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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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I'd welcome any thoughts people might have on what that might be.

Something along the lines of Trump's "Make America Great Again" but more concrete and effective.

1: Small businesses. Make it way easier to start and run a small business. Slash regulations, maybe taxes too. Take like half the forms and policies and regulations that businesses have to do and either remove them or make them only apply to businesses over a certain size. Make harsher anti-monopoly anti-corruption laws or just enforce existing ones more harshly on large businesses. The American dream isn't that one day you might be a wageslave to a megacorp, it's that you can make it big by your own hard work. Freedom and perseverance and all that. This also will help the balance of power between labor and corporations, more small businesses means more competition for megacorps trying to convince employees to work for them, and a more credible threat that an underpaid employee can just quit as start their own business.

2: Infrastructure. Build fancy buildings and cities and parks and bridges and highways. A modern first world train system would be nice. Cut the cost disease, be less wasteful, and do great things. Create employment for working class people who build stuff, and probably bring some manufacturing jobs back.

Elon Musk seems remarkably well-suited towards being a figurehead or inspiration or actually in charge of parts of the above points. He's good at taking things that everyone has been doing poorly, like space travel or electric cars or internet, things which everyone knows could be better but for some reason aren't, and actually doing it better. And, importantly, these can be part of inspiring utopian visions about the future, not the past. The internet allows for new decentralized employment like Uber or Airbnb, maybe self-employed tradesmen could use similar things to be plumbers or electricians or something, and maybe weird crypto stuff could allow workers and customers to coordinate without some large corporation pulling the strings and leeching the profits. And fancy new technology makes building fancy new infrastructure possible.

3: Family/Community. This one is largely a return to the past, but part of the point of the right is that you don't destroy things just because they're old, you keep the good stuff. The leftist future is one in which you are either an individual who can do whatever you want and cut people's throats to get ahead, or you are a member of a collective group determined by your sex/race/orientation determined by your birth. The rightist future is one in which family and neighbors are bond together by shared traditions, cultures, and mutual duties to each other. You don't just pack up and move to another city abandoning your friends and family every four years even if it would maximize your career trajectory. You are loyal and act with honor even when it goes against your self-interest, because you actually care about the people around you, and they care about you. Also, I think there is potential for this to go in future directions, as telecommunications, and the easier work-from-home meta caused by Covid allows for increased career opportunities for people who stay in their small hometowns with their extended families.

Republicans are too busy playing defense against the Democrats to build such a utopian vision, and too afraid of being cancelled to shrug off accusations of "-isms" and stick to their own vision of moral goodness. And most of the voters are too uneducated and unambitious to demand such a utopian vision, or to demand honor and loyalty from their own politicians. And the Democrats have been crying wolf against Republicans for so long that all such accusations are now ignored by Republican voters, allowing some actual wolves to mingle among them unnoticed. It's a mess, and I'm almost as upset at the Republicans as I am at the Democrats for ruining the country. But at least theoretically a utopian right wing vision of the future is possible and would be inspiring to people to vote for and genuinely good if accomplished.

The leftist future is one in which you are either an individual who can do whatever you want and cut people's throats to get ahead, or you are a member of a collective group determined by your sex/race/orientation determined by your birth. The rightist future is one in which family and neighbors are bond together by shared traditions, cultures, and mutual duties to each other.

Since when is there no such thing as a libright?

Take like half the forms and policies and regulations that businesses have to do and either remove them or make them only apply to businesses over a certain size.

This is already true. There's a huge cliff at 50 employees, and a few lesser ones lower down.

Infrastructure. Build fancy buildings and cities and parks and bridges and highways. A modern first world train system would be nice. Cut the cost disease, be less wasteful, and do great things. Create employment for working class people who build stuff, and probably bring some manufacturing jobs back.

Passenger trains are for leftists; the American right drives. As for the rest of it, the reason for that cost disease is largely public-sector unions and their cozy relationship with politicians, and you can't break them without losing the working class.

The rightist future is one in which family and neighbors are bond together by shared traditions, cultures, and mutual duties to each other.

And nobody wants that except the old people who want to be able to set those traditions and duties. This is why conservatism can never really attract the young. You can make it sound appealing in campaign literature but it's really totalitarian gerontocracy of the worst kind.

More accurately, everyone wants the ends - the society that would exist that way but almost every erosion that progressives put through was individually popular.

