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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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  • This is where the hole comes in. My position is that the secular liberal dominiation of academia has effectively castrated our society's ablility to discuss certain topics in a reasonable manner by baking liberal assumptions about how the world ought to work (rather than how it actually does work) into the vocabulary of the discussion.

The recent post-Musk surge of the HBD-left after such ideas were unshackled by the threat of censorship by the old owners, is evidence that at least some on the center or center-left are willing to confront these harsh truths--not just about IQ but also crime stats. Many of these people also agree with you on the innocence of Daniel Penny. On this community, by my estimate, most people here at least are on the side of Penny. I don't think it logically follows that one must support Trump to oppose leftism . Much of modern liberalism is just anti-whiteness, which is a reductive but also accurate lens. Or the invocation of the noble savage trope . Had the races been reversed, the Penny story would have been ignored.

The recent post-Musk surge of the HBD-left after such ideas were unshackled by the threat of censorship by the old owners, is evidence that at least some on the center or center-left are willing to confront these harsh truths

That you think this is about HBD demonstrates just how unwilling and unable you are to confront these harsh truths. If the races had been swapped Penney would have still been righteous.

It is the desperate need of the woke PMC liberal to make questions of violence and virtue about something other than violence and virtue lest they be forced to ask some uncomfortable questions of themselves, that drive their obsessions with race, class, and other nonsense.

If the races had been swapped Penney would have still been righteous.

I think we broadly agree on this, and with your point about "other than violence and virtue", but it's true that had Penney been black and Neely white, this would not have been presented as "innocent harmless victim of white supremacist racist violence". Except perhaps formulating it as Neely the crazy white racist trying to attack the black guy just going about his business, who only acted in self-defence and had no malign intentions of murder or vigilantism.

no, my point is there are liberals who agree with you but are kept in line for fear of social repercussions. Elon buying Twitter make it easier for center-left dissenters to speak out. Not every liberal is woke or subscribes to woke framing.

If it is possible to keep them in line out of fear of social repercussions it is safe to conclude that they do not agree with me.

It begs the question, what social repercussions?