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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Or, and hear me out here, abortion is not the major break between the dissident and the mainstream right, that would be foreign policy.

The dissident right has plenty of hardcore Catholics, who are happy to call abortion "sacrifices to Baal" with no cognitive dissonance.

The dissident right has plenty of hardcore Catholics,

Most of the DR twitterati tradcaths are as tradcath as the IRA was regular Catholic- the church to which they do not go is in Latin. That’s not to say there’s no overlap but your typical rad trad is a very conservative Republican with fairly typical very conservative Republican views.

Traditional Catholicism is popular on the DR because it’s a distinctively western community of real-life reactionaries with a coherent philosophical system. That popularity does not, in many of these cases, extend to actually going to church all that often.

Ok, but that still leaves them with the ability to believe abortion is sacrificing your child to Baal, without cognitive dissonance.

I didn’t even perceive it as tongue in cheek. I used to read the Bible and be incredulous that anyone would participate in child sacrifice. Seems to be absurd in so many directions: so cruel, paints the sacrificers in the worst possible light, is evolutionarily unfit.

I forgot when I read someone make the parallel with abortion, but it was a great insight. People sacrifice their children because they perceive them as burdensome and just want to have fun. Moloch is fun! Sexy parties and no annoying babies!

This maps onto nearly every abortion. We just have the technology to more or less reliably kill them ahead of being born.

I didn’t even perceive it as tongue in cheek. I used to read the Bible and be incredulous that anyone would participate in child sacrifice. Seems to be absurd in so many directions: so cruel, paints the sacrificers in the worst possible light, is evolutionarily unfit.

Remember that until the 2nd half of the 19th century, "Not all the children will make it, child death is just part of life" was one of the harsh truths of life in a fallen world. "Save every child!" was an absurd blasphemy against Gnon until it wasn't.

Given that child sacrifices peaked in times of drought and famine, I suspect it was a way of putting a positive spin on "I will share my limited supplies of food between the subset of my children that I can expect to keep alive."

he said they’d found a brothel
on the dig he did last night
I asked him how they know
he sighed:
a pit of babies’ bones
a pit of newborn babies’ bones was how to spot a brothel

Surely it's not a sacrifice if it's fun, any more than "giving up doing the chores for Lent" would be an act of devotion.

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