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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26627 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Having agency is right-wing.

And....this is the kind of comment that gets 18 upvotes here...turning into a bit of an echo chamber eh? Do I need to start right coding all of my comments to stop being rate limited by downvotes?

rate limited by downvotes

Please explain.

My biggest sin so far is being uncharitable towards Mike Pence. I think that is my top downvoted comment. Ripping on DEI stuff should have off set it, but man, people really like Mike Pence! If you have too many downvotes some/all of your posts go to mods for approval and the conversation often passes you by or is out of context by the time your post goes up.

That was a pretty bad comment.

Someone: "Mike Pence is a good role model"

You: Scornfully list a bunch of things you think are terrible about Mike Pence, assuming that everyone agrees the same things are terrible

The problem is chiefly the contempt and lack of justification. If you'd merely listed those as reasons that you don't think people should support Mike Pence, yes, you'd draw downvotes, but not as much.

That is, explaining why you support things in a way that shows that you understand that people can disagree on the issue and not be crazy, since there are a bunch of people present who would disagree with you on at least some points of your attack on Pence, and who do not fancy themselves crazy.

I at least am in favor of 1, 3, and 4, and get the motivation behind 2, even if I don't think it's good. Does that mean I like everything about Pence? No. But it does mean that your tirade isn't the self-evident thing you think it is, and recognizing that allows for better conversation.

Yeah I mean it was bad... but it was better than the "liberals are NPCs" stuff that gets heavily upvoted.

It looks like there's some rate-limiting/auto-hiding based on comment score leftover from the rdrama code. Certain users have finally hit the threshold for their posts being filtered to the mod queue like a new user's, but not this guy that I've noticed.

Whoa.

I hope someone removes that.

I find it a welcome respite personally. Haven't seen the code, but it seems like someone has to be really consistently awful for it to trigger.

We've asked, and it's apparently not practical. We try to fish them out as quickly as possible.

No, you need to come across as less smug.

I’m not exaggerating. Almost every time I see your name in the report queue, it’s attached to something combative. Either directly insulting people or laying on the sarcasm. People do not appreciate this.

You are clearly capable of writing with tact or at least good humor—I’ve approved enough of your comments to see that. It’s when you choose not to apply that skill that you get dogpiled.

If you make the same points but with more tact, you will receive fewer downvotes.

I'll second this, though with the caveat that you will get some downvotes whenever you disagree with the local hivemind. That's just a fact. But you (@AhhhTheFrench) are definitely above average among the handful of left-leaning posters here in how antagonistic and flame-y you are, and I've downvoted several of your worst posts accordingly.

Saying things in a better way and backing them up will make a real difference in how you're received.

At the very least, that sort of thing affects my vote, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Most people wouldn't describe me as left-leaning. I feel a bit like I'm taking crazy pills here, I invented the Piano Key Necktie Derrick! What have you done?!

If you're interested in my position on hot button topics I'm happy to straightforwardly list them. I feel like more people should do that since it helps prevent the motte and bailey situation this forum is named after, and seems to be almost a trademark of discussions in this space.

Most people wouldn't describe me as left-leaning.

Ah, that's fair, sorry about that.

I guess I was over-applying (non-explicit) heuristics like "worst post was for attacking Mike Pence," "dislikes religion a lot," "complains about leftists being downvoted," and "is downvoted frequently." None of these, of course, require one to be on the left.

If you're interested in my position on hot button topics I'm happy to straightforwardly list them.

I have no objection to you doing so, though I don't intend to turn that into an argument over every hot-button issue at once.

If you make the same points but with more tact, you will receive fewer downvotes.

I think it's clear that people frequently (though certainly not exclusively) use votes as a way of expressing agreement/disagreement, despite constant exhortations not to.

People are more forgiving of combativeness when they agree with the actual content of the post. There were posts where Dase really laid into Hlynka, and those posts were still upvoted, because Dase's views are popular here and Hlynka's views are not.

On the flip side, I think this post was written tactfully, but it still ended up in the negatives - in fact I was surprised to see how many downvotes it had given how anodyne it was. Certainly posts that were much less tactful have achieved far higher scores.

I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that the vote button functions as a general boo/yay reaction in many instances. Lord knows that's how I use it a lot of the time. I think it's unavoidable. If you give people a big "I don't like this" button, and they come across a view that they find deeply objectionable, then they're liable to press the button, regardless of how well argued the post is.

People are more forgiving of combativeness when they agree with the actual content of the post. There were posts where Dase really laid into Hlynka, and those posts were still upvoted, because Dase's views are popular here and Hlynka's views are not.

It seems to me that a big part of the frustration with hlynka was his refusal to engage with certain points routinely made by his opponents, and not his views per se. Really, I don’t perceive hlynka’s views as particularly unpopular here; I’m something of a poor man’s hlynka and it seems like I’m agreeing with people more than disagreeing. Hlynka had trouble interacting with actual, literal, honest-to-God Nazis and white supremacists in a civil and constructive manner and that’s why he was such a source of frustration.

Well, that, and he couldn’t help but lump us all together and combine us with the Left racialists.

He would not recognize that a fair number of us here combine race realism with a desire for race-blind classical liberalism/individualism.

If he would have engaged with actual arguments made, instead of constantly dodging and misrepresenting them, and only been pissy with the actual Nazis and white supremacists he would probably still be around here.

It sure was a trip to watch him contort his arguments against the descriptive evidence for race realism with his anti-elite/academia views.

On the flip side, I think this post was written tactfully, but it still ended up in the negatives - in fact I was surprised to see how many downvotes it had given how anodyne it was.

I don't think that post was particularly tactful. Starting right off the bat by claiming the person is being weird isn't very tactful, just the opposite. There's a good point to be made about singling out Democrats being unfair given the behavior of the other party, but that's not a tactful way to make it. This is the kind of behavior I tend to see out of people who complain about being downvoted for not fitting into the "echochamber" of this place, that, at best, they're passive aggressive in an obvious way that's harmful to the quality of the discourse, instead of taking the effort to contribute their views in a non-combative way to produce good discussion.

I don't think that post was particularly tactful. Starting right off the bat by claiming the person is being weird isn't very tactful, just the opposite.

We might subjectively disagree over how tactful or not it is to call someone's post "weird" in this context. But the point is, I don't think 16 people downvoted that post because it called the parent post "weird". I think 16 people downvoted that post because it questioned how committed Republicans were to the principles of the anti-lockdown cause.

Posts with sharper personal insults than "weird" still manage to accumulate upvotes, if the content itself is popular enough. I already linked one. It's not that hard to find others (from multiple different users).

people who complain about being downvoted for not fitting into the "echochamber" of this place

But these people are simply correct in many cases. In every community with reddit-style voting, posts that disagree with the consensus viewpoint are more likely to be downvoted. This is simply obvious to me based on 15+ years of watching how different internet communities behave, and my knowledge of how I personally use the voting buttons, particularly with posts that provoke a strong emotional reaction from me. I can't recall any significant counterexamples, and TheMotte is no exception.

