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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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If this works, it'd be amazing. I have no idea what intentional actions could be taken to make it more likely; the best I can think of is to try to highlight what seems to me to be the incredibly, horrifyingly dysfunctional relationship between the Black community and Blue Tribe, where Blue Tribe gains political support from the Black community by blaming all of their problems on Red Tribe, including those problems that Blue Tribe seems to be explicitly causing.

It's worth noting that there's an analogue- the AFL-CIO used to be incredibly pro-democrat, this cycle the teamsters president spoke at the RNC, Trump has been winning the union vote, etc. Democrats kept the union vote long after the rest of the white working class abandoned them due to machine politics that may or may not have been corrupt deals with union leadership; a lot of what African-American community leaders are getting from the DNC for their support certainly doesn't look very aboveboard and unanimous support from black community leadership is what keeps the AADOS on the plantation.

If you're an accelerationist, vote for AOC-aligned candidates in the coming Democratic power struggle. The progressive/PMC caucus is one of the current drivers of the wedge in the black-democrat coalition, and it's likely to make things worse the better the AOC-wing does in its struggle for the 'soul' of the party.

Progressives and the 'black community' are pretty far apart. Part of this is where they are on the cultural war, but part of this is literal- the progressive urban power centers are not the black political machines. The black political machines are mostly along the south-eastern and southern seaboards (because that's where state-influencing political machines exist in those port population centers). The progressive wings are more the pacific seaboards and interior cities. They've co-existed with the neoliberals who are more in the north-eastern coast and also interior. There are overlapping areas, of course, but typically their machines dominate their respective areas.

The black machines are very comfortable with playing Democratic coalition power politic, and they have had a multi-decade alliance with the neoliberal wing of the Democrats that align with Clinton/Obama/Biden. For the last generation, the black-machines have basically been democratic kingmakers in the neoliberal candidate primaries. African-americans don't win the total election, but they do swing the party.

Or at least, they did. The issue with the post-biden crackup of the Obama coalition is that the neoliberal-dominant party is now in question. It's no longer neoliberal vs neoliberal, black machine is decisive. Rather, the AOC/progressive/socialist wing is contesting the neoliberal democrats in the non-black-machine turfs. That is, the internal and northeastern city enclaves.

This is why David Hogg, the progressive DNC leader, indicating he's going to primary various democrats is so significant. We're in the opening phase of a contest for control of urban political machines where progressives could be competitive. That is, well, not where the black machines are. It is, however, a struggle between progressives and neoliberals over who dominates.

The issue is that if the progressives lose that, the generational alliance between black machines and neoliberal machines will be replaced. And what it's replaced with will probably crack the black machines more.