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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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I don't think I do have a poor mental model of you.

I also unapologetically love the urban lifestyle, and for a number of reasons that also correlated with progressivism. It’s not the progressivism that is the appealing part.

Yes, I understand it's not the progressivism per se that is the appealing part. But for all the reasons you mentioned, the things you like are basically "white progressive culture." You don't like that it's progressive. I kind of sympathize with your dilemma (not a lot), but I think you are pointing in the wrong direction by insisting it's not white progressives responsible for the things you don't like.

My entire point is that none of those things used to be the exclusive province of progressives. Classical music was a very right-wing tradition for a long time. Ditto for literature. We find ourselves in a very odd and atypical moment in history, in which the vast majority of smart and high-human-capital people are left-wing. There’s no reason this needs to be the case now, it hasn’t been the case for very long, and my contention is that it will not continue to be the case for very much longer.

Abandoning the cities, deriding high culture as faggy elitist status-signaling (as a number of conservatives on this very site have done) and going all-in on rural populism is a toxic dead end for the right wing, and I would rather actually try and rescue those parts of our culture - the BEST parts of our culture - from the mind virus of minoritarian identity communism. Being a white identitarian is inextricably tied up with this; I believe that white people are largely doing this to ourselves, and that all we need to do is stop. However, if we don’t stop very soon, things genuinely will be out of our hands and those who hate us truly will have the whip hand. Right now, white progressives are allowing vindictive race communists, like the individuals I mentioned in my original comment, because they’ve forgotten what made white people great, and forgotten that they have the strength to fight back.

It’s like if a huge jacked guy was allowing himself to be bullied by a scrawny manlet, simply because he had some psychological condition that caused him to forget that he has muscles. Some perceptual blindness that causes him to ignore the evidence of his own strength right before his eyes. He could snap out of it in a second and flatten the bully, but something is stopping him from doing so. And there are people like me standing off to the side yelling, “Bro, you’re fucking massive, just pummel this guy!” And he’s like, “Nah man, I’m puny and weak, and plus, even if I was super strong, it would be morally wrong of me to fight back.” That’s essentially how I see racial dynamics in this country, at least as it concerns whites and blacks.

Being a white identitarian is inextricably tied up with this; I believe that white people are largely doing this to ourselves, and that all we need to do is stop.

I'm bemused that you just wrote a long screed saying at greater length what I said above - which you claimed was wrong.

Let me clarify. White progressives are allowing themselves to be dominated and led off a cliff by non-white race communists. This is not at all the same as saying that white progressives are “in charge”. What I’m saying is that that people actually driving the dynamics of cancellation and of the enforcement of woke values within woke spaces are not primarily white, even if those spaces are numerically mostly white. The white individuals who are contributing actively to the weaponized parts of wokeness very often have something else wrong with them - they’re trans, or they’re extremely mentally ill (but I repeat myself), etc. Whereas the high-level non-white leftists are usually much more well-adjusted, clear-eyed, cynical operators who merely recognize the opportunity to win power for their own group at the expense of the group that had power before.

they’re trans, or they’re extremely mentally ill (but I repeat myself)

This comment was reported, and I have to agree that this sort of glibness isn't appropriate here. You are allowed to argue that trans people are mentally ill, but it has to actually be some kind of an argument, don't just throw low effort boos like that.

(I was reluctant to mod this one because you are responding to me, but this comment isn't actually a response to anything I said, which makes it even more of a gratuitous dunk on your outgroup.)

Lol, reluctant. As if it isn't plainly obvious what your goal is here - a grand display of your power. "Ha ha ha" you say, "every single comment in this chain by both of us was reported multiple times, but I will enforce this one on you because I can, because this exchange didn't end with you slinking away defeated and I will not accept that result."

PS my mental model of you is flawless.

I'm going to indulge you for a moment because why not.

Lol, reluctant.