I want to reiterate that using the vote button as an agree/disagree button isn't a bad thing. It's natural and unavoidable. The solution is to simply not have any punishment associated with a low comment score. It's already a good first step that TheMotte doesn't hide low scoring comments like reddit and HN do, and I think we should remove the rate limiting as well.

I think 16 people downvoted that post because it questioned how committed Republicans were to the principles of the anti-lockdown cause.

The thing that would tempt me most to downvote that (I didn't) was the following sentence:

Density + poverty drives most of the type of crime you seem to be concerned about, not who you vote for.

I think there are other factors besides density and poverty: most importantly, policing.

That said, I agree with the overall thesis that people downvote for disagreement, and more than I would prefer. I would be happier with downvoting for disagreement when what is going on in someone's head is closer to "that point in that comment is wrong" than "I don't like their team."

I have no disagreement with your opinion on the pattern of upvotes and downvotes in this case specifically, at The Motte more generally, and in places with such systems even more generally. If anything, I'd say it is a bad thing, but it's indeed natural and unavoidable. Which is why I find complaining about it to be silly and pointless. It's like whining that the Sun rises in the east.

I didn't call anyone weird. I actually said "Kind of a weird focus on democrats in this post." and went on to explain why I thought that was the case. As opposed to this post. which is dripping with condescension and outright insults such as "Liberals exist in a world without cause and effect, and conservatives do." and has 20 upvotes to my 6 downvotes for a much milder and reasonable post that should have produced some discussion if the other party was willing.

To not accept that there is certainly a large and growing hardline conservatives only need apply culture on this form is to not see what the votes are telling you.

This post is literally a drive by insult and has 27 upvotes; 27 people thought it added to the discussion, that is what we are talking about right now...

I didn't call anyone weird. I actually said "Kind of a weird focus on democrats in this post."

To say that this is in any way meaningfully different from, "claiming the person [who made the post] is being weird [by making the post]" is pretty absurd in my eyes. The person who made the post is obviously the one responsible for what the post was focusing on, and you claimed that the particular focus in the post was weird. If you believe that making a post that has a weird focus isn't "being weird," then your skills at splitting hairs are greater than mine.

I also have no interest in up/downvotes in general and specifically find the idea of comparing downvotes between one's own posts and those of other people to be silly and rather narcissistic, so I won't comment on any particular comparisons.

It isn't absurd. We should be able to seperate a bad post or one that seems misdirected from the poster themselves. Not everyone is going to write a banger everytime. The post did have a bit of a weird fixation. We are supposed to be a bit objective here and perhaps have our arguments called wrong, or weird, without letting our ego's get too damaged in the process. If anything, I thought that is what this place is for.

It is nice that you don't care about upvotes and downvotes, but they do impact the discourse, especially when your posts wind up in mod que.

"Having agency is right-wing." is at +19

This is low effort, insulting, smug and sarcastic. Sure you modded it, but the people love it.

What do you think "Having agency is left-wing" would garner?. I'm not even a left winger! I just don't want to see this place become /r/conservative +/r/Christian version of sneer club.

If that ain't at least a pretty good canary in the coal mine...seeing this should be a warning that the gas is building up to toxic levels.

People don't always point this stuff out, most just leave.

I interpreted it as being sarcastic, as in “agency is right-coded by the left, who worship victimhood.” Is that how you interpreted it?

What more would you have done? Ban the people that upvoted it?

I mean that would be a pretty good snare to catch people only interested in boosting team ideology with sneering insults. We should be engaging in interesting thought experiments, digesting the news of the day, seeing the other side of things, and exploring the pressing issues of our time with diverse viewpoints, not rewarding one liners dunking on the other side.

Well he was literally banned for that comment.

It does seem like your comments require mod approval though, presumably due to having received too many downvotes, which I agree is very bizarre and that feature should be disabled.

You have been warned before about low-effort comments. Enough.

One day ban this time.

No plans to ding the 4chan tier memery that's getting popular around here (including among members of the mod team who ought to know better) while you're at it I suppose?

Just look at the vote count on that drive by boo-outgroup comment. +18...wow

I like to think I try.

If you’ve got anything particular in mind, perhaps a DM?

Sure.

The current Christian theological consensus is that God knows the future with 100% accuracy. Shouldn't that make right wing thought align with zero agency thinking?

That's Calvinist predestination (since God is omniscient and sovereign, what He knows must come to pass so you're hosed), but we Papists believe in free will so agency is still in operation 😀

While the consensus is that God knows the future with 100% accuracy, there is not Christian theological consensus on predestination, election, or free will.

In the Evangelical tradition I grew up in the position I heard the most was that the Bible commands us to choose certain things, which means choice is possible. And that the Bible says God knows all things, including the future. Like most Evangelical theology, how to square that circle is left as an exercise for the reader.

The Calvinists, quite famously, believe God chooses who will be righteous and who will be damned from jump. We have no ability to choose salvation or damnation. Many Calvinists believe that we do have free will, but our choices are based on our desires and characters and God choose to give us particular desires and characters that will constrain the choices we have available.

The Catholic church teaches that we have the free will to either accept or reject the grace of God, and that when God predestined the course of history he left room for us to make decisions. He knows what decision we'll freely make in advance, of course.

C.S. Lewis described the intersection of our choices and God's predestination this way in Mere Christianity:

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

…

Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way — because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.

Oh, is it time for Time Travel Jesus discussion now? Awesome!

TLDR on the Lewis quote: God is omnipresent, and He is also omnichronal. Time is the specific arena within which we make our real choices with real consequences, even though from outside of time it looks like fate.

The Word, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity became a mortal chronal being. Does that mean that, in the thirty-two years He was Jesus of Nazareth who had not yet died, there was no Logos in Heaven? That seems absurd to me; one can no more separate the Persons of the Trinity than you can remove your shape from your body.

In my theological thought experiments, I model the Word as the perfectly accurate truth about God the Father, an infinitely complete and divine description, the only possible counterexample against Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. So the Son experiences time as one of Adam’s children for a time to bring the message that God is not an ineffable immaterial entity external to spacetime and abstracted from our merely human concerns; He walks with us and guides us in love, in concern for the poor and abused, because their suffering matters.

And then there’s the timeless sacrifice of the Jews’ Messiah for the sins of all mankind, the zero-point of history. It ripples back into the past as the sacrifice of countless animals by Iron Age and Bronze Age Hebrews, Shemites, and Noahics. It ripples into the future with the assurance that the debt is paid even though we haven’t yet committed the sin and earned its wages, entropy and death.

