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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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The whole "weird" angle of attack seems really bad in general because it doesn't say what they want it to say. If they want to tar Vance for something made up just say he molested someone. If they want to tar republicans for being gross then call them gross, as an insult for anything against the left-leaning the word is already used that way anyway. Weird just doesn't work in my opinion. Comes out somewhere along the lines of calling an old man lame.

I'm not actually sure this is a strategy that anyone sat down and thought up in the sense that it's something that was determined with a rational calculation, it's just the Id of the American left expressing its deepest-held views against the American right. Tim Walz used the fucking-a-couch meme in his speech because he honestly believes it. He doesn't believe Vance molested someone.

But I shouldn't be throwing stones in glass houses, portions of the right have gone completely bonkers too, the memes are flying faster than I've ever seen before and people I know in real life are getting radicalized in all sorts of wild directions, even people I've long associated with stability and aversion to politics. I saw this phrase on here -- we live in a post-post-Truth world. And this election, wow, that makes it so fanatically clear. Part of me wants to suspect state-sponsored memers, but honestly I think Americans are just crazy enough to delude themselves without anyone else goading them on.

I find it extremely unlikely Walz honestly believes the couch thing. It’s well known that it’s fake, it’s just become a meme.

it's just the Id of the American left expressing its deepest-held views against the American right. Tim Walz used the fucking-a-couch meme in his speech because he honestly believes it. He doesn't believe Vance molested someone.

I think this is it. The left finds genuine social conservatism weird and concerning in a way they have trouble quite pointing out without sounding like a conspiracy theory(‘handmaid’s tale’ ‘dominionism’). They really do think Mike Pence is creepy for setting strict limits on socializing with women other than his wife. They also know, deep down, that they’d be perfectly comfortable with him giving their teenaged daughter a ride home. The expression thereof is going to be something vague, maybe with some nonsensical and probably made-up ideas. Making up creepy and embarrassing shit is probably a natural human way to express that tension.

Remember, progressives fail the ideological Turing test. They don’t know what social conservatives believe, just that it upsets them on a visceral level.

It's not just social conservatism. Trump is weird, and so is the online right which Vance feels tied to. Hanania is weird, Moldbug is weird, people on this website are weird.

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