ArjinFerman

Tinfoil Gigachad

2 followers follows 4 users joined 2022 September 05 16:31:45 UTC

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User ID: 626

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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 2hr ago

I can imagine "ambient cultural softness". I gave two examples above, I can probably come up with more if I had to. A vegan group house that eschews violence and practices non-violent communication is soft.

Ok, then I guess it's an argument over definitions? If so, these are kind of fruitless. You can argue that your definition of ambient cultural softness is useless for the purpose of predicting what will happen to a nation / group, but that does nothing to argue against the definition of people you're disagreeing with.

The Papal Enclave is soft. (...) The Pope has bodyguards with rifles, who are willing to use violence so he can keep his hands clean.

I don't know if you could have picked a worse example. Even in today's secular era, you'd still probably find literal millions of people who'd voluntarily take (and for that matter "give") a bullet for the pope. The Swiss Guard are hardly a central example of soldiers of fortune or rent-a-cops, either.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 3hr ago

I do not agree that there is anything usefully described as "ambient cultural softness",

That seems to be the core of the issue, then. You can't have a meaningful debate about a specific thing being caused by "ambient cultural softness", if you think the very concept is incoherent.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 3hr ago

Rome's military decline tracked with its institutional decay, loyalty structures, economic capacity to maintain professional armies, and political dysfunction, not with some ambient cultural "softness" that sapped the virtue of Roman men.

Ok, hold up. If there is such a thing as ambient cultural softness, that can be applied to entire societies, then surely being unable to recruit your defense from your own people is as close to a definition as we can probably get.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad 3hr ago

And if decadence and "good times" was so bad, then like you point out, why do nations like North Korea continue to suck so much while the US has such untouchable supreme power?

You could ask these sort of questions about Rome, and every other empire, right up until the point of it's collapse. The one about democracy could be, and was, asked in reverse right up until the 20th century.

Unless you're actively saying America is not in decline, and will not collapse if it stays on it's current trajectory, you're not even addressing the issue with these questions.