This is the Good News, as CS Lewis fictionalized it: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Stone Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.” And if instead we consider time not a true dimension but rather a description of the order now present permanently winding down as potential energy becomes waste heat, He is the opposite of entropy, making all things new starting with His own corpse revived, rebuilt, and perfected.

Time Travel Jesus loved you from the foundation of the Earth.

Re: Catholics, well, I'm pretty sure it's messier than most people realize. There was a big controversy a couple hundred years between Jesuits and Dominicans a couple hundred years ago that was never actually settled (the pope just told them to stop talking about it) over how exactly human choice exists in combination with predestination. The Dominicans were basically Calvinists on this narrow issue, and that remains a viable option for Catholics today, if I understand rightly.

As a Calvinist, like you said, people choose things, just our choices are themselves based upon our own character, desires, etc. And I don't think that fallen humans will turn to God on our own.

Our agency matters, because God works through means, not apart from them.

Thanks for bringing a Calvinist perspective, since I was not confident I portrayed the Calvinist position right. Growing up my Dad always told me, "Son, beware the yeast of the Calvinists."

He also said that Arminians were Calvinists who flunked logic, though I never could figure out why. Every time I try to study Amrinianism they either seem to be agreeing with my perspective, or saying something completely incomprehensible to me.

Yeah, I think the default view in many places is basically Arminian, though probably with fewer moving parts (e.g. prevenient grace) than the original Arminian position would have had.

But I think a more predestinarian theology is clearly biblical.

I did remember the Jesuit versus Dominican bit, but looking up the details, one set of references says it's about free will, while another says it's about grace. The operation of grace would be different enough that the freedom of the will and personal agency isn't a problem.

"Is grace irresistible?" is a small difference, but even a small difference is enough:

The controversy between the orders began with a public disputation on grace held sometime around 1581 between representatives of the two orders, the Jesuits represented by Prudentius Montemayor and the Dominicans by Domingo Báñez, the confessor of St. Teresa of Avila. The disputation was heated and led Jesuit theologian Luis Molina to publish a work entitled Concordia in 1588. In his Concordia, Molina proposed a doctrine of scientia media, the “middle knowledge” of God. Scientia media concerns the ability of God to see future contingent events—not only things that will be, but every possible outcome based on the variability of human will. Molina argued that with perfect foreknowledge of how a person will respond in given circumstances, God gives grace accordingly. He thus does not cause us to perform deed A, but knowing that with the help of grace we would voluntarily perform deed A, makes this grace available subsequent to this knowledge, which in turn results in us performing deed A.

The Concordia was a controversial work. It quickly aroused the ire of the Dominicans, who claimed it violated several principles condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. The Dominican Báñez was asked to examine the question and stated that the Concordia did indeed contain condemned propositions.

Molina was offered the opportunity to clarify his work, which he did with several amendments attached as appendices. The book, now amended, began to circulate about Europe and was energetically championed by the Jesuits. But the Dominicans continued to object, specifically to the doctrine of scientia media. The teaching, they said, accorded too much to man’s free will. If scientia media were true, they argued, God’s decrees would be determined by man’s actions, since Molina argued that God gives grace based on what He knows men will do in given circumstances. Therefore, the Dominicans argued, man would be determining God.

Led by Báñez, the Dominicans proposed the idea of physical premotion as an alternative to scientia media. Physical premotion is the theory that God moves the will directly by the application of grace, which infallibly produces His intended result. Whereas the Molina’s theory was accused of extending too much to free will, the Jesuits accused Báñez of leaning too heavily upon grace, effectually negating free will. The Dominicans, however, replied even if grace moves the will, it does not do so in a way that negates its freedom; on the contrary, grace actualizes the will and makes it freer.

...By now (1600) the controversy had dragged on for 19 years and Luis Molina was dead. Pope Clement, still indecisive, ordered the matter to be discussed in his presence, as well as that of Cardinal Camillo Borghese (the future Pope Paul V) and various members of the commission and other notable theologians. The discussions dragged on for three years (1602-1605) with a total of sixty-eight separate meetings held in the pope’s presence. Clement had the matter talked to death—quite literally, as he died in 1605 before the discussions concluded. Seventeen more debates would be held in the presence of his successor, Paul V. By this time Domingo Báñez, as well, had died, and the orders were being represented by a new generation of thinkers.

At this point Paul V seems to have concluded the problem insoluble, at least at that time. In 1607 he issued a decree to the Dominicans and Jesuits allowing each to defend their respective doctrines but charged them to refrain from condemning the other. Beyond this, he ordered them to wait for a judgment from the Holy See on the matter, which, to this day, has never come. Besides the theological rupture, the pope was also concerned with repairing the bad feeling that had arisen between the orders and consequently forbid the publication of new works on efficacious grace, as he surmised these would only rekindle the intense passions that he hoped to extinguish. These rules remained in force for most of the 17th century.

Thanks for that context. It really clarifies the Catholic Church's stance on this matter.

I agree wholeheartedly with the Jesuit's "middle knowledge" and it's neat to see an argument that seems to be a direct precursor to Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds" theodicy.

It (assuming you are referring to the Jesuits) isn't the same as Liebniz's "best of all possible worlds" theodicy. Leibniz was working from the principle of sufficient reason, among other things, which the Jesuits would not affirm, as they would think (roughly speaking) that human choices are brute facts; there is no reason sufficient to explain the choice beyond the choice itself.

The Dominicans' position is more compatible with that, I suppose.

Jesuits would deny the principle of sufficient reason? That's remarkable to me. I don't know much about Jesuit theology, but I would have thought...I mean, our choices are not ontologically simple enough to be brute facts.

The connection I saw was to the idea that God can see all possible outcomes, and His providence moves events in such a way that the choices He can predict we will make work towards His greater plan while preserving free will. That seems to fit well with Leibniz's thought, especially from this section of his Monadology:

Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of God, and but one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God which determines him to select one rather than another.

And this reason is to be found only in the fitness or in the degree of perfection which these worlds possess, each possible thing having the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection which it involves

It seems to me that the Dominican's primary objection is that God structuring the universe around our choices puts God subservient to man's decisions, in a sense. Which I don't really agree with, but I can understand the objection.

That's remarkable to me.

It's entirely possible I'm wrong.

The connection I saw was to the idea that God can see all possible outcomes, and His providence moves events in such a way that the choices He can predict we will make work towards His greater plan while preserving free will. That seems to fit well with Leibniz's thought, especially from this section of his Monadology:

I think the key question here is what does "the choices He can predict we will make" mean? I can see two ways of construing that. Either, it could satisfy the principle of sufficient reason (that is, there exists some set things which together suffice to cause/make it the case that I make whatever choice I end up making), or a way that doesn't (in an undetermined-by-causation manner, we would make choices in any setting, and God happens to know this).

