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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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I think the more pertinent question is should we want to?

What do the woke-contrarians/dissident-right bring have to offer that's worth the risk of lowering our memetic defenses to bring them in?

What do the woke-contrarians/dissident-right bring have to offer that's worth the risk of lowering our memetic defenses to bring them in?

It's like you're saying "The gates will hold!" when the enemy is already breaching the keep. What memetic defenses do you speak of? It's clear that white people have no memetic defenses against the organized group behavior of others. That's the entire point.

The DR provides an evolutionarily-proven strategy for establishing memetic defenses.

evolutionarily-proven

White Identitarianism seems to have failed in all prior cases.

An answer to the woke that's not "Let's keep retreating and maybe eventually they'll be satisfied".

There are other answers that do the same though.

I haven't seen one. Actual equality under the law doesn't work; the woke side will always win by demonstrating blacks are worse off and playing on sense of justice and sympathy to demand preferential treatment.

There's a great deal more that conservatives could try doing before they resort to "actually, we need to think about ourselves as White people". They seem reluctant to stoop to the tactics of their enemies, but if they did, I don't think it's obvious they would still lose.

"Actually, we need to think about ourselves as White people" IS stooping to the tactics of their enemies.

Right, I should clarify. When I say tactics, I mean that which is roughly agnostic of ideology. Conservatives could, for example, ban that which they dislike without changing what they believe. For example, the New College thing in Florida where they put aligned people on the board of a progressive college. There has been long discussion about the "Long March on the Institutions", this is just a more blatant version of that.

Building race-aligned coalitions is also tactics. The New College thing is going nowhere anyway; the left knows all about the long march and they're not going to let it happen to them.

It's barely been any time, how the hell do you know nothing is going to happen?

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Reading this instantly made me think of Clausewitz: either you believe your position to be an advancing one or you're banking on future provenance alone. The presumption is that the faltering side seeks to bring in new allies.

Who's faltering though? From the perspective of the mainstream right its the left that's on the backfoot. For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control, winning on abortion, winning on school choice/religious freedom. Our claims about the covid lockdowns and the perfidity of the technocratic class are in the process of being vidicated. And while the battles over immigration and the trans issue continue they but remain undecided.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed, thier credibility eliminated. They dont know what to make of a world where claims of superior intelligence and education are met with a disdain rather than deference

Contrary to users like @SecureSignals and @The_Nybbler I do not see the progressive movement's rising aggression and shrillness as evidence of strength, just the opposite infact, i see it as a product of evaporative cooling. They were supposed to have already won, and the fact that not only have they not won but that they are slowly getting pushed back on several fronts is making the "true believers" among them desperate.

Who's faltering though? From the perspective of the mainstream right its the left that's on the backfoot.

I want you to be right. I can even see a few fronts where the tide seems to be turning, but I think you're going a bit far with your triumphalism. They only seem on the backfoot relative to the speed at which they've been making gains.

For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control

I'll defer to your expertise, but is it actually easier to get a gun than it was 8-10 years ago?

winning on abortion

Granted.

winning on school choice/religious freedom.

Teachers/students at religious schools are being fired/suspended for not following tenets of progressive ideology that directly contradict their religion. If you suggested that 10 years ago people would call that slippery slope, or an uncharitable strawman.

Our claims about the damage of covid lockdows and the perfidity of the technocrats class have been vidicated.

Yes, but no one but you/us cares.

Meanwhile the battles over immigration and the trans issue are continue but remain from decided.

Funny, the trans issue is where I see the tide turning.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed

We just got out of a worldwide lockdown they decided to impose. It's possible they won't be able to do something like that again soon, but a reprieve from the greatest show of force that I can remember is not what I'd call getting crushed.

thier credibility eliminated.

"Eliminated" might be too strong a word, but mostly granted. Even the Klaus Schwab Gang is whinging about it.

They were supposed to have already won, and the fact that not only have they not won but that they are slowly getting pushed back on several fronts is making them desperate.

There's truth to that. In fact, people like SecureSignals, The_Nybbler, and me might have our characters tested soon. I have a feeling that, if you're right, the powers that be might put away Wokeness and start pandering to people like us again, and we'll have to show if we learned anything from all this.

For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control

LOL. In red states, you've got constitutional carry; that at least is real. In blue states there used to be "no carry" or "may issue".... and now there's carry permits that have so many carveouts that you can't actually carry, and anyway there's a super-long backlog to apply. Not to mention in blue states there are still permits to purchase which are hard to get. Some "right to keep and bear arms"! On the Federal level there are still import bans, machine guns remain banned, suppressors remain difficult to obtain legally, there's the new bump stock ban, the new pistol brace ban, there remains the ban on interstate transfer of firearms. There's red flag laws passed at state levels (and including red states) and encouraged by the Biden administration. There's bans which can be triggered by an ex parte restraining order, bans which apply to "domestic violence misdemeanors" (ex post facto of course), etc.

That's not winning. That's a mixed result. It only looks like winning because of the rout in so many other areas.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed, thier credibility eliminated.

Not so. COVID proved otherwise. People may say they don't trust the media or whoever, but they'll fall right in line with whatever the gatekeepers say anyway.