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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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I know it's being made fun of often, but what exactly is per se inconsistent about a combination of views that amounts to "you are pretending (your positions) to be losing when you are actually winning, and I actually wish you were in fact losing"? In a culture basically hardwired to support underdogs (ceteris paribus), the most reliable way to drive home a win is to maintain the narrative of loss, thus overcoming the bias towards balance that starts working against you once you cross the fifty-fifty mark. If you are a right-winger, you would do well to feel exactly the same about the left's response to any minuscule win that you consider to be yours (a bunch of people coming out to protest for a nativist party, Elon Musk taking over Twitter, Trump and allies actually implementing a "Trumpian" policy for once...).

Well yeah, we know it's rational to use that tactic, and we know you know it's rational. That's why we read that message into e.g. smirking denials that child mutilation fetishists are writing their pedo fiction into public policy. You can't read it any other way once the tactic is common knowledge.

That's why I've been begging any of you for the love of God to oppose it instead of just denying it, to no success.

I don't think the duplicity you are implying is actually part of it, though, at least consciously. In my estimation, the typical left-wing activist really does believe that the forces of society are arrayed against them and attacks on some sexual-politics NGO like this one are an instance of the way in which the overwhelming forces of society assert themselves the moment they attain the smallest victory.

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