances that make them different.

Race isn't a monolith... white people... Black people

Oh really?

I dont think I can recall a more transparently racist, or at least racially monolithic movement than this particular push by the swap creatures infesting the halls of Big Journalism than this particular quirk. We must always capitalize "Black" to denote their universally shared identity and experiences, but "white" people are normal, default, boring individualists who dont share a common identity? Thats not me exaggerating, thats straight from the AP Style guide. Its tranparently divisive and racist, and also hilariously ignorant of ethnic relations within Africa proper.

If you want me to believe you dont see race as a monolith, dont treat it like one. Assuming all black people share experiences because of their skin color is peak whitey guilt.

If I didn't capitalize the word "black" in my sentence, there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it. What would you have me do?

Also, from the link you provided:

After a review and period of consultation, we found, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, AP is a global news organization and there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes in much of the world.

It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue. They sought guidance, they considered it, and decided that for now, this is the best way to handle it.

  • -13

First, thank you for participating here as a self-identified progressive. Good luck, hope you enjoy your time.

It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue.

It's very easy to rewrite the AP's style decision as incredibly anti-black racist without actually changing its reasoning: "After a period of review, we found that white people are just too diverse to comprehend as a single group. Black people, on the other hand, are basically all the same no matter where they're from or what their culture is. They are defined primarily by their melanin and whether or not white people (an undefined group) have been racist against them."

It's wildly racist against basically everyone, and manages to center white people in the process of of supposedly supporting black people. It's blatantly absurd and narcissistic.

When arguments are made in favor of Black for the group also known as Americans Descendants of Slavery, as a culturally-distinct group from African-Americans being either new immigrants or those with recently immigrated ancestry, that makes sense. On similar grounds White could make sense as a term for us pan-European mutts with no connection to ancestral lands. Personally, I'd prefer both groups just be "American," but the powers that be don't seem too happy with that. But Black as a term that spans from an American whose ancestors were forced here 300 years ago, and somebody like Mswati III? Balderdash.

If I didn't capitalize the word "black" in my sentence, there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it.

Welcome to theMotte! For the record, there are effectively no such people here. SJ's tolerated here, but trying to impose SJ on others would get a dogpile and possibly even moderator action - as there's a little moderator action here against people demanding you stop using SJ terms.

Basically, the moderation here is quite neutral but the commentariat leans heavily to the "right" of politics - there are quite a few libertarians (like me) as well as a lot of full-blown conservatives, but very few true SJers. My going theory for the lion's share of this disparity is that because a lot of the big places on the 'Net don't allow opinions contradicting SJ (though this is less true than it used to be since Elon Musk bought Twitter), and people only generally put in enough effort to find one place where they can talk politics and then stop, SJers don't generally need to bother with a niche forum like this while anti-SJers do (I, for instance, came here after it became obvious to me that continuing to talk politics on Sufficient Velocity or SpaceBattles would get me permabanned for blasphemy against SJ).

What would you have me do?

Tell them that it's silly to capitalize one and not the other because races are not monolithic entities.

I'm really indifferent on whether they capitalize both or not. To each their own.

What would you have me do?

Take that risk. That was an easy decision.

What would you have me do?

Be consistent. If you say you dont treat black people as a monolithic block, then don't. Recognize that those who shriek about the lack of cap on black are happily assuming they are all interchangeable persons who share exactly the same cultural experiences based solely on their skin color.

It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue.

Correct, and if they hadn't omitted the four words "with our news room" after "consultation" it would be an entirely accurate and honest statement. That absense manages to suggest that this policy is something other than a lily-livered, vibe-checking, virtue signal without directly stating it, but if you are familiar with the particular dialect of urban leftoid journo-bullshit spoken by the AP its meaning is clear enough: "we can't be bothered to explore the nuances of African-American, or African-African" (fucking LOL to that!) "cultural, ethnic, tribal, or economic groupings, and hope our fellow guilt-ridden whiteys will reconize this noble gesture rids us of the need to actually clarify our identifiers, because frankly we're too cowardly and lazy to do that."

If I didn't capitalize the word "black" in my sentence, there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it. What would you have me do?

This is not even remotely true. I have never seen anyone on the motte admonish someone else for not capitalizing black.

At the risk of getting admonished for consensus building, where do you think you are right now?

I haven't been here long enough to know what is accepted and what isn't, but it is my personal preference to capitalize the word black when talking about a Black person/people.

It's a bit dishonest to confidently predict the reaction of a community you admit to knowing nothing about. It's also a bit dishonest to say in one post you're doing it out of peer pressure and in the next say it's your preference.

You're right, those are both fair points. Let me clarify. I started doing it about two years ago when more and more media outlets began doing it. It seemed like the right thing to do, so as to not offend anyone in text-based conversation.

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When did you come to have this preference?

See my response to lurker.

If I didn't capitalize the word "black" in my sentence, there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it.