"Cut cost disease" is exactly the same as "get rid of public sector feather bedding" AND "get rid of 'reasonable environment protections'" AND "get rid of simple rules to ensure justice in hiring", etc.

Ultimately it's a case that the framework of rules that progressives push for that is somewhat popular simply because it permeates all society is "everything must be approved of by a committee using lots of words to ensure fairness". None of it changes without a cultural change and it takes something pretty extreme to change a culture that way.

And nobody wants that except the old people who want to be able to set those traditions and duties. This is why conservatism can never really attract the young.

You make good points, but I actually think we're seeing a (small) shift here, that could be expanded upon by the right leaders and messaging.

All the hip young professionals I know fled the cities during COVID, started having families, and took up gardening and canning peppers and shit. And they all secretly love living in red/purple suburbs where they dont have to deal with homeless encampments. And they're all secretly terrified of what the public schools are going to do to their kids. They're practically Republicans already, they just don't want to admit it because they think the brand's so toxic.

All those hip young professionals will vote for politicians who make those places worse. They may like suburban living (which is not the same as traditional conservatism; it's the liberalism of the post-WWII generation, and almost as atomized as cities. What holds suburbs together is families with children, but actually forming families there is difficult), but they know in their lefty-educated bones that it's immoral and terrible and they'll work to destroy it.

And nobody wants that except the old people who want to be able to set those traditions and duties. This is why conservatism can never really attract the young.

I don’t think this is the case. In my experience the trad right is mostly young, pushing back against older conservatives who are economically right-wing but socially liberal. The traditions in question are also more likely to be those of dead ancestors than current elders, and in practice there’s nothing preventing the young from interpreting those as they please.

In short, I think conservatism in the sense of keep-doing-what-we’re-doing-now skews elderly but RETVRN style rightism is inherently riskier and relies on youthful zealotry.

The online trad-right is just play-acting at conservatism. They like the aesthetic (or the aesthetic they've invented for it, anyway), but they're not actually practicing the substance.

As I understand it, we’re talking about whether such ideas can appeal to groups other than old people. I would say the existence of the online trad-right is proof that they can.

Moving on to the substance, you’re largely correct. To get personal, I’m currently working far from home, I’m not married, I don’t manage to go to church very often, etc. This bothers me.

I would say that the core insight of the trad right is that modern society inherently conspires against living a good life.

  • You can’t keep a sense of community if everyone half-intelligent has to choose between leaving home or committing career suicide.

  • It’s hard to marry when many jobs are effectively gender-segregated and most romance takes place on the Tinder meat market.

  • If you do, you have to choose between being childless, working long hours to afford childcare, and career suicide for at least one parent.

  • Et cetera.

Now, you may feel that this is all whining but the reality is that even if driven individuals can push back against this stuff, it’s too hard for most of us to swim against the current. I think the stars re: loneliness, celibacy bear this out.

In short, I predict that if we do see a return to trad conservatism (which frankly I doubt) there will be a generational gap where trad ideas are popular but the necessary reforms and innovations aren’t yet there for the majority to live according to those ideals.

This is mostly shooting in the dark, though. I would be interested in discussing previous successful traditionalist movements - I have a hunch that the Meiji Restoration is one, and the Great Awakening in America might be another.

I have to point out that the Meijj Restoration wasn't at all a conservative movement, but the exact opposite, where the Imperial government was embracing Western and modern influences and destroying much of the traditional social structure of Japan. The fact it "restored" power to the Emperor instead of the Shogun and Daimyos really doesn't make it conservative.

As I understand it, we’re talking about whether such ideas can appeal to groups other than old people. I would say the existence of the online trad-right is proof that they can.

My claim is the ideas as fully fleshed-out do not actually appeal to the online trad-right; rather, the online trad-right likes the aesthetic associated with them and has not really considered the consequences.

You can’t keep a sense of community if everyone half-intelligent has to choose between leaving home or committing career suicide.

Traditional conservativism does not solve this problem; it simply makes the choice of "career suicide"

It’s hard to marry when many jobs are effectively gender-segregated and most romance takes place on the Tinder meat market.

Traditional conservatism keeps the jobs gender-segregated; you (assuming you're male) marry a girl from your community (school, church, etc). This does solve the problem, though not for the online right: it only works if you actually grew up in a traditional community and married a girl there.

If you do, you have to choose between being childless, working long hours to afford childcare, and career suicide for at least one parent.

Traditional conservatism also does not solve this problem; it simply chooses "career suicide for the woman".

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