Yes. For exactly the reasons I stated, and I also because I do not disagree with the object-level claim, yet the rules here clearly require you to actually support negative generalizations about a group, not just flippantly toss them into a one-line boo light. And also because the person who reported Hoff was being petty (many, many reports are basically a handful of people vindictively reporting either people or arguments they don't like), but in this case, they did have a point.

As if it isn't plainly obvious what your goal is here - a grand display of your power.

Dude, if I wanted to grandly display my power, I would be using it a lot more than I do. For example, when you jump on me in a discussion you weren't involved in with a load of personal attacks just because you've got beef, you are pretty clearly testing me to see if I will wield my "power." You would probably love it if I modhatted you (as I almost certainly would if you were crawling up someone else's ass like this). You'd make for a very dramatic victim of the system, I'm sure. Yet I enforce the rules as impartially as I can, even when confronted by belligerent pests trying to get a rise out of me, as seems to have become your idle hobby.

"Ha ha ha" you say, "every single comment in this chain by both of us was reported multiple times, but I will enforce this one on you because I can, because this exchange didn't end with you slinking away defeated and I will not accept that result."

This is absolute nonsense. Even @Hoffmeister25 agreed his comment was bad.

"Every comment in this chain" was not reported. A few were (I don't think any of them received multiple reports), and most of the reports were spurious. (The vast majority of the reports we get are dismissed without action.) In many previous exchanges with Hoff, I've let the matter drop after we've both had our say - often with him having the last word - so your claims are flatly and objectively untrue.

PS my mental model of you is flawless.

I'm sure you think so. Yet the objective and observable evidence says otherwise. Carry on, my dude.

I did to you what you did to hoffmeister. I used your words to develop an uncharitable model of you based on incomplete information (how would I know which posts were reported or how many times?), deployed it and then insisted on its accuracy despite obvious flaws. I think that's a bad way to behave on the motte, and I think you should stop it.

I understand it falls afoul of the speak plainly rule, however past conversations have taught me that no matter how I phrase it, if I simply tell you you have made a mistake you will dismiss me automatically. And reporting you is pointless as I have explained before. So this time I made the same argument you did, so you could discover the problems with it for yourself.

I did to you what you did to hoffmeister.

Yes, I know that's what you thought you were doing. I saw the words, I knew you undoubtedly fancied yourself to be making quite a clever point.

I understand it falls afoul of the speak plainly rule, however past conversations have taught me that no matter how I phrase it, if I simply tell you you have made a mistake you will dismiss me automatically.

Yes, I know you believe that. You keep saying that because you keep making demands, accusations, and statements which I consider and then tell you whether or not I think they are valid (usually not) and since I do not agree with your assessments, you make snide comments about how I am "automatically dismissing you because it's you," even though until you started making a hobby of this, you were barely on my radar.

Reporting me isn't pointless per se; generally when someone reports me (which happens a lot), I do not dismiss the report myself, I let another mod do so. On rare occasions this does result in one of us speaking to the other. 99% of the time, reports on mods are spurious complaints because someone doesn't like the mod or doesn't like that the comment in question was modded. But sure, report me if you want the other mods to look at my comment and decide if it was bad. If you think the mods just automatically dismiss any report on another mod, that is not true, but it certainly true that our priors at this point are heavily weighted.

You do you. But for future reference, this sort of thing, randomly jumping on someone in a subthread because you have a grudge against them, is not acceptable either, and would have gotten you modded except you are still benefiting from the extra latitude we usually give people who want to vent at mods.

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Fair enough, it wasn’t a good or high-quality statement, and I agree that it deserves a mod warning.

I'd be curious to hear what makes you see this kind of mental health divide because I don't think it's so clear.

For example while Jussie Smollet was an opportunist, he did not seem clear eyed to me, like something was really wrong with him to try that. And I feel like that example can be applied pretty broadly to people who do and do not benefit from wokeness. People with personality disorders will manipulate those around them for status and gain, while being completely not "clear-eyed". Isn't that kind of model more plausible, where everyone is crazy? In that sense it's kind of a codependency across victimization lines.