The question is what sort of person would object to not capitalizing black, if white also isn't capitalized. I would consider such a person a racebaiter of the lowest sort and their admonishment of you would surely lead to them either getting downvoted, piled-on, or most probably both.

They sought guidance

Whose guidance? Were these advisors "trained marxists", holders of PhDs in critical race theory, or did they ask for the opinions of people who do not see race as that important? I think it was the former, so their decision is just laudering what they wanted to do anyway through academics.

The question is what sort of person would object to not capitalizing black, if white isn't also capitalized.

Why can't black be capitalized but not white? I don't think it's necessary in this case to capitalize both. It's the same sort of thing when people counter "Black Lives Matter," by saying, "All Lives Matter". The former statement isn't being made to belittle the lives that aren't black, but rather, to affirm that Black lives truly matter to them and worthy of the same protections in society that non-Black people have. Capitalizing Black in the context of race but not white is done for a similar reason: there is a greater consensus that Black people have enough shared experiences that their identity should be recognized. As it stands right now, the same cannot be said for white people.

Whose guidance? Were these advisors "trained marxists", holders of PhDs in critical race theory, or did they ask for the opinions of people who do not see race as that important? I think it was the former, so their decision is just laudering what they wanted to do anyway through academics.

Do you have any evidence to suggest they were "trained Marxists"?

  • -14

there is a greater consensus that Black people have enough shared experiences that their identity should be recognized. As it stands right now, the same cannot be said for white people.

A bit tautological- marking white people as "the group without an identity" does give them an identity and a mass of shared experience. One defined almost wholly in negative ways and a requirement for higher standards of evidence, but still.

Do you have any evidence to suggest they were "trained Marxists"?

That's probably a reference, maybe indirectly, to Patrisse Cullors, the infamous BLM leader that bought 4 houses with the money donated to BLM.

If you're asking if CRT is descended from Marxism, or most PhDs in CRT have also dabbled in Marxism, I feel comfortable saying yes but providing sufficient evidence for that is a sizable project. Short version is CRT is descended from critical theory, which was developed by the Frankfurt School, (broadly) a descendent of Marxist thought attempting a synthesis without the failures of Marxism-Leninism.

If you're asking about the AP style guide specifically, I don't think anyone outside the AP can answer that.

have enough shared experiences that their identity should be recognized. As it stands right now, the same cannot be said for white people

Says who? Even the avowed leftists that pass through here generally do not buy into this brand of fanatical anti-white hatred

there could be people here who would demand I capitalize it

How did you end up here? Genuinely curious

Edit: “Here” meaning TheMotte

This isn't an official warning, but consider it a disapproving squint. I don't think you are "genuinely curious," I think you are displeased at a leftist posting and you are subtly implying he's a troll or a brigader and questioning whether he belongs here. If you are genuinely curious, there are less confrontational and non-sequiter ways to ask someone how they found us, and if you do think he's a troll or a brigader, it's not your job to "police" the Motte unless he actually posts something that is against the rules.

Ok apologies, there was definitely an element of trying to enforce a consensus there and I was certainly transgressing. That said, it was hard for me to believe the user wasn’t a troll and had somehow stumbled here without being aware of the culture/consensus that does exist here (even if speaking of it or acknowledging it is mostly against the rules).

For god's sake, don't harass away every leftist who comments here, this place could use some more ideological diversity.

It's quite possible he is a troll (or at least pretending to have stumbled upon us when he actually heard about us elsewhere and decided to come see what's what). That said, "Posting leftist views" does not make someone a troll.

As for the 'culture/consensus' that exists here, it's not against the rules to "speak of it" (that is, speak of what you think the culture is). It's against the rules to try to enforce a consensus. In other words, you may think of this as a right-leaning, anti-woke space, but we do not prohibit leftist/woke views, and we explicitly forbid trying to chase them off, or make them feel like they don't "belong" here.

I was tired of dealing with the groupthink and circlejerking on Reddit and I Googled "forums that allow for nuanced and respectful political discussion".

Welcome, we are glad to have you and appreciate your contributions to the discussion.

I Googled "forums that allow for nuanced and respectful political discussion".

Not doubting you, but I'd be interesting in knowing how that worked. I just searched Google for that and then clicked through the first couple pages of links and looked inside the content for any reference to the Mottle. Couldn't find it.

After I typed that, I realized it was actually through asking ChatGPT, not Google. My bad.

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I don’t know this feels dubious. TheMotte has basically zero googleability and the idea someone would stumble into our dying spinoff forum years after it spun off is just hard to believe.

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The whole point of progressivism, to me, is to allow for intersectionality so we can have collective conversations about how to make our country better.

What seems off to me is that all these groups seem to be saying the exact same thing. What do you get from joining the "white dudes" group?

Race isn't a monolith. Gender is not a monolith. I would reject any fellow progressive's premise that every white person is inherently racist and that every man is anti-feminist, simply because there is a non-zero amount of white people who aren't racist and a non-zero amount of men who are anti-feminist.

