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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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And I think the people trying to awaken this class consciousness might discover why that particular hatchet was buried to all of our losses.

That's just called "accelerationism" though. It's revealing that the best idea that labor has to deal with the usurious taxes of capital is "try to speed the inevitable collapse along", but then again that's probably the reason why they're labor in the first place.

But then again... is there really a problem with this?

I always figured it's an evo-psych thing: losing a war in ancient times generally meant being sold into slavery (labor and capital alike), but if that slavery was better than the slavery your own society imposed then it's very difficult to argue that resisting was the right call (and "then we won't fight for you; better to die trying to kill you than the supposed enemy" is a decently effective threat- draftees killing your officers with the guns you necessarily had to give them is not good for military efficiency).

And we see this played out through history. If the population legitimately considers the enemy to be a better choice over their own rulers (or at least, insufficiently bad to bother throwing bodies at the problem with no guarantee of victory), they'll let them walk right on into the city. Ancient cities in the path of invading armies did this time and time again when the invaders weren't actually that much different than them and they'd rather avoid the siege- this is why people pay Dane-geld in the first place. If the price is right, it can work.

The best example of this was, in my opinion, the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan. No Afghani defended Kabul- the average Afghani male actively chose the Taliban over Western ways because he knew what the enemy wanted, and what they wanted wasn't worth dying to resist. Sure, sucks for the women, but they were perfectly capable of mounting a defense of the city themselves because they were Liberated and Strong per the imported/imposed Western ideology... well, apparently the Islamic view was more correct.

By contrast, the Ukrainian response to invading Russians. Guess the men must feel like they have something worth defending; they could have welcomed the Russians to deal with their "Nazi problem" and their first strike teams were claimed to have been found with riot gear to enforce the peace (that might be propaganda though), but they very clearly did not do that.

The best example of this was, in my opinion, the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan.

I enjoyed the recent Bennett's Phylactery podcast on this topic. I'm no expert and have done no work to verify details, but the core points make sense in any case.