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100ProofTollBooth

Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.

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100ProofTollBooth


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 January 03 23:53:57 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is a very mid-wit argument that is as specious as it is ever present.


"Without the Left women and minorities wouldn't be able to vote!"


Nonsense. This is a view of history as inherently progressive; you have good guys and bad guys and all of the bad guys will eventually lose if we just Resist hard enough. It's the fever dream of sophomore PoliSci students and ACLU lawyers alike.


Segregation and black enfranchisement itself were very non-linear and more a product of reform and reactionary ebbs and flows. People often forget that we had a black senator from Mississippi in the 1970s for instance. And that link shows the plethora of other black elected official holders before 1900.


The failure of Reconstruction was that it was, in fact, so radical as to provoke a counter-reaction that may have been stronger than what would normally occur. You then get Jim Crow and the Solid South for another few generations.


But that doesn't fit into the neat narrative of "Slavery Awful --> Lincoln --> Emancipation --> Oh no, KKK! ---> Rosa Parks, MLK ---> 1964 --> We're equal now! --> Oh wait, George Floyd, let's pretend it's 1964 again"


Do a deep dive into the better conservative (small c) thinkers; James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall. You'll see that one of the tenants of conservative thought is that it's totally fine for people to think whatever they want so long as the political system cannot be co-opted by the Small But Loud to coerce the Many But Disinterested to abandon their beliefs - as "ugly" as they might be. Democracy is a process and a system - never an "outcome" generator.


From, The Conservative Affirmation by Kendall:




Is there anything in the Constitution or in the American political tradition that prevents American government or American society from announcing: We intend to proscribe such and such ‘political’ opinions; to that end we intend to persecute those opinions, that is, to place the price of holding them—not expressing them, but holding them—so high that people will be forced to avoid them or, if they have already adopted them, to abandon them?




I know that, of course, all of us enlightened folk, if we were living in Alabama in 1955, would've definitely been on the "right side of history" and bravely advocated for desegregation. I mean, like, how could you not?


Because you (in Alabama in 1955) didn't really have a passionate attachment to the issue. It was simply the way things are. You're mostly interested in paying your mortgage and raising your kids. But, all of a sudden, your kids' teachers start telling them about their inherited culpability for slavery and you go, "Hey, what the fuck?" and now ... you're involved.