The gender equivalent to racism would be sexism, not anti-feminism. Equating being against an ideology that preaches it is okay to hate and abuse people because of their gender with sexism is an interesting way of "acknowledging the nuance in gender issues".

Not everyone makes any such distinction. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure whether it's the claim that anti-feminism isn't necessarily sexism or the claim that anti-feminism is necessarily sexism which is more dependent on definitional games for veracity.

This isn't a reduction in wokeness, it's an increase.

"White dudes for Harris" is a perfect example of two woke premises:

  1. Intersectionality. Your individual identity is the composite of different identity groups you belong to.

  2. The progressive stack. Every identity group is ranked in moral virtue from good to bad. White is the worst race. Male is the worst gender. Straight is the worst sexual identity. Straight white males are therefore the worst group.

"White men dudes for Harris" seeks to find men who embrace this meek identity, rooted in original sin. "We know we suck and nothing we can do can make us not suck. But at least we acknowledge the superiority of our betters."

If you think this is somehow a reduction in wokeness, then please tell me how the Harris administration plans to help white men specifically.

"White dudes for Harris" is a decline in both premises you mention, though:

It is appealing to the white identity of white men rather than just demanding pure intersectionality, in a way that does go beyond simply ranking white men as the worst in the progressive stack:

“Throughout American history, when white men organized, it was often with pointy hats on,” said Rocketto before he added how proud he was of this group of white men, who he said are too rarely heard from.

Actor Jeff Bridges, who played “The Dude” in the cult classic “The Big Lebowski,” was excited when he heard about the gathering of his fellow white dudes.

“I qualify, man! I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris,” Bridges said. “A woman president, man, how exciting!”

So we've gone from "white men cannot organize, to identify as a white man is either silly or vehemently immoral" to The Dude and other celebrities saying "I'm white, cool I can participate in this event for white men!" Now it's a political reality acknowledged by the Harris campaign- and not by the Trump campaign or Republican party, I might add.

True, the actual content and movement is not pro-white, but it's an introduction of White Identity politics to polite society and that's a significant change which will most likely continue as white people become "just another" demographic in our democracy. This George Floyd "white people are evil" peak-wokeness is not going to be permanent.

It's another example of "The Liberals" leading the Conservatives by the nose. The Liberals dragged the Conservative movement towards no acknowledgement for the actual interests of White people, and now that Liberals are acknowledging white people we may see the Republican party do the same. In all the Conservative thrashing over Wokeness they never did the actual transgressive thing, which would have been to directly appeal to white people like Harris is doing now. They fundamentally respect that boundary and will respect the new boundaries put in place by "The Liberals."

Identity politics typically don't involve the group actively advocating against their own group's interests.

There have been plenty of anti-White struggle session groups, maybe this is the most prominent but I don't think it's anything totally new.

This George Floyd "white people are evil" peak-wokeness is not going to be permanent.

He literally can’t make his pitch for this group without reminding us how evil white dudes are by saying

”Throughout American history, when white men organized, it was often with pointy hats on," said Rocketto

This is the usual “We’re so sorry” organizing of whites

It is appealing to the white identity of white men rather than just demanding pure intersectionality, in a way that does go beyond simply ranking white men as the worst in the progressive stack:

“Throughout American history, when white men organized, it was often with pointy hats on,” said Rocketto before he added how proud he was of this group of white men, who he said are too rarely heard from.

That's not going beyond the progressive stack, that's temporarily rearranging the order. It's the whole beauty of it, you can promote / demote client groups depending on what's necessary in the moment. In this case it's made pretty clear this particular group isn't even being given any amount of respect, they're just loosening the leash a little - they're explicitly warning you that if you even think of getting too uppity, you'll be thrown in the "pointy hats" bag.

they're explicitly warning you that if you even think of getting too uppity, you'll be thrown in the "pointy hats" bag.

Yes, this is what they are doing. With Peak Woke they oscillated between "White identity is the most evil thing in the world" and "there's no such thing as White people". Now they are "ok you can identify as white in a positive regard as long as it is to support our campaign, otherwise you are the KKK." But there's an important difference between those two positions, with the latter position being much weaker than the former position, and more indicative of a future White Identity Politics.

With Peak Woke they oscillated between "White identity is the most evil thing in the world" and "there's no such thing as White people". Now they are "ok you can identify as white in a positive regard as long as it is to support our campaign, otherwise you are the KKK." But there's an important difference between those two positions, with the latter position being much weaker than the former position, and more indicative of a future White Identity Politics.

No, it's really not, and it requires to thinks so requires a singular obsession with white identity. They do this stuff all the time, they used to tell women that they're on top of the world, until Women+ came along. The thing is you're not even being offered anything all that hot. They're not telling you you're going to be on top of the stack - you're still at the bottom, but maybe the boot won't press so hard, if you behave.

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