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I think the context missing here is that "X will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes" is typically targeted at abstract groups ("Furries" "Business majors" "Lakers fans who don't live in LA") or public figures ("Roger Gooddell" "Nancy Pelosi" "Martin Shkreli"). Presumably you don't actually know these people, your rage is directed towards what they do in the world. It's not personal, personal impotent murderous rage is a different animal.
It's very different to say "These three people I know personally, I'd really like to murder them. When I talk to them I think 'The world would be a better place if you were dead.' The things you've done to me personally are awful enough to deserve death." That's an expression of personal Animus, and when your political conclusions seem to follow from personal Animus, well FreudGPT doesn't need much more of a prompt does he?
It's also a profoundly anti-conservative attitude to want to murder your friends. I've noticed a contrast between Evangelical conservatives, who often hate abstract groups while being friendly to actual members of those groups; and Bloomberg Democrats, who often love groups in the abstract but hate or ignore the actual members of these groups they come across. As exemplars picture a putatively racist contractor who will complain about Puerto Ricans over beers while working with them every day, versus the Liberal BLM profile pic investment banker who has zero Black friends they speak to regularly.
I admire our friend Hoff for his willingness to examine his own psyche, but it's hard not to disagree with his conclusions after we see what premises he's working with.
See my reply to Hlynka. The “get the wall” comment was intended to be read as an obviously hyperbolic joke. I do not want to kill my ex-friends in the San Diego theatre community.
I do advocate political violence in a limited capacity, and you’re correct to note that in this sense I am profoundly different from the median conservative who just wants to restore some sort of détente, but I don’t believe it’s in any way necessary or morally right to extend that violence to individuals whose “power” was ultimately nothing more than hyper-localized and entirely social in nature.
We will ultimately need to see certain public officials killed, maimed, or permanently jailed. I truly do believe that healing in this country will need to include that. This doesn’t mean that I want the jerk who told people not to be friends with me because I’m a problematic white man to suffer this fate.
Okay, can you please explain in more detail why you are so extreme in your views and why you think violence is necessary? I actually agree with you that the identity politics and views of the modern left are insane and need to be curtailed, but I'm nowhere near justifying the awful means you endorse.
All I'm getting from these posts is that you, personally, have had a really hard time and so you think extreme, violent, measures are needed to change our society. On a societal level, why have we moved so far that we can't resolve this situation without violence?
No, I haven’t! My life could definitely be a lot better, but a huge amount of that is because of poor choices I’ve made! Apparently my posts have given people the impression that I’m some sad-sack burnout with no prospects or something like that. My income is nothing like what most of the people on this sub make, but I’m not struggling to make rent or pay bills or anything like that. I even have some discretionary income that I use for frivolous things! My love life is a mess right now, but there was a period where it wasn’t, and a lot of why it is now is, again, due to things I’m doing wrong and choices that I’m making. I don’t feel “oppressed” or anything like that.
As for why my views are “extreme”, I don’t think that’s actually true when you look at the full scope of human history. In fact the norm historically has always been that major regime changes have been incredibly bloody affairs. This was true long before Robespierre and Cromwell. When the ruling class of a country fails spectacularly, and especially when those failures seem not only avoidable but to actually be the result of specific bad ideas or corrupt motives which that ruling class actively chose, then usually blood has been spilled.
Liberal democracy was supposed to “fix” this. It was supposed to structure society in such a way that this bloodletting would no longer be necessary, nor even desirable. And for some length of time, in some countries, it even accomplished this for real! That was no mean feat, and I’m not going to pretend like it wasn’t an improvement over a lot of what came before it. The problem now is that I think the Gods of the Copybook Headings have begun to reassert themselves. I believe that some public officials in nearly all European and Euro-diaspora countries have failed their people so comprehensively - in fact, they haven’t merely failed the people, they’ve actively conspired against them - that the burning rage, the despair and hopeless and sense of injustice which have begun to proliferate among the common people of these countries is going to boil over at some point.
And I’m not even a populist! I think that some of the complaints that common people have about the government, and some of the things which they accuse the government of doing, are actually illegitimate and ill-considered! That doesn’t change the fact that the rage is real. I certainly feel it. When I see career criminals continually released back into the streets by DAs who are actively pro-criminal and anti-white, and when I see what used to be actual borders reduced to open doors, I feel burning rage at the people responsible, and a profound sense of injustice when I reflect on the fact that none of them will suffer any consequences or accountability whatsoever. Even if they get voted out, they’ll immediately land on the board of a non-profit, or get a show on a cable news network, or an academic sinecure, which in some cases will make them even more powerful - and certainly more wealthy - than they were when they were in formal elected office!
