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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   30970 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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Crimes are real, and people in high places commit them. But prosecuting them is reactive, and prosecutorial discretion lends itself to petty political witch hunts. Trump supporters, of all people, should realize this.

What would be gutsy and genuinely salutatory would be for Biden to offer broad, blanket pardons of controversial figures on both sides. And it would be helpful for Democrats: they wouldn't spend the next four years chasing down crimes, real or imagined, that don't really matter (compared to other issues) and that don't help them win elections.

Crimes are real, and people in high places commit them. But prosecuting them is reactive, and prosecutorial discretion lends itself to petty political witch hunts. Trump supporters, of all people, should realize this.

No, we shouldn't. What we should realize is that the system has been used against us, legitimately or illegitimately, and so now it needs to be used against them as well. If the ways that federal, state, social and corporate power have been used against Red Tribe were acceptable, then they remain acceptable when we use them against Blue Tribe. If that cannot and will not be allowed to happen, then that is valuable information that we would do well to confirm before considering where we go from here.

If in fact the situation is one where Blue Tribe is fundamentally unwilling to accept application of their own rules against their interests, then this fact needs to be made common knowledge.

This is a fine argument for just desserts, but not for escalation. Their own methods, sure, but a lot of this is far beyond.

What escalations do you perceive?

You’re not nearly stupid enough to make that comment stick.

Try me. We have a rule here: speak plainly. If you think "a lot of this is far beyond", then lay out which things you're talking about and why, and then we can discuss it.

Sulla was so bad that Marius must take every measure and seize every power to save the Republic, otherwise the Optimates will keep winning forever. This can't have dire consequences down the line.

Meh. The blues are pretty much guaranteed to lose a kinetic tribal conflict, so it's far from a worst case scenario.

The blues are pretty much guaranteed to lose a kinetic tribal conflict

I'd say this is a pretty strong assertion, of the sort that should really have some evidence provided to back it. For one, why don't you think the blues will be able to retain control over "kinetic" government institutions?

I mean, the Texas border standoff shows that federal control of kinetic institutions is far from unlimited(theoretically both sides were supposed to take orders from Joe Biden- in practice, neither of them did), and there’s simply very few blues in kinetic positions. There’s a lengthy history of federal law enforcement- much much more willing to crack skulls than the actual army- not being willing to get into it with antigovernment extremists.

From a geographic perspective, as well, maintaining control over enough kinetic institutions to win a civil war is a far taller order for blues than reds. The navy is the most liberal branch of the armed forces and it’s also the least useful for this. To win, blues need to maintain a continuous line of supply over hostile terrain to large inland cities that can serve as a base for controlling the hinterlands well enough to launch offensives against red states- if they fail at this very infantry intensive task, then they don’t have a victory condition. Without Denver it’s basically impossible for the blues to reconquer the heartland.

Unlike a lot of people here on both sides (apparently), and despite my ostensible respect for violence as a necessary component of politics, I am not fond of war.

It would be better for everyone involved if that could be avoided.

A fair point. Now offer your plan for how the powers we've seen turned against Red Tribe can be reliably leashed in the future. Tell me how we get back to a trustworthy media ecosystem. Tell me how we end systemic discrimination in education and employment against non-Blues. Tell me how we get the FBI to stop breaking the law to persecute Republicans, and then breaking it the other way to protect democrats. Tell me how we lock up cancel culture for good. Tell me how we solve the thing where the general Blue population believes that they have an inalienable right to lawless violence against perceived Reds without consequence or retaliation.

The system whereby we share power with Blues cannot survive the abuses we have seen. It has to go. One of the best ways to convince Blues of that fact is to use it against them, forcing them to fight back against it themselves out of self-preservation. This does not even require breaking laws in the way that they repeatedly have done, and continue to endorse doing. Merely enforcing the letter of the law will, I think, be more than sufficient.

offer your plan

Octavian. The Red vs Blue distinction must become meaningless. Frankly Trump is already some way there with the amount of Democrats he has made switch sides.

But really, the only way to end the war is to win a victory that is incomprehensible to its own paradigm. Using the system to prosecute the other side in retaliation isn't enough. The system must be destroyed and remade to such a degree it is unrecognizable.

Abolish the CIA and turn its role over to the DoD. Turn the FBI into a statistics department. Obliterate the DoE with extreme prejudice. Collapse the entire education Ponzi by making student loans forgivable in bankruptcy. End the Fed.

Afuera. Afuera. Afuera.

And don't stop there, create two new institutions for every one you destroy.

