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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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I'll offer a kind-of alternative hypothesis: wokeness exists to weaponize racial resentment against any group which defects in the approaching American economic crisis. The obvious drawback is the development of a high-ingroup-preference group identity in the targeted group, which explains why it was deployed against whites for field testing- you can rely on liberal and conservative whites to attack each other even if they're sharing a foxhole, rather than circle the wagons. Only time will tell if red tribe whites will develop a sufficient group identity to escape that trap and advocate for the ingroup.

I agree that trans qua trans is not the reason that the government promotes it so hard; I think in widespread civil conflict the pro-federal side will not care very much about some subset of its allies shooting transgenders out of hand, or otherwise learning from other cultures- such as Islamic ones- on the issue. But I don't think the conservative reaction is the point, unless it's some kind of 5d chess move to prevent ingroup orienting among conservative whites by getting them to argue about something else instead. I think trans is a distraction from deeper systemic issues.

It's true that a prolonged economic crisis leading to balkanization or pervasive civil strife is the main threat to the current world order; the USA is still #1, and Russia and China have demographic and economic issues preventing them from being true world hegemons, to say nothing of the problems faced by, like, India. But I think wokeness is intended as a weapon to be used against groups that are perceived as rebelling, not as a means of keeping them in line.

There is no approaching economic crisis. The USA is doing better than every single country in the world economically. Why do you say this like is is a default belief we should all accept. What proof do you have?

But I don't think the conservative reaction is the point

The government decided to redefine the social contract in a way that allows it to attack more and more people and institutions as "transphobic" in a way that is basically unavoidable. Because of the moralizing, it was able to do this shockingly fast and with relatively little pushback, even according to activists themselves.

I mean, that sounds enough like a conspiracy theory to me! Not sure why we need to posit some additional indirect play or benefit.