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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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You are describing what I used to criticize here as liberalism of the gaps: the theory that the solution to culture and institutions falling to progressivism via post-detraditionalization liberalism is MOAR liberalism!

No, the solution to protecting tradition and institutions is protecting tradition and institutions, both through fortification and legal protection. Libertarian solutions to protecting / building institutions cannot work in a legal landscape that makes a key component: free association, illegal.

OP is pointing this out with the fact that 'no politics' is subverted when you declare X value neutral. But the other side of the coin is also on display. When X is value neutral, anti-X is illegal discrimination / harassment. Start your own... cannot work without first winning back the neutral ground, which cannot be done when you spend all your time abandoning your institutions and fortifying elsewhere.

Show me an example where conservatives/traditionalists abandoned X to go build their own X-prime, where X-prime remains both not a ghetto and not actively infiltrated.

Your question about why traditionalists don't build their own X is easily answered in that they can't build their own X, and part of the reason is ironically because half their rank are actually liberals who keep telling them to build their own X.

Example:

Jonny Vanheusterwhilton is a made up character who used to get picked on as a child for his ridiculous last name, but that is completely irrelevant to this story so let's call him JV and we don't need to spell out his last name again.

Jonny V (JV), has lived in his neighborhood his whole life, even buying his parents' house when they retired. It's June 1st, and bigot that he is, JV (Jonny) bemoans that the neighborhood is plastered in Pride Flags and preachy yard signs. He's saddened that his neighborhood July 4th picnic has been discontinued and replaced with a late June Pride Party.

Jonny's actually not even a bigot, not even by modern standards, nor even a conservative. He is very pro-LGBT right, a believer in letting people live their own lives etc. He's just a combination of patriotic, nostalgic, and finds pride to be tacky and over commercialized. Yet this gets Jonny labeled a right wing bigot, which almost frustrates him as much as getting picked on for his name as a child.

Eventually his friend, @Primaprimaprima encourages him to just build his own neighborhood. (+) Out of options and tired of being picked on JV sells his family house and buys some farmland with several others in a less desirable exurban part of the town to turn into a new neighborhood. Saddened by the lack of mature hardwoods, history, culture, or accessibility to the broader city, JB puts that aside and focuses on the upside: no more Pride Month.

Although JV is not a conservative, it took partnership with a lot of them, and some outright bigots to even get this neighborhood started. No worries, though, because they aren't banning anyone. JV has a simple liberal solution: Their HOA will just say, no value-messaging yard decorations.

The HOA includes a lot of other shit JV doesn't like. His old neighborhood didn't have an HOA, but now, just to get back to neutral JV has to accommodate regulating EVERYTHING, even the length of his grass. He hates mowing. Almost as much as he hates his last name. Or being called a bigot.

Trouble begins when some of their conservative neighbors put up a cross on their front door, or Easter decorations. 'Hey,' yell the libertarian sect. NO MESSAGING. The French neighbor, Le Prima, convinces everyone that secularism is the best they can hope for in this new arrangement, the conservatives mostly* sadly acquiesce, telling themselves, at least it's better than Pride Month. (*A few with conviction move away to an even shittier, further exurb, to find out what happened to them scroll up to the + above and start reading. Continue recursively.)

This satisfies JV until July 4th comes around, JV's favorite holiday. There will be no J4 parade, and he is forced to take down the American flag he hung must come down at once.... Oh well... at least in the name of fairness this is a compromise.

JV wonders how previous generations like the one he grew up in were able to use maintain communities with shared traditions, while keeping out the elements they didn't like without over-regulating everything. JV can't ponder long before his neighbor accusingly reminds him about the types of discrimination that happened in yesterday. Remembering quickly that nostalgia for any aspect of the past is for bigots, JV quickly stops his musing, and never follows his train of thought to the answer: The type of community JV is describing is found alive in the neighborhood he left, albeit with different values.

Well all goes well for 2 more years until, as the city grows, his neighborhood does too. His exurb becomes a desirable suburb, and now folks who would have simply ignored the neighborhood move in. Doesn't matter thinks, JV, they'll have to live by our rules just like everyone else.

Imagine Jonny Vanheusterwhilton's shock on June 1st of the current year, when after returning from a trip oversees, he sees PRIDE FLAGS everywhere and a flier for a neighborhood pride parade.

"But.. but...but...," stutters Jonny. "I thought we didn't allow value messaging!"

"We don't," his helpful, new neighbor replies. "But... this was brought up at the HOA meeting you missed. You see us new neighbors quickly explained that this isn't about value messaging. It's common decency. To suppress it wouldn't be neutral, it would be bigoted and hateful. They saw it our way.

There were a few hold-out undesirables, but our lawyers were there to make sure they understood this is not negotiable, it's equality. I mean, anything less would be like not allowing you to hold your wife's hand while walking around the neighborhood."

"I'm actually gay," says Jonny.

"And a happy Pride Month to you!," the neighbor replies cheerily, while handing him a school board voting guide for the candidates who most protect trans youth.

That night, JV's visiting his old friend distraught. "It's simple," says Primaprimaprima as he opens a beer and hands to JV. "Just start your own neighborhood."

This is only the sole option because conservatives clearly don’t care about actually conquering institutions, as Trump’s polling over DeSantis transparently shows.

Corporations, trade unions, NGOs, they're all just spokes on a wheel. One's on top, then another and another. And on and on it spins crushing those who just want to play a game/sell their labor/cook some food.

I didn't vote for Trump to stop the wheel with my ostensible allies at the top, I voted for Trump to shatter the wheel to splinters.

You can not shatter the wheel. You can only be on top of it or beneath it. This sort of fanciful thinking derives from the same place that makes progressives think that they can overcome human nature through socialization. In the end these two western pathologies have the same root.

Did it work, did he shatter the wheel? Did taking over the wheel work for your ostensible enemies?

Is no one going to point out the Game of Thrones reference or is it too obvious?

No, of course not, but he had the best chance of anyone of doing so. Probably still does.

Better chance of catching a bullet to the skull thanks to one three letter agency or another.

I'm sure the conservatives would all love to conquer the institutions, they're mostly wary that yet another "ally" savvy to the ways of the institutions will turn out to be an infiltrator who will betray them when the stakes get high enough. Many would rather bet on the boisterous man who makes himself an enemy of institutions at every turn. He might not be the best to convert institutions, but perhaps he will succeed at razing them or culling them (he hasn't so far, but there's also a much longer record of conservatives betraying their base).

My point exactly. (with the caveat that these people aren't conservatives. They are right-wing, republican liberals.)