But I wouldn't even attempt to prosecute the people staffing the old decrepit system. Just let them go. Ignore them. Make their protests a meaningless antiquated impotent gesticulation that has no effect or meaning.

It's a high bar, but I genuinely think that short of this, you are locked in an endless struggle that ends with the death of the Republic. There can't be any reds and blues anymore.

Collapse the entire education Ponzi by making student loans forgivable in bankruptcy.

That’s an extremely counterproductive idea as stated if the goal is to attack schooling industry. It would be a huge boon to schooling industry if these were dischargeable. Instead, what you need to do is to stop the federal government providing the loans.

Actually it wouldn’t. One reason that admitting thousands upon thousands of people into institutions of higher education is that no matter how poorly they do, the college gets paid. If that were no longer true, if students were no longer money buckets, then they’d either have to do without students or retool to provide value to their students. That means more practical education and lower costs. And obviously no bank is going to back a dischargable loan for “activism studies” because the student won’t be able to pay for it.

no matter how poorly they do, the college gets paid

Yes, and that’s why making them dischargeable doesn’t make sense. The schools are paid up front. The loan payments are made to Federal Government. If you allow the loans to be discharged, the schools don’t lose a penny, and it’s the taxpayer who bears the cost.

His point is that the college already got the money, so they don't care if the loan is dischargeable or not. The one on the hook if the student is allowed to default is the government, not the university.

Most student loans are from the government, not from private banks. And the government doesn't make a risk/profit calculation before lending you the money.

Private parties wouldn’t give out loans for worthless degrees and bad students when the degree is the collateral.

Why not both?

I don't even mind the FedGov providing loans, as long as it's directly linked to something FedGov cares about. Right now you can dispose of a loan by working for a nonprofit, or, say, a public school teacher, which creates a very specific incentive. Cut all of those general-purpose incentives out, and make it so that if you want the federal government to loan you money for education, it's because you're going into military service, or you're going into shipbuilding, or you're going to go work for the three-letter-agencies we haven't abolished, or w/e.

Otherwise, you can get your loan from a bank, and it will be dischargeable through bankruptcy, and they will evaluate it on the likelihood that you can pay it off. (No, I don't object to people getting a PhD on Aristotle's conception of the good life who will go on to earn $80k/year teaching at a mid-tier university, but the federal government doesn't needing to be footing the cost, and neither do the banks. That's what special interest scholarships are for.)

Frankly, I think this is less an "attack" on schooling than something that is likely to fix it (although it would be perceived as an attack).

Why not allow them to be discharged in bankruptcy, but require the schools to cosign the loans?

That would work too.

This would bankrupt pretty much every non-ivy inside of a few years. Higher ed operates on razor thin margins. I want to burn down the system, but this is too much fire.

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There can't be any reds and blues anymore.

But that’s saying that to destroy the enemy, we have to destroy ourselves.

It’s a bit like the school I mentioned once in the UK where, to avoid religious conflicts between children, everyone is forbidden from praying and all meals are vegetarian. I grew up Church of England. I resent having to give up my religious practices because newcomers are causing trouble. I don’t want to stop the Culture War, I want to win it, at least in my local area.

But I wouldn't even attempt to prosecute the people staffing the old decrepit system. Just let them go. Ignore them. Make their protests a meaningless antiquated impotent gesticulation that has no effect or meaning.

I agree with this otoh.

But that’s saying that to destroy the enemy, we have to destroy ourselves.

Yes. The Populares must cease to exist. Because they only exist in their opposition to the Optimates, and vice versa.

You must transition from the 2 story state to the 1 story state.

The Populares must cease to exist. Because they only exist in their opposition to the Optimates, and vice versa.

You deserve a better, longer reply but to be brief, I don’t think this is true. There are real, concrete issues at stake: who is allowed into the country, who is allowed to control cultural bottlenecks like Twitter or academia, the relative privileges and duties of men and women, whether we need to destroy our economy with unilateral green policies, and so on.

Tony Blair actually tried what you suggest: he began mass migration to, in the words of his advisor, “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. But I consider myself a British nativist populist. If you attempt to render the Culture War irrelevant by flattening the differences between natives and newcomers, I lose by default. So I can’t back that. This is what I mean when I say I want victory not peace.

Another example would be transgenders vs TERFs. There are currently irreconcilable differences between the TERF wish for single sex spaces without men, and the trans wish to be invited into single sex spaces for women. You can render this conflict irrelevant by ceasing to consider women as meaningfully different from men, or considering trans ‘women’ as equivalent to women, but either is a loss for the TERF faction.