I don't think the Jesuits meant the first, because then the whole schema isn't really different from whatever other determinists would say. But the second does seem to deny the principle of sufficient reason to me. Am I wrong in that? I assume you prefer the second?

It seems to me that the Dominican's primary objection is that God structuring the universe around our choices puts God subservient to man's decisions, in a sense. Which I don't really agree with, but I can understand the objection.

Specifically, in the sense that God's will, even exhaustively stated, does not suffice to explain the state of the world, but would depend also upon man's decisions (known to God in his middle knowledge).

To be clear, I do think the state of the world depends on man's decisions, but I think that man's decisions are something that are adequately accounted for by God's providence, not something that there is some extra nondeterministic component in.

Do I misunderstand what you think anywhere?

More comments

Two things:

  1. "Right Wing" does not mean "religious." There's a correlation between the two, obviously, but imo that's more the result of history than philosophical alignment.

  2. You are obviously correct. I think that's because the religious generally don't behave as if they actually believe in predestination or an omniscient god (same thing), not because they don't actually believe in personal agency.

"Right Wing" does not mean "religious." There's a correlation between the two, obviously, but imo that's more the result of history than philosophical alignment.

I believe that a certain type of magical thinking is, if not a necessary component of the rightist personality, then at least a prominent and salient feature of it across multiple diverse manifestations. (I raised the question here recently of whether there was actually something to leftist accusations of "right-wing conspiracy theories", the question of whether the rightist mind might actually be more prone to conspiratorial thinking.)

Nietzsche is the archetypal example to study here. In terms of his explicitly avowed philosophical commitments, he was the arch-materialist, not only denying God but also any notion of value (aesthetic or moral), free will, a unified conscious "self" that could be responsible for its actions, and at times he seemed to suggest that even the concept of "truth" had too much supernatural baggage and should be rejected on those grounds. And yet throughout his work he couldn't stop himself from making constant reference to the inner states of man's "soul", relying on analogies and parables that featured Greek gods and demons, judging people by a standard of authenticity which on any plain reading he should have been forced to reject, and courting overt mysticism with his concept of the "eternal recurrence". This was a fundamental psychological tendency expressing itself, a yearning for a reality which he could not explicitly avow. Not only could he not excise these concepts from his thinking but they were essential to him, it was the fiat currency of his psychic economy.

Or look at Heidegger who, despite having a complicated relationship with Christianity and attempting to distance himself from it, and heavily critiquing Cartesian dualism in his early work, ended up throwing himself head-on into mysticism in his later works (for example his lectures on Hölderlin).

This passage from Heidegger's Country Path Conversations is illuminating:

GUIDE: Perhaps even space and everything spatial for their part first find a reception and a shelter in the nearing nearness and in the furthering farness, which are themselves not two, but rather a one, for which we lack the name.

SCHOLAR: To think this remains something awfully demanding.

GUIDE: A demand which, however, would come to us from the essence of nearness and farness, and which in no way would be rooted in my surmise.

SCIENTIST: Nearness and farness are then something enigmatic.

GUIDE: How beautiful it is for you to say this.

SCIENTIST: I find the enigmatic oppressive, not beautiful.

SCHOLAR: The beautiful has rather something freeing to it.

SCIENTIST: I experience the same thing when I come across a problem in my science. This inspires the scientist even when it at first appears to be unsolvable, because, for the scientist faced with a problem, there are always certain possibilities for preparing and carrying out pertinent investigations. There is always some direction in which research can knuckle down and go toward an object, and thus awaken the feeling of domination that fuels scientific work.

SCHOLAR: By contrast, before the enigma of nearness and farness we stand helplessly perplexed.

SCIENTIST: Most of all we stand idle.

GUIDE: And we do not ever attend to the fact that presumably this perplexity is demanded of us by the enigma itself.

If there is such a thing as an identifiable core of the "rightist mind", I believe it consists in finding the enigmatic beautiful rather than oppressive.

(I cite these examples because, rather than being the psychological eccentricities of a few individuals, I observe the same patterns in contemporary rightists, albeit in an attenuated form.)

This reminds me of my puzzlement at the reception of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. I imagined that English politics in 1651 had a right-wing that favoured monarchy and the divine right of kings, and a left-wing, that favoured Parliament, diggers and levelers, and if the diggers and levelers got too rambunctious, a Lord Protector. I further imagined that the right-wing would love Hobbes. Why? Because they would notice that a mystical faith in the divine right of kings wasn't persuading everybody. Some persons had a more mechanistic, materialist take on how politics worked, and Hobbes' reasoning, about needing a king to maintain order, would persuade them, perfecting social harmony as both the pious and the mechanistic/materialists agreed on the need for a king.

I was wrong. Quoting wikipedia "The secularist spirit of his book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics" and "Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labelled a heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers." The divine right of kings was a mystical doctrine and one profaned it by offering worldly justification.

So yes, the rightist mind finds the enigmatic, such as monarchy, beautiful. The tiny minority of rightist (just me?) who distrust enigma and construct mechanistic/materialists accounts of why we should be right-wing are rejected by the right. And then there is the left, which offers mechanistic/materialist accounts of why we should be left-wing (that I find unconvincing due to neglecting the details of the mechanisms).

Much of the core messaging on the right is explicitly 'anti-agency,' for lack of a better word. You're unemployed because the government shipped your jobs overseas, you're addicted to fentanyl because of corrupt doctors and politicians in bed with Chinese companies flooding the country, men are depressed and committing suicide because of feminism/hostile society/subversion of traditional gender roles, you're poor because immigrants are driving down your wages.

When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs? I can accept that even if they did believe that, saying so publicly would be political suicide...but do you think that they believe it? Do you yourself believe that, or do you agree with most of the statements I made above?

When the government takes half your paycheck and gives it to a swarm of party-aligned parasites that live off grant money, the government is denying you agency.
When politicians coordinate with megacorporations to enrich themselves by impoverishing american workers, they are denying you agency.
When your child isn't allowed to take algebra in school because a leftist "education consultant" got paid $5000/hr to call math racist while sending her children to a private school, they are denying you agency.
When those same politicians order the secret police to monitor anyone who complains about it, they are denying you agency.
Noticing this and talking about it does not make you "anti-agency," it makes you correct.

This is not denying one's own agency as in "whiteness existing makes it impossible for me to show up to work on time." It is simply pointing out that a powerful and malicious agent is stronger than you are.

When the government takes half your paycheck and gives it to a swarm of party-aligned parasites that live off grant money, the government is denying you agency.

Hey man, I don't like that the government is subsidizing traditionally red tribe occupations either, but you should really pressure your elected officials if you want it to stop.