This cannot continue indefinitely. We are so far past the point of no return, as far as I can tell. And my reading of history is that these situations always end in bloodletting. And that this is not always a bad thing. In this case, since I’m not expecting to die myself, or for anyone I know or care about to die, as a result of the coming bloodletting, it’s especially easy for me to be comfortable with expecting it.
Do you disagree with my assessment of what’s coming? Or do you merely disagree that it will be something other than a calamity? Do you think that the targeted persecution of specific individuals responsible for catastrophic failed policies is the historical norm? Or do you think it’s “extreme”? Can it be both? What does “extreme” mean in this context?
Absolutely, and this still happens today in much of the world. I think it's bad, and I think one of the most important efforts of each person is to move away from this sort of world.
Do you think people didn't have burning rage during the Civil Rights movement? After the Great Depression? During the fight of the sufragettes? Hell, I'd say the rage back then compared to the limp, satiated populace we have today is barely comparable. I'm frankly shocked you just look at history, supposedly, then say the rage in the modern West is at a boiling point. People have endured far, far worse situations than we have without rebelling. We don't even have it that badly, and even if we did we have ample distraction. Bread and circuses orders of magnitude better than the romans.
You really see the modern world as irreparable without violence? I don't buy it.
I don't trust your reading of history. I think that as you admitted above, the miracle of modern liberal democracy is that we can make changes like this without bloodshed. I'd argue that we try and let those mechanisms work, and actively push for that sort of non violent revolution.
Yes I disagree with your assessment if it means violence is inevitable. Sure I think targeted persecution is a historical norm, but I also think that we've miraculously managed to move past that historical norm, as we've moved past other historical norms. Did we all the sudden go back to oral history after writing was invented? No. Permanent step changes in human history can happen when we find a vastly superior cultural technology. Liberal democracy is a step change.
Whether or not violent political purges are extreme, they are foolish, sub-optimal, and most importantly wrong. Whatever justification you try and make for them regarding our current state of the world is foolish. Perhaps in circumstances orders of magnitude worse than the West's current situation I could see the justification for violence, but even then I'd prefer we find our way without it.
What happens is not out of our control. Which path we go down depends on the actions individual people make, day to day. Creating a just-so story of inevitable political violence is you trying to justify your worldview by making up a narrative that makes it impossible to avoid. Again, I don't buy it.
Yes, they did. And they expressed that rage, often through violence, and got their way.
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The rage is less important than whether a practical path forward exists. In the times you mention, there was a path forward. Wind the clock back a little more to the late 1850s, and there was no path forward, so it came to serious violence.
If you see a path forward now, your eyes are better than mine.
Sure. And a couple years ago, the actions individual people chose was to tell lies to foment mass violence nation-wide, then fanned that violence continually and dropped the hammer on anyone who tried to resist. A massive amount of damage was done, and now everything is worse, and none of the people responsible suffered meaningful consequences. They did that because they thought it was in their interest. They'll do it again, because they still think it's in their interest. Sooner or later, they'll force the issue to the point where your options are surrender and be crushed, or fight. They'll push it that far because it's the only option they have other than giving up. Their values demand it.
Thanks! Maybe you should invest in Lasik or something, friend. Alternatively...
As for this part:
I absolutely agree. It was awful, immoral, and absolutely destructive. The recent response to the Covid pandemic and the George Floyd situation were bungled unimaginably bad. Unfortunately for Covid at least, both parties were more or less complicit in fucking things up, at least on the national stage. On the local level conservatives made much better choices.
In my mind the obvious solution is to keep blasting the truth from the rooftops in places like this, and not let the people who pushed for these awful policies and disregarded our liberties get off scott free. It will take some doing and persistence to push through the government propaganda, it always does. But I'm encouraged by the fact that the Covid response has seen things like Musk taking over Twitter, and generally a much larger signal-boost of the wrongs committed.
If all goes well, this blatant corruption and evidence of outright lies by the elites during a time of serious upheaval will serve as a renewed beacon of the importance of free speech. If we do our jobs right in learning from the disaster, we can teach a whole new generation of people to keep the flame of liberty alive, and warn them away from the dangers of authoritarian governments, policies, and ideologies.
Again it won't be easy, but this is the path forward that I see, which it seems like you are too blind to even admit it's a possibility. I'm not saying it's the only path forward, or even the most likely. But for you to effectively say it's impossible is utterly foolish, and as @Amadan says in his other response, this type of rhetoric is exactly what will lead us to unnecessary bloodshed and war.
