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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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Major lurker here. I really appreciate the long-format style and eloquence of posters here, and it is a way a getting in touch with the zeitgeist without having to check the most important news anywhere else. Not to mention, it is one of the few places left in the internet where there is an attempt to engage in meaningful conversation to arrive at the truth, as opposed to bickering and attacking the outgroup. I wish I posted more, but I just don't. There's two main reasons for it:

  • I don't care that my political opinions are that different from motters here (not a leftist at all; you could say I'm an anti-war hippie libertarian/voluntaryist); but I do care about the fact that they're different from my family; it's one thing keeping opinions in my mind, but writing things that are so different from theirs, even if they're not even aware of this forum's existence, and thinking how they would react to it...makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess I could write about free speech issues (those are very close to my heart and not something I think my family disagrees with me much), but I haven't found one to put the dent on;
  • I live alone with my dog, and I'm struggling with fatigue issues so finding time and effort to write comments is difficult (not to mention it seems little worth it in the grand scheme of things...maybe lurking so much in this site is too, I'm not going to deny I'm addicted to the Internet)

But that said, I like seeing people who disagree with me arguing so well; some of the posts regarding the game-theory arguments about war and international order have made me see that there's at least a valid reasons (if not enough I think) for Western military interventionism, specially related to Ukraine. And they're very well written; it's not surprising at all there's at least three Substacks from Motte alumni; people here write like they like writing, and I like that.