Not to mention the income tax rate tops out at 37%, so it's not half your paycheck, and even if you are in the top tax bracket...you really don't have anything to be complaining about because you're making over half a mil per year.

When politicians coordinate with megacorporations to enrich themselves by impoverishing american workers, they are denying you agency.

Based. How do you want to bust the megacorps, comrade?

When your child isn't allowed to take algebra in school because a leftist "education consultant" got paid $5000/hr to call math racist while sending her children to a private school, they are denying you agency.

That's an impressive 10,000,000$ per year. Do you have any idea how I could become an education consultant?

Anyways, I'll ask you the same question as last time. I largely agree with you about the problems in the country. Do you have any realistic, well-thought out plans to address them? We could zero out budgets for all the education consultants, all the minority-owned business subsidies, most of the other stuff you complain about as woke, and your buddy would still be struggling to feed his family stocking shelves. If you want to cut taxes, we probably need to cut medicare and social security (I'm assuming you don't want to touch the military), so your shelf-stocking friend will age into being a senior who both can't afford healthcare and has to keep stocking shelves until he keels over and dies.

But seriously, I'm listening. I'm open to having my mind changed. What do you actually want? What's your positive vision for the future?

you're poor because immigrants are driving down your wages

So let's build a wall says the right-winger.

No you can't do that says the left-winger, you just can't. You really can't says the left-winger, so the right-winger says, ok we'll jan6 then, and then the left-winger says no, no, no, you really, really, really, can't.

You're afraid to start a business or do anything because of crime?

So let's gather all the gang-members says the El Salvadoran President. But at what cost??? Asks the NYT.

When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs?

How's 'relocating' working as a strategy generally? Plenty of 'relocated' Americans homeless on the streets of blue cities, not sure what good it does them.

Why is this never a solution to the mysterious problem of 'food deserts' that seems to plague African-Americans, completely unrelated to the spontaneous combustion of businesses in their neighborhoods when Republicans get in power?

Why is this never offered as a solution to racism? There are plenty of countries with way fewer oppressive white people.

I've seen right-wingers advise journalists to learn to code, does that count?

abstaining from drugs

Does the so-called 'War on Drugs' count? I'm all for going Duterte on drugs.

So let's build a wall says the right-winger.

No you can't do that says the left-winger, you just can't. You really can't says the left-winger, so the right-winger says, ok we'll jan6 then

You mean the wall I was promised Mexico would pay for (oops), the wall that was actually built by Trump after refusing compromises offered by Democrats and instead built by appropriating funds from the military? The wall that, as far as I can tell, has had virtually no effect on the number of illegal immigrants showing up at the border? That wall?

Leaving aside the fact that your implied definition of 'having agency' means 'getting whatever policy you want at the federal level.' By that definition, you're denying me agency every time you vote for a Republican. Nobody has agency.

So let's gather all the gang-members says the El Salvadoran President. But at what cost??? Asks the NYT.

Sure, we could crack down on crime in the US as well if we instituted a police state. This is diametrically opposed to what most conservatives want. When is the last time you saw a conservative cheering on NSA wiretappings or the FBI?

How's 'relocating' working as a strategy generally? Plenty of 'relocated' Americans homeless on the streets of blue cities, not sure what good it does them.

You do understand that homeless make up a minute portion of a state's population (~90k for New York out of a population of 19 million), and the number of them that were shipped there from red states is a fraction of them? Meanwhile, there are plenty of kids who leave West Virginia for college, work, etc and never come back - and they do just fine. People typically refer to this as a negative as the talented are leaving West Virginia, exacerbating the problem. Any hard data on the subject would suffer from selection effects as well, so maybe it isn't a solution for someone with a high school degree or less, who knows.

Doesn't really matter though. You seem more interested in 'zingers' and waging the culture war, right?

Do you yourself believe that, or do you agree with most of the statements I made above?

Those are not exclusive! It's entirely possible to have the deck stacked against you along some axes, but not to such an extent that it cannot be overcome by agency.

That said, I don't believe a bunch of those:

1.Sure, a bunch of jobs have moved overseas, but the unemployment rate is pretty low. If you can't find a job, that shouldn't be blamed on companies (not the government, of course) moving jobs overseas.

2.Sure, immigrants may drive down wages in specific sectors, but they should increase prosperity overall.

Others I agree with more, but think you should still take agency:

3.Being addicted to fentanyl probably is related in some cases to doctors prescribing opiates without sufficient caution. Doesn't mean you shouldn't get up and try to go through rehab programs and take steps to get rid of the problem instead of throwing away your life.

I have no comment to make on the suicide point.

But I agree with @Primaprimaprima that I see more pro-agency messaging on the right, even if there is plenty of victimhood messaging too.

Being addicted to fentanyl probably is related in some cases to doctors prescribing opiates without sufficient caution.

It seems like "is related" is kind of sweeping some stuff under the rug in that sentence. My understanding is that there is good evidence that over prescription leads to more drugs available on the black market, but that it is in fact extremely rare for someone to develop an addiction stemming from their own prescription. The vast majority of addicts started on other people's prescriptions. (Let me know if you have a different understanding of this.)

If that's the case, it's not really relevant to the agency that the addicts had in becoming addicted to say that the drugs were prescribed too carelessly in the first place.

That was not my impression, but I have nothing at hand to back me up, and am not at all certain.

Much of the core messaging on the right is explicitly 'anti-agency,' for lack of a better word.

What you are noticing is the difference between actual political philosophy and the advertising used to sell grifters who are nominally aligned with a given philosophy to retards. The two are only related inasmuch as they need to be for the grifters to successfully associate their grift with a tribal affiliation.

I can't claim this is particularly rigorous, but I have noticed a broad pattern in which traditional or right-wing ideologies tend to include a strong belief in the power of individual agency to shape the world, whereas progressive or left-wing ones don't. If you look at arguably the most traditional belief system there is, Animism, it attributes agency to absolutely everything down to trees, rocks, rivers and clouds, which are perceived as conscious beings that act with deliberate intent. Even something as simple as it raining is thought of as the deliberate act of a god.

On the other hand, far-left ideologies such as Marxism tend to stress the role of socioeconomic forces larger than any one man in shaping history. It's believed communism's victory is inevitable because the material conditions will shift and make capitalism obsolete. Class conflict is portrayed as inevitable, with the capital class effectively incapable of not exploiting the labour class to the greatest extent they can due to the way the system is set up. I believe there's also a parallel here with progressive beliefs about how white people are incapable of not perpetuating racism due to their position in society.

Great Man Theory, too, is right-coded and stresses the role of individual agency in historical change, where leftists prefer to believe that structural forces play a larger role; conservatives speak of the importance of personal responsibility while progressives emphasise the effect of environmental influences on a person's choices, and consequently cons tend to believe strict punishment of criminals is just as they are ultimately responsible for their choices, where progs favour leniency as they believe a person may have had little choice but to turn to crime.

