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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Here’s a history of the economics of the first Thanksgiving, by the late, great Rush Limbaugh. The original commune contract collapsed, and they chose an ownership economy, which prospered. But this was not a part of the mainstream American mythos of Thanksgiving Boomers and GenX grew up with, so it wasn’t one of the reasons left-aligned Americans grew to despise it.

The first time I remember Thanksgiving publicly mocked was the Addams Family Values camp scene. It’s the classic Blue Tribe borrowing the virtue of the victimized far group and insisting their outgroup, the WASPs at the time, are forever stained by the blood of genocide, so let’s mock the ignorant WASPs in the most transgressive and shocking way possible. That’s probably the most lasting public depiction of critical theory’s revision of American mythos, because it’s a hell of a meme. It was my first glimpse of the culture war. (I might even call it an act of memetic ethnogenesis, given how different the signifiers of the two tribes were back then.)

My grandmother traced our family history back to four of the Pilgrims, and also one of their white indentured servants. This is my family’s holiday. I invite you all to enjoy the bounty and come together as a community to celebrate with turkey and maize, with potatoes and ham, with apple or pumpkin or cranberry pie and be thankful for making it through this past decade of chaos alive and able to appreciate providence, natural and/or divine.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

I think you misinterpret Addams Family and read into it something that wasn't there. Surely, they are anti-normal and in that quality they are opposed to the WASPs as WASPs are the quintessential "normal" for pre-culture-war America. Of course, this is a stereotype, because that's how satire operates. Nowdays, for such an idea you could be cancelled even if you bring it in for the purpose of mocking it. However, if you look into it, Addamses, while being anti-normal, are never at war with normies, all they want is to be left alone and enjoy their weird life in their weird ways. It is only when the normies try to aggressively normalize them, they turn their world upside down, striking into the most WASPish myth ever - not because they think it is virtuous, but because they think the normies would hate that, and they deserve it for not letting the anti-normies be in peace. That's how it looked before the culture war. The culture war changed the picture - SJWs don't want to be left alone, they want to proselytize aggressively and nothing less than turning every single normie into SJW would suffice them. Not only non-compliance is violence, silence (i.e. not being an active SJW) is violence. They don't want to enjoy their own lifestyle in their own community - they want it to be the only possible lifestyle, everywhere, and would aggressively persecute anybody who admits the possibility of any other way. Addamses would never go there.

So I think the Addams Family is not the first glimpse of the culture war, it is the last glimpse of how it was before the war. How you could diverge from the normie culture and still not try to destroy the civilization.

You’re right, the Addams family are much more like goth Looney Tunes than hardcore SJWs. There’s a reason I mentioned ethnogenesis, though: I remembered it completely wrong until I watched it again, and I bet I’m not alone.

The cultural appropriation of the Native Americans was forced by the camp counselors, so Wednesday’s faction is let off the hook for its responsibility. It also wasn’t part of the standard political correctness package until around 2012.