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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27235 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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As an SJW: You can't win. It is as impossible for you to win as it is for me to will big communism into existence ex nihlo.

We are currently playing Culture War by a set of rules that gives me infinite tries and only allowed you temporary victories; and it is the same set of rules that means I can vote in as many elections as I like and choose between two dudes representing corporate interests but one has the pride flag.

So, I win the culture war. You loose the culture war. Maybe you make some headway here or there, but in the end all your causes will fail and all of mine will succeed, until they move beyond me and I become the reactionary.

Unless there is some sort of radical reorganization of society; until the socialist or ancap revolution really comes, this is just how it do. Capitalist realism baby!

What has happened in Argentina that an ancap wins election?

The normal churn of society.

Watch as the Ancap fails to implement any policy whatsoever that deviates from the standard economic rails laid down post WW2.

I haven't been paying attention because lol Argentina, but dollars to donuts the dude finishes out his term as a normal ass austerity conservative while the imf nods on approvingly; unless he fails to do anything at all because cancelling grandmas medicare gets him lynched.

Again: capitalist realism baby!

The normal churn of society.

Shall we expect the rise of anarchocapitalist parties in Western Europe then?

Maybe you make some headway here or there, but in the end all your causes will fail and all of mine will succeed, until they move beyond me and I become the reactionary.

I hope you don't mind my asking this, but: if you can foresee that SJ will go places you don't like, why are you "an SJW"?

I don't consider myself an SJW because that's a boomer ass term from 10 years ago, but conservatives do.

I am a gender abolitionist philosophically, and pro everything on that cringe liberal yard sign more practically. Also, I am more equality of outcome than I am equality of opportunity (with limits, ofc).

I can't imagine the future planes of shit I don't like that will eventually get normalized; but when it comes I will know it. Or maybe I will be the cool old guy who remains both "hip" and "with it", who nows.

Capitalist realism, indeed. When the money is flowing, the SJW/wokeness crowd get appeased because why not, there's so much dough sloshing around that playing pretend that this obvious guy in a dress is a real true woman, etc. doesn't lose us (much) money.

When the money gets tight, we see the difference. Suddenly all the DEI departments get thinned out or shut down. Disney is in the toils with flop after flop in a row lately. Luggage-stealing they/thems don't get replaced in the administration.

I think you believe this because of the people around you and the bubble you are in; but it just isn't true. Historically when money is tight, SJW's make even faster, harder, more permanent progress. Prosperity produces empty gestures because everybody can get by well enough, hardship produces actual clicks of the ratchet because people have enough potential energy to be actualized into political will.

But even if that doesn't happen, nothing ever happens for you. Even if nobody believes in DEI (which they don't because it's dumb); the gesture is all that is required. If DEI goes away, it will be replaced with something you hate equally because, again, you can't win permanent victories, just like you can't make water flow up hill.

You can expend cultural capital; you can burn that shit as fuel and pump that shit back up; but eventually water finds it's way to the sea.

Because we live under capitalist realism, because even with two (do I hear three!) wars going on right now, History has Ended. Nothing Ever Happens. If you want to actually see the changes you desire in your heart, you are going to need to take a risk; to smash the system just like I will to see the economic changes I want to see.

How will you smash the system? What economic changes do you want to see?

I won't smash the system, is the thing. It's not gonna happen until shit gets BAD bad.

You might be right, but what does the endgame look like? It seems like the issue of immigration in particular has the potential to undo most of the gains that progressives find important. I'm thinking of France, where it seems inevitable that there will be a de facto Islamic party in the near future. In that case it seems like both progressives and conservatives (except the immigrants) lose.

Then the game board gets flipped and france becomes the seat of the Neo-Caliphate (both lose option); or like every fundamentalist religious group taken out of their milieu, the Muslims get Mellowed over the generations. They go from fire breathing puritans to evangelicals barely holding on to one or two strictures in the style of a cargo cult (capitalist realism option).

Okay, now it sounds like you're saying "we always win, except when we lose and become a Neo-Caliphate." How is the mellowing of Islamic countries going? What's the mood like in Afghanistan or Somalia?

Mellowing*. This is what the market is, this is what the market does. It connects your country to the global super culture; which overwhelms you with it's fitness. They managed to maintain their shitty standards because they were decoupled from the global economy; as they become actual states that need to do shit instead of just saying shit and as they want to participate in the market, they mellow.

It's like how republicans and libertarians talk a big game, but when they get elected what they do is cut taxes and take the most minor possible step in the culture war as red meat for the base, which immediately gets shouted down and rolled back usually while they are in office.

*You can avoid lots of the supercultre effects by being a totalitarian dictatorship, but you also miss out on lots of the benefits. Trading ideological purity strength, as it were

The problem with this is that The Mellowing that comes from constructive interaction with capitalism is dependent on actually being able to interact with capitalism. The average banlieue resident doesnt have much to offer in the French marketplace, and even their unskilled labor is mostly devalued and surplus. I dont see this situation improving, either.

I agree that market activity tends to reduce ideological fervor. But as you note, that doesn't necessarily happen if the government becomes totalitarian, which you also agree is a distinct possibility. So I'm not even sure what your claim is anymore. "Progressivism always wins except when it doesn't"?

Pretty much. My claim is that the American right has to choose between their economic and social goals; they can't have both. They (and other conservatives in free market/free association states) have goals which I believe to be contradictory.

Makes sense, I think I agree. And AI just makes this happen faster and on a larger scale - humans will be outcompeted unless we put a stop to basically all competitive pressures.

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