I would even argue that the reason rightists seem to be more likely to give credence to conspiracy theories is that they align with the idea of a small number of individual agents acting with deliberate intent to change the world, something more plausible to the right-wing worldview than the systemic explanations the left favour, which suppose people perpetuate systems of oppression without necessarily having conscious intent to.

On the other hand, it could be argued that belief in HBD or in certain individuals being chosen by God to rule is anti-agency, and some right-wing ideologies do seek to greatly restrict agency for certain classes of people (e.g. women) or sometimes the population at large, whereas left-wing ones can seek to greatly expand the agency of groups previously denied it (again, women). Perhaps that's not so counter-intuitive though; if you think individual agency is powerful you might logically seek to restrict who can wield it, whereas if you think it doesn't matter so much, why not let everyone have it?

I can't claim this is particularly rigorous, but I have noticed a broad pattern in which traditional or right-wing ideologies tend to include a strong belief in the power of individual agency to shape the world, whereas progressive or left-wing ones don't.

And this is obviously adaptive, for the simple reason that even if you can’t affect the world very much, behaving better can affect it at least a little bit, and probably make life better for you as well. Traditional ideologies have an upper limit to how maladaptive they can be because they have by definition been around long enough to weed out the worst ones.

On the other hand novel or progressive ideologies have no such upper limit; the failures of communism are the obvious example, but there’s thousands of others. Lobotomies, alcohol prohibition, these things died out because they turned out to be bad ideas. That’s not to say absolutely everything new is going to kill millions of people; that’s to say most ideas which go on to kill millions of people are new-ish at the time they’re tried.

So we should generally expect traditional ideologies to tend towards adaptive beliefs, and novel ideologies to have no particular tendency, irrespective of truth value in any which way. And that being said, while adaptive beliefs encourage adaptive behavior, they don’t necessitate it. Most people have at least some disconnect between their actions and beliefs, and we should expect adaptive behavior to be more associated with adaptive ends.

That is, I think, what the thread notes.

When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs?

JD Vance seems like a good example:

Alongside his personal history, Vance raises questions such as the responsibility of his family and people for their own misfortune. Vance blames hillbilly culture and its supposed encouragement of social rot. Comparatively, he feels that economic insecurity plays a much lesser role. To lend credence to his argument, Vance regularly relies on personal experience. As a grocery store checkout cashier, he watched welfare recipients talk on cell phones although the working Vance could not afford one. His resentment of those who seemed to profit from poor behavior while he struggled, especially combined with his values of personal responsibility and tough love, is presented as a microcosm of the reason for Appalachia's overall political swing from strong Democratic Party to strong Republican affiliations. Likewise, he recounts stories intended to showcase a lack of work ethic including the story of a man who quit after expressing dislike over his job's hours and posted to social media about the "Obama economy", as well as a co-worker, with a pregnant girlfriend, who would skip work.[1]

Of course, Vance also has Senate policy positions and rhetoric that takes on the more populist tone, but I don't think he's scared to tell individuals to get their shit together. There's always going to be some degree of tension for anyone that's thinking carefully - obviously the material conditions and culture of a society, a locale, or a nation are going to matter and meaningfully impact the behavior and outcomes for the individuals there. Nonetheless, the best advice for individuals will still be to focus on what is within their control; in the United States, the things that are under one's own control are so plentiful that making endless excuses is going to be much more destructive than generating agency.

I don't know that Vance is the best example. While he called out hillbillies (and I use that term loosely because the Rust Belt white trash he's describing in Ohio are decidedly different from Appalachian white trash) in his book, his actual politics started veering into the "lack of agency" lane as soon as Trump's success made it a veritable requirement for him to do it. I can't tell you how many times I heard from conservatives that nobody owes you anything, stop whining, buck up and take that menial job because you aren't above working at McDonalds just because you have a college degree, nobody wants to work anymore, etc. (not to me personally, but the sentiment). One night I was at the bar and a bunch of them were bitching about immigration. They weren't white trash, but obviously successful guys from a wealthy suburb. My view on immigration are complicated, to say the least, but when they started about Mexicans taking jobs from Americans it pissed me off so I turned it around on them: "Why do we owe them jobs? Why should I pay more for stuff because some whiny American doesn't want to work for what I'm willing to pay. Those Mexicans are damn glad to get my money, and besides, they do the work and don't complain. Besides, they're the only ones who seem to want to work anymore." Or something along those lines. It didn't work, of course, because as soon as anyone brings up market forces to a conservative in an argument about immigration, they just do a u-turn and talk about welfare instead, not realizing the inherently contradictory nature of those arguments. And, as a putative conservative, I couldn't really argue back.

The same thing applies more directly to employers. There's one older guy I know we call "Pappy". He's big in the whitewater community arouind here and is an excellent boater, and teaches free lessons at the park and cheap roll lessons at a scum pond on his property (only charging to cover the insurance). He's very generous with his time, especially considering these lessons are always 8-hour marathons. Not so much with his money. He owns a garage and auto body shop and refuses to pay his employees. He also constantly bitches about the quality of the help he gets. I once couldn't help but comment that maybe if he paid more than ten bucks an hour he'd find decent people. I knew this would get him fired up, because he was great at going on these kinds of rants; "Hell, when I started out I made 2 bucks an hour and was glad to get it. When I opened this place you couldn't ask no god damned bank for any money because they wouldn't give it to you. I had to save my money to buy all this and earned all of it. These people don't want to work, they just want to sit on their asses and collect a check. And you lawyers are half the problem. When my wife and I bought our first house the mortgage was one page. One. When I took out a loan last year it was a god damned book. And it's all because you lawyers found lazy fucks who didn't want to pay and tried to weasel out of it, and now the banks have to make sure that you can't."

I wasn't thrown by the change of tack because he never missed an opportunity to dunk on my profession. I would note that my brother was an inspector for a major industrial company that does global business and they had him paint some equipment. The quality steadily deteriorated over the years to the point they had to cancel a very lucrative contract because nothing he did would pass. I've known a few people who took their cars to him for work and now aren't on speaking terms after the work was so bad they had to withhold payment. His intransigence is literally costing him money, but he won't budge on principle.

I bring up these examples because they're evidence of this mentality not among the white trash that Vance talks about, but among normal, successful people. As for Vance himself, he plays into the same ethos wholeheartedly, and doesn't seem to understand the contradiction with the argument that gave him fame. If he continued in the Reagan mold of bold free market principles, or took the opposite tack of siding with the lefties in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" sense, I could take him at face-value. But instead he's latched onto the same victimization worldview of those he previously complained about. He was once a moderate and anti-Trumper; now his "National Republicanism" is just an amalgamation of the worst protectionist ideas Trump had to offer. Maybe it's a cynical response to give him more political credibility, I don't know. But it's certainly a contradiction with what he used to be.

