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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Firstly, Europe and India do not belong in the same category as 'non-American'. Europeans founded the USA. France and Spain helped America break away from England. Americans speak a European tongue, LARP as Romans with the Senate and Capitol, Eagles and Fasces and Cincinnati. American law is just English law with a twist.

Americans are just a different kind of European, the most successful offshoot. India is totally different. E pluribus unum is not a hindi expression. India is not fundamentally a European country, even if they kind of speak English and kind of have European law. The heritage they look back to, the culture they live in, the religions they worship are not European.

You seem to consider meritocracy as an end in and of itself. Why? Meritocracy will throw your children into Korean style hell-schooling and hell-exams to raise the GDP. Meritocracy will make you work 996 hours. Any mistake you make can be permanently recorded and held against you - incentives dear boy. Economic efficiency demands trackers on your work PC to ensure you're working hard. Economic efficiency demands that your factory be closed down and sent to Bangladesh to eke out 3% higher profit for someone else.

It will raise the GDP but at what price?

Economic efficiency and meritocracy should not be the goal of our culture and civilization. If we go down this path, then AI will do to us what you want to do those who 'didn't earn it'. Nepotism and being extremely lazy is not good either, there needs to be a balance. I am not anti-meritocracy per se but there should be limits.

Art, culture, family, fun, play and nation matter. Preserving a nation enables trust and strengthens the benefits of meritocracy while limiting the weaknesses. You can trust that the other guy isn't lying about his exams, that he won't screw you over and steal your IP because you share a background, you're of the same tribe. That's what tribes are for! You can't be totally trusting of course but better than limitless meritocracy (which is ironically just a breeding ground for ethnic cliques and corruption). Homogenous nations are important, they enable trust and stability. Nation is the opposite of diversity, it prevents this whole problem at the start. What happens when you bring in a million smart people from a foreign ethnic group and they start working together to infiltrate your institutions and build up their own power base, bootstrapping their merit into corruption? They have an advantage in cohesion and trust over the rest.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects. The far left wants everyone to be the same shade of brown, they have a particular distaste for European just about anything, they want DEI which is the reverse of meritocracy, they want mass redistribution from rich to poor. The far right wants there to be more Europeans, they're super pro-European, moderately pro-meritocracy, reasonably happy with the market system though they want some constraints. They are much more meritocratic than the far left. It's not a horseshoe, I think that concept has done permanent damage to political ideology.

How would you go about convincing him that he would be doing more to secure a future for his children (and his genes) by urging his son to associate with gay Catholics and non-binary/MTF cat-girls, than he would by letting his son date that thicc Latina from down the street?

How is this relevant to anything? He goes for the blonde girl shouting slurs on tiktok of course.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects

It’s funny you said this because as I was reading I internally was thinking that everything you wrote up to this point I could barely distinguish from a socialist.

Preserving a nation enables trust and strengthens the benefits of meritocracy while limiting the weaknesses. You can trust that the other guy isn't lying about his exams, that he won't screw you over and steal your IP because you share a background, you're of the same tribe.

There are quite a few low-trust ethnostates in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, while places like Singapore and the UAE sit near the top of the corruption perception indices, so preserving one's nation does not appear to be necessary or sufficient for maintaining trust.

What happens when you bring in a million smart people from a foreign ethnic group and they start working together to infiltrate your institutions and build up their own power base, bootstrapping their merit into corruption?

They win a bunch of Nobels and found companies and institutions in your name, making major scientific and literary contributions to your society, before losing their internal cohesion and assimilating into the broader population as their ethnic and religious solidarity is eroded by the overwhelming tidal forces of modernity?

"quite a few"?

Serbia (>80% Serb and ranked 104 out of 180 by the CPI), Belarus (85% Belarusian and ranked 98 out of 180 by the CPI), Albania (>90% Albanian and tied with Belarus by the CPI), Kosovo (also >90% Albanian and ranked 83 out of 180 by the CPI), Cambodia (>95% Khmer and ranked 158 out of 180 by the CPI), and if we feel like stretching the definition of Southeast Asia we can throw in Bangladesh (99% Bengali and ranked 149 out of 180 by the CPI) too.

It's no good to say that the progressive left and the far-right are similar. They have markedly different goals in most respects. The far left wants everyone to be the same shade of brown, they have a particular distaste for European just about anything, they want DEI which is the reverse of meritocracy, they want mass redistribution from rich to poor. The far right wants there to be more Europeans, they're super pro-European, moderately pro-meritocracy, reasonably happy with the market system though they want some constraints. They are much more meritocratic than the far left.

One could certainly be confused about this statement by reading American right-wing Twitter, which is replete with poasters continuously declaring how much Europe sucks, how Europe is bound to collapse and its all the fault of the Europeans, "enjoying having your women raped by browns Europoors?", declarations about the total ideological detachment of Americans from their European origin countries etc.

There's Europeans and there's Europeans. I can understand Americans taking a few jabs at the European PMC, when the internet discourse coming from the continent has been essentially dominated by them, and who have done absolutely nothing but talk shit about America and Americans for all this time.

Firstly, Europe and India do not belong in the same category as 'non-American'.

If you are you trying to claim that Europe and India are both "American"? I am pressing X to doubt.

Europeans founded the USA.

...and you think that this means we owe them? That this gives them power over us? I disagree.

Americans are just a different kind of European

No we are not, we are better than them.

You seem to consider meritocracy as an end in and of itself. Why?

Because merit, like virtue, is self-justifying, They are things that are good unto themselves.

Art, culture, family, fun, play and nation matter.

I agree, and if you believe that this is the case, why are you choosing to align yourself against them?

How is this relevant to anything?

It is relevant because @IGI-111 is wrong, the powerful do not dictate what is popular to "the normies", "the normies" dictate what is popular to the powerful.