JTarrou
2d ago
I'm just describing it. The ideology will not exhaust itself, but find ever weirder and more unpalatable things to force the country to deal with. It's part of the religion. Find or invent some tiny minority of badly-behaved people, sacralize them and accuse the mass population of conspiring against them. Then unleash this group on the population and accuse anyone who complains of deep and unjustified hatred of anyone who isn't straight white men. This will continue to happen for the rest of our lives, and probably our children's children's lives. It will potentially end in the civil wars of empire that destroy the last vestiges of "Democracy"(oligarchy) and with it the unelected bureaucracy hiding inside it. Whether the future emperor keeps the religion (and the class) or replaces it is in his hands, not mine.
It's not that the state is a church. It's that the class of people who staff the bureaucracy have a deracinated protestant heresy which they have entrenched in the university system which serves as the great filter for the middle and upper classes. They (in a very complicated and messy and unorganized manner over several generations) then declared the traditional concept of meritocracy against the Constitution and replaced it with what X might call "gay race communism", the true religion of the capitalist managerial class. Forever decrying the system they are parasitized on, and the populations they rule. It is only by this "eternal revolution" that they can maintain the class solidarity needed to rule the empire. Everything old must be destroyed forever so that each generation can in turn be divided and ruled along lines of class or race or religion or sexuality. Hilariously, the religion essentially exists as a critique of itself. It calls for the constant abolition of the economy that sustains it, the nationalism that empowers it and the social order that submits to their bureaucratic will.
Just as in the old days, this church controls the official Science, all official education, its monasteries and charitable organizations serve as conduits for political power and influence. And just as with any state religion, the personal and class interests of the adherents inevitably influence some amount of their doctrines. The amorphous nature of the ideology is sort of the point, it can change on a dime when political winds change. You can always revolt against the revolutionaries from twenty years ago.
JTarrou
5d ago
Back in the seventies there was a series of "Death Wish" style vigilante movies that served as a B-movie critique of the dominant liberal legal order and its criminal consequences. No doubt something will serve that role in our current reprise of that history. Not sure it will all be movies, that seems a dead medium to me, but the ability to get it banned suggests otherwise.
JTarrou
6d ago
Deranged internet leftists have never been able to stampede major institutions into implementing their demands? It's all online screeching until the DOJ mandates the screeching.
So yeah, I'm gonna stay in the pocket on this one too.
JTarrou
6d ago
The steelman is that a 30-yo man having a normal, consensual relationship with a legal adult female age 24 is something that currently can fall under "pedophilia" in the national discourse. The issue isn't that "real" pedophilia has some redeeming quality (it doesn't), it's that because of that very evil, we will never be able to define it narrowly enough to stay pure evil. People will always be looking to smear that taint onto stuff that isn't quite, or even close to pedophilia.
And anyone who argues the minutia (e.g. "ephebophilia") just gets bulldozed as "pro-pedo".
If you don't know why, it's probably old and complicated and involves real national interest, which is why you don't know about it.
So, for instance, as to why we "have" to sell Israel weapons, it's because that was part of the deal Carter brokered for peace between Egypt and Israel, a peace that has lasted nearly fifty years now. We also "have" to sell Egypt like 80% of what we sell Israel. That's the deal, from the Realpolitik '70s. Egypt leaves the Soviet Union as main sponsor, Israel leaves France as main military sponsor, and they buy American and agree not to use the US guns on each other.
So, we don't have to do shit. We can withold weapons from the Israelis, but that scotches the peace deal with Egypt which puts the Suez in play (and so on down the line of international consequences). Also, the weapons we provide tend to be the most targeted and high-tech. The Israelis make much of their own hardware, and are plenty rich enough to get reasonable options from elsewhere except for our best stuff. The idea that the US military hardware is the only thing between Israel and defeat is ridiculous and ahistorical. US military hardware is what stands between the Palestinians and an Israel that doesn't have Patriot missiles, but can build their own artillery. Not sure that's better for anyone.
Which is why we keep voting to do it.
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