This is actually a good point, the essential claim is that neoliberalism attempted and failed to do this synthesis.

I'd argue it actually succeeded. And ruled the world for a long time. It's just that this has now fizzled out like any other regime.

But can you really say that the political lines of today are the same as the political lines of the cold war (which are the ones that neolibs synthesized).

Saying that you're a socialist or a capitalist today has indeed become essentially meaningless. Everyone lives in a managerial mixed economy where the line between public and private enterprise is so blurry it may as well not exist.

My call is for someone to do this with the issues of the day. However impossible it indeed seems right now.

But as Corvos raises, to go from a two-tier society to a one-tier society does not necessarily mean that Populares becomes Optimates. Rather, Optimates must become Populares. This is why people have railed against communism and similar ideologies in the past, because all they really accomplished was leveling everyone in certain societies down to a level that was objectively sub-par.

I think class is something that might be impossible to eradicate. Even the Soviet Union stratified into proletarians and intellectuals. Classes must always exist in any human civilization. The best you can do is to keep resentment from building up in the first place.

It's certainly impossible to eliminate classes and groups of interest, as a concept.

But making specific groups irrelevant happens all the time.

Oh, see, upon reading your initial response I thought your point was that the endgame is approaching, the knives are coming out, and there's nothing to be done for it but live accordingly and start shrinking one's personal circle of concern to that which might be preserved. And I'd have agreed.

Now it seems that you think this plan will actually work to somehow put the cat back in the bag. I really don't think so.

Game over, man. Game over!

Why would the game be over? The game has barely even started. Do you think, if this last election had gone the other way, that would have been game, set, match? Would the Death Star have appeared in orbit and engaged primary ignition?

If Trump dies tomorrow, the Culture War will go on. If Blue Tribe jails Elon, the Culture War will go on. If another pandemic breaks out, the culture war will go on. And as I was arguing ten years ago, I argue today: Red Tribe is not only going to win, but is clearly going to win. The question is how and at what cost, but all the plausible costs seem acceptable to me.

“So yeah, the war. It is everything. Is this really how you want it? We’ll win.”

I rather think you won’t, actually. Your side seems to have a much easier time making enemies than friends, in my experience. Your comrades hate too fast and forgive too slow, and the obvious problems with your ideology keep expressing themselves in open fratricide. By de facto embracing a “revolutionary conscience” model of ethics, the movement generates an endless series of hypocrisies that must be covered up or explained away, thereby burning good-will it might otherwise turn to the cause. Social Justice’s gains have been significant, but it seems to me that the current generation is trading on goodwill amassed by their forebears, and that most of their success comes easy because the general population does not see where the movement is leading them.

Red Tribe is not only going to win, but is clearly going to win.

I will again reiterate, for our audience, that I, for one, do not think it's "clear" at all, that you have not provided sufficient evidence to back this claim, and that from what I have seen, if any tribe is "clearly going to win," it's Blue.

I will again reiterate, for our audience, that I, for one, do not think it's "clear" at all, that you have not provided sufficient evidence to back this claim

This is true, I have repeatedly refused to lay out my evidence, publicly or to you. You have claimed I'm lying, and I have agreed that by refusing to provide the full evidence behind my claim, your interpretation is reasonable.

On the other hand, you have a well-established reputation of advocating suicidal despair or mass murder, and so detailed discussions of the mechanics of rebellion with you or with the public generally are probably not a good idea.

We've just had an election. My prediction was that Trump was going to win. What was your prediction?

And as I was arguing ten years ago, I argue today

How are people pulling up old comments from themselves and others like this? Perhaps that was an especially memorable blogpost, for you, but people also link to old comments from five year old culture war threads.

I trolled through the posts on thing of things, searching for my old handle till I got a hit, and worked it from there... I was pretty sure that conversation was one of the last I had on that blog, so it wasn't that hard to work through posts until I found it.

Well, damn.

What worries me isn’t that you think some weird nerdy guys might deserve to be critiqued using hurtful names. What worries me is that you seem to measure offense and acceptable punishment on different scales for different groups of people, presumably for Social Justice reasons. If your fundamental ethics differ based on whether “friends” or “enemies” are involved, where does Charity go from there?

Helluva paragraph, hoss. I've been having that argument for years and only wish I had yours to build on. Thank you for being around.

My God, that was you? I've had that conversation in the back of my mind for most of this decade.

Actually tried to look up "Veronica D" recently. Anyone have a clue?

And then people wonder how Superman gets away with putting on a pair of glasses.

Everyone here may well as well posting as “anon” to me. How do you keep track?

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