I'm not really getting your point here.

Why should I pay more for stuff because some whiny American doesn't want to work for what I'm willing to pay. Those Mexicans are damn glad to get my money, and besides, they do the work and don't complain.

He owns a garage and auto body shop and refuses to pay his employees.

Should he go recruit a bunch of qualified workers in Honduras then? How would you feel if Guatemalans (or Indians, or Poles, or AI...) started offering lawyer services at one half of your rate and you started losing customers?

Would you be upset at your former customers if they told you 'Why should I pay more for stuff because some whiny American doesn't want to work for what I'm willing to pay'?

I'm not a conservative so I don't worry about these things. As for them, I don't expect them to do anything other than stop bitching about people who need handouts and then asking the government to set policies that are basically handouts for them. And if you want AI to do legal services, be my guest; I'll make more money undoing the mess...

Hypothetically speaking, you're in the state of Washington. They vote in some progressives who decide that established lawyers have to hire assistants in order to train them for the bar exam bypass. The new hypothetical regulation leads to lower profit per case for you, with the same or additional work. Additionally they vote in some new taxes just for the stuff you like to buy.

Do you just take it, give up on some stuff? Do you move to another state and have to leave family and friends behind? Do you retrain for a completely different career that you can still live decently from? Do you complain in a bar with a bunch of your lawyer buddies until you decide that you will take some kind of action to lobby against the new regulations?

Also would actions like jan6, starting a border patrolling militia or targeting open-borders-supporting politicians qualify as 'having agency' for somebody complaining about economic stress from immigration?

On the other hand, I'd say forming a union definitely counts as having agency for (left-wing) workers who feel unfairly treated by their employers.

I raise my fees to cover the cost of the assistants. There's not even a competitive disadvantage to that since the laws apply to everyone.

Well in the hypothetical that was not an option. Whatever hypothetical progressive regulation also gives preferential treatment. For example law firms headed by women/diversity get preferential treatment in court over you, or their costs get partially subsidized by the government, making you less competitive.

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This is why people talk about luxury beliefs. AI can't do legal services at half your rate. New immigrants, especially illegals, can't either. You can be rest assured that your ability to sell legal services depends on a bar exam, many years of education, and a lot of overhead costs such as opening an office. It's not possible for someone to undercut you because he's willing to live in poverty, forcing you to live in poverty in order to compete.

I could say the same thing about any American, though. Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans, almost all of whom have jobs and live decent lives compared to people in say, Guatemala or Venezuela. We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.

A luxury belief is not a belief that someone should be harmed, or else "bank robbers should be jailed" would be a luxury belief. It's a belief that harms someone you supposedly care about while not harming yourself.

So that's not a luxury belief because your opponent doesn't care about Guatemalans (or claim that restricting immigration is good for them). If you explicitly are willing to say "I don't care whether immigration hurts blue collar workers", then supporting immigration wouldn't be a luxury belief for you, but themotte frowns on putting such words in people's mouths.

Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans

A luxury belief, according to its proponents, is an idea or opinion that confers status on the upper class at little cost, while often supposedly inflicting costs on the lower class, in their view.

Would restricting trade and immigration harm Guatemala or Venezuela? Don't the people of these countries suffer from all their capable people seeking higher wages in the US?

We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.

Adjusted for cost and quality of living? I've seen interesting discussions between born-in-Africa immigrants and African-Americans, and the natives made a good point that being born in a broken family and broken community makes hustling harder.

American businesses may have the highest wages for the lowest qualifications but they have also perfected the art of destroying the bodies and soul of a people.

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Alongside his personal history, Vance raises questions such as the responsibility of his family and people for their own misfortune. Vance blames hillbilly culture and its supposed encouragement of social rot.

In retrospect, it's wild to me that someone with a law degree from Yale and who worked as a tech VC with Peter Thiel got elected to the senate with that message. But yes, I'll grant you that one.

He did worse than Republicans in his state in general, if I remember correctly.

I'd also point to pro-police, anti-privacy, and anti-drug policy positions adopted by the political right. Really the entire Law and Order branch of right wing policies is totally antithetical to a politics that supposedly centers on personal agency.

Maybe a better way to rephrase is with the old line about racists: Not all Right wingers have an internal locus of control, but most people with an internal locus of control are right wingers?

I'm not a fan of the law-n-order branch, but it's not antithetical to personal agency at all. Do the crime, go to jail; it's your choice whether to do the crime.

It seems very incompatible with the idea that a right winger is high in personal efficacy to say that tax dollars need to be spent, and civil rights abrogated, in order to pay people to "protect" you from scary things.

The police exist as the enforcement arm of the state in order to hold up the state's half of the bargain in their monopoly on force.

We are making a deal with the state. We give up some things, most notably the right to use violence to enforce our will and of course our money in the form of taxes. In return the state acts as the "unincentivized incentivizer" to solve Molochian coordination problems and arbitrate disputes up to and including using force on our behalf to bring those disputes to a satisfactory close. The police are part of the terms of the contract, so to speak.

It is not a violation of one's autonomy to enter into a contract. Right wingers acknowledge that the state and its monopoly on violence is helpful and necessary (necessary in order to avoid the state of nature, the Hobbesian "war of all against all"), they aren't anarchists.

I think that difference in internal/external locus of control between the Left and Right is better thought of as a side effect of the difference between right and left wing thought, not the source of it. The primary philosophical disagreement from which all others flow is the Hobbes/Rousseau split, which is basically how you would answer, "if we stopped controlling everything and completely took our hands off the wheel, would things be good or bad?" or, "are people inherently good and learn to become evil, or inherently evil and learn to become good?" I think there are a fairly strong selection effects in that people with high personal agency tend to gravitate towards right wing politics, but it's not the cause.

We are happy to abolish the police and handle their functions ourselves, individually and as a group. The police are a peace treaty with the rest of you, who prefer to avoid the realities of that arrangement.

I disagree, I don't think this is an accurate description of what most right wingers believe. IMO Rightists tend to recognize the necessity/benefit of the Leviathan, so long as the state is fulfilling its half of the bargain. You're right that an average RW, high agency person is more likely to be capable of solving problems with violence, but I think they also tend to be more aware of the what the costs of doing so are (especially on a societal scale) and therefore are more likely to prefer the existence of the state/police.

IMO Rightists tend to recognize the necessity/benefit of the Leviathan, so long as the state is fulfilling its half of the bargain.

That's not the Leviathan. With the Leviathan, once you (or your forebears) have made the deal to surrender your sovereignty (whether voluntarily or at swordpoint), you're bound to it forever. Hobbes's second "OF THE RIGHTS OF SOVERAIGNES BY INSTITUTION" is "Soveraigne Power Cannot Be Forfeited".

