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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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they are trying to persuade a species of extinct men who could be swayed by reason and good faith.

They're not extinct, they just don't have loyalty to a particular party as their terminal value. Even in Europe, I'm nearly-literally watching women who were welcoming refugees 10 years ago, now dancing to the tune of "Ausländer Raus", and conspiracy-posting about woke NGO's sponsored by the EU (roughly analogous to the USAID scandal uncovered by Trump). Trace wants to arrest this process of defection by promising to reform the Democratic party from within, the problem he has is that:

  • People have eyes, and
  • With every defection he's losing an ally in the party, not only dropping the credibility of his promise, but lowering the actual chances of his success.

Its kind of the age-old dilemma. Speaking truth to power doesn't really work.

You have to acquire power, THEN speak truth.

But the process of acquiring power requires you to believe or promulgate so many falsehoods you will probably forget the truths you wanted to spread anyway.

If speaking truth, plainly, effected change we wouldn't even be in the mess needing saving.

If you have power, why would you need truth for any reason other than power?