I like your thoughts elsewhere and you've helped me to become a more moral person with some of your other perspectives, so I hope I can convince you to lay down your sword and work for a peaceful resolution.
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I think I have mentioned before that I have been chugging chronologically through presidential biographies. I'm up to Franklin Pierce (not exactly a page-turner).
A common theme from about Andrew Jackson on is "He set in motion / failed to prevent events that would lead to the Civil War."
And while I haven't actually gotten to Lincoln and the Civil War yet, I have already concluded that this is basically wrong - that the Civil War was inevitable, due to irreconcilable differences (arguably baked in from the start), and no president could have prevented it. Individual decisions or different policies enacted by some of them might have shifted the timeline a bit, maybe even made the whole thing shorter and less bloody (or longer and much bloodier), but slavery was just not something we could compromise on forever. Half the country wanted slavery to end, half the country didn't want slavery to end, and all the various attempts at "Okay, we'll only have some slavery" were of course doomed.
(Yes, I am reducing the irreconcilable differences to slavery. Of course there were other issues as well, but really, it boiled down to slavery. But that's an argument for another time.)
There was no practical path forward in 1861. At most the can could have been kicked down the road some more.
So, as for where we are today: until recently I would have said we don't really have literally irreconcilable differences. Yes, red state vs. blue state (and all the cultural and economic differences that entails) will always be a thing. Abortion and gay rights and racial tensions and transing kids - they are very heated topics, but compromises do (and did) exist.
Individually, I don't think any issues we face today are truly things people would go to war over. The escalation of race issues, worse than I ever imagined it would be in the optimistic, "colorblind society" nineties, may come close.
But I do think there are enough people who are so angry that they want to "break the system," light the fire, set off the war, that there is a danger this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Okay, well, to be honest I’m not really interested in getting you to buy it. I’m comfortable with the fact that a great many people on this sub, and obviously a far vaster number of people not on this sub, are fully committed to seeing this liberal democracy experiment through to the end. Maybe I’ll crack the code at some point and figure out the best method to dissuading these people, but I am humble enough to recognize that right now I’m simply not going to be able to make an effective enough case to persuade dyed-in-the-wool liberal democrats. Obviously I used to be a liberal democrat myself, so one would naïvely think it’d be as simple as reverse-engineering what arguments led me to change my mind and then deploying those to try and change your mind; however, it seems not to really work that way.
Much of my writing here is targeted toward people who are already at least part of the way along the journey away from liberal democracy the same way I am. The goal of at least trying to get people such as yourself to see people like me as somewhat palatable, or at least not obviously crazy and requiring immediate censorship and destruction, is a secondary goal.
I can't say I wish you the best, but at least you're honest about your intentions.
I hope for all of our sakes you and people like you never gain a significant amount of power. I don't think you understand the scope of the horror you will bring back into the world if you achieve your goal of widespread political violence.
It's always the naive ones that want it bloody, and ruin things for the rest of us, unfortunately.
Who’s asking for “widespread” anything? I very explicitly said that I’m advocating targeted consequences for a relatively small number of specific public officials. The premise here is that this will be basically welcomed by such a large majority of people that it will not require a civil war or anything like that. It’ll be more like a “truth and reconciliation commission” with the power to hand down criminal punishments.
Now, I also advocate widespread violence against criminals and profoundly mentally ill, but my fervent hope is that this is all done through formal criminal justice channels and does not mean widespread vigilantism. The only way this happens, though, is a massive clearing-out of precisely the public officials who are making this impossible at this time. They’re not going down without being taken out. Those are the sorts of people I want persecuted. Not you, not random people who disagree with me, not “everyone from a particular ethnic group”, etc. Does this help clarify things a bit for you?
Does there have to be violence? What if we just jail them for their callous disregard of virtue and the will of the people, would that satisfy you?
I'm... generally fine with this, as long as we aren't talking about brutal beatings and murder. I think criminals and the profoundly mentally ill do need to have far more consequences than they get today in the West.
This does help clarify, thanks for sticking with the conversation long enough to get here. I'm used to seeing wignats, depressingly more and more often on this very site, unironically call for another civil war on racial lines. I appreciate that you have a bit more nuance.
Again, I'd argue that it's likely that we can manage this political turnaround without resorting to extra-judicial violence. I also firmly believe that even if it takes 10-20 years longer, it's worth doing the purging the right way in order to prevent a spiral of political violence, like the one that took down the Roman empire. But I do understand your points and have found more areas of agreement than I thought there were.
I'm glad we resolved this - I generally like your perspective and really enjoyed your post about increased pushes towards monastic orders, so I was sad to (mistakenly) see you devolving into a full-throated violent revolutionary wignat.
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