Secondly, Because the Right of bearing the Person of them all, is given to him they make Soveraigne, by Covenant onely of one to another, and not of him to any of them; there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Soveraigne; and consequently none of his Subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his Subjection.

Full disclosure: I haven't read Hobbes, I just know the lingo, so I can't speak to what Leviathan actually says or not. So if you're trying to argue "what you mean is the state in general, not The Leviathan, that's something different" then I must decline to argue.

However, it seems obviously true that nobody is bound to a sovereign permanently and without recourse; history is replete with successful revolutions against governments.

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I don't actually disagree with your disagreement. My point is that the police don't exist to "protect right wingers from scary things". Right wingers can and will do that on their own. The police exist to provide that protection in a codified, formalized, legible, purportedly neutral fashion.

No, personal agency does not require anarchy. Personal agency is vitiated by insulating people from the consequences of their own actions, not by insulating them from the consequences of the actions of others.

Much of the core messaging on the right is explicitly 'anti-agency,'

As opposed to... the core pro-agency messaging of the left?

Obviously no one believes that individuals can act completely unconstrained by external factors. Whatever "pro-agency" ultimately means, it doesn't mean that.

I can see how you might construe the right's general fatalism regarding inequality as being anti-agency, but as has been painstakingly reiterated numerous times on this forum, HBD itself is policy-neutral. Recognizing the reality of genetic limitations is no different from recognizing gravity: it's a fact, and it doesn't care about your feelings, so you may as well get used to it. You're welcome to try to circumvent it anyway, and you might end up inventing the airplane in the process. But don't be shocked if you fail.

When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs?

I can't think of any explicit instances to cite right now (except maybe some old JBP "clean your room" lectures), but I'm certainly happy to say it for them: poor people from West Virginia have the power to improve their lives by relocating, retraining, and abstaining from drugs. If they don't/can't do those things then that's on them.

Republicans obviously aren't immune to blaming the outgroup for their woes, but they are still consistently more likely to endorse the bootstrap perspective. While not a politician, Oliver Anthony was widely feted by them as well as the rank and file. Relevant line from his song:

But God, if you're five foot three and you're three hundred pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

That's a pretty harsh way to talk about your ingroup, but they gobbled it up (so to speak).

you're addicted to fentanyl because of corrupt doctors and politicians in bed with Chinese companies flooding the country

Having just looked it up, I (a non-American) am surprised that needle exchange programs enjoy the level of support among Republicans that they do, but it's still almost twice as high among Democrats, and Republican states are far more likely to ban them. To be sure, this isn't a perfect proxy for embracing personal responsibility; it sets the bar below that. But the difference is still clear: Republicans are less likely to endorse policies that amount to buying people the opportunity to remain mired in their self-induced problems.

Taking a step back, you can believe in people's (qualified) agency without being a full-blown existentialist. All the conservative takes you list are accurate to some extent; if China stopped exporting fentanyl to the US, there would in fact be fewer addicts. It's a difference of degree.

When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs?

There's Cernovich, or Bronze Age Pervert, or dozens of smaller accounts. Maybe you're thinking of Ben Shapiro and Cadence Owens and Hanania types. Beyond them, there is an overwhelming surplus of righties telling kids to buckle up, lift weights, learn to cook, invest, mew, code, read, write, train, work, learn, mog. If you step outside academic credential and op-ed circles, it's hard to find right-wingers who aren't talking about such things.

Hanania's definitely pro-agency. On this particular topic, see him talking (well, until a paywall) about his becoming not fat due to willpower, and encouraging the same.

I can't think of any reasonable way to draw the lines which would lump Richard Hanania in with Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens. They're almost polar opposites.

There's Cernovich, or Bronze Age Pervert, or dozens of smaller accounts.

Fair enough, I confess to not reading BAP and I've never heard of Cernovich. I'm surprised you wouldn't mention Joe Rogan or JD Vance, but I know the phenotype you're referring to.

Maybe you're thinking of Ben Shapiro and Cadence Owens and Hanania types

Well, also the vast majority of the Trump administration, people like Steve Bannon, Alex Jones (I guess he hawks his supplements) and other conservative talk radio hosts, red coded media (fox news, OANN, Breitbart), most of the local commentariat, most any public figure on the right whose schtick isn't self-help/redpill/MGTOW style. You know the rhetoric I'm referring to, right?

Sure, Trump isn't telling people to lift weights. What generalization do you want to make? That makes all the difference. The GOP isn't running on a platform of gym access and diet subsidies. If that's what you mean, I agree with you. But there are plenty of influential right-wingers with millions of followers -- BAP, Cernovich, lots of the guys Rogan brings on -- who are talking about these things.

Hanania tells them to buckle up. But since Trump’s ascension in 2015 this has been the minority position.

I guess. He's not really telling people to lift weights or invest or make their lives better. I do think he would just tell cons to suck it up when policies he likes cause bad outcomes, instead of trying to change policy.

So... No elected Republicans, nobody who is part of mainstream conservative politics. Just to be clear.

Who defines "the core messaging of the right"? OP included "right-wing influencers". Those people are overwhelmingly discussing self-improvement. Politicians? Nobody is running on lifting weights and eating clean but there is absolutely a culture of "personal responsibility" and individual freedom. Whats's fair? Donald Trump isn't talking about it, but there are plenty of things that fairly characterize "the left" that Democratic politicians aren't running on either.

Who defines "the core messaging of the right"?

The core message of the Right could be defined as the message that is important to a majority (or perhaps a large fraction) of Americans who identify as Right of center or who vote for Right of Center politicians or support Right of center causes. Those people are the actual physical Right in real life. When describing what the Right is, rather than what we might like it to be, the description has to reflect the actual people who support the thing.

BAP, whose work I enjoy more than most here, has 143,800 twitter followers. Sean Hannity has 6,500,000. Tucker has 12,600,000. And it's fair to say that Twitter is a much more important playform to BAP than it is to Hannity or to Tucker! (For reference, Taylor Swift has some 95,000,000 and Lebron has 52,800,000) Ben Shapiro, who you brush aside casually, has 6,600,000. To point to a tiny portion of the Right as representative is like using /r/swoletariat (30k subs) as your standard for the left.

The Marxist left has its delusional fantasy of the movement as a vehicle for the proletariat, the working class straining against Capital; it can't cope with the reality that the socialist left in America is mostly a vehicle for stoned college students and those who never really graduated. The Right has its own fantasy of itself as the noble, bootstrapping, individualist heroes; and can't cope with the real life coalition that puts right wing politicians in power.

Here in Ohio, we elected J.D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy guy, to the Senate.

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