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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But I do believe it's possible for people to change their minds, even if just in small ways. Then small mind changes lead to bigger ones.




It's happening, just centered around the local Overton window. I admit to having my mind changed on a number of issues, although most weeks this place is a parade of events that make the left look bad while events that paint Red tribe in a bad light are largely ignored. If you want to see the future of the Overton window, look at the two recent threads on natural selection and epistemology. They actually generated discussion and genuine disagreement in ways that posts about Trump, trans issues, gun rights, police violence, immigration etc. never do anymore.


Cthulhu swims ever farther right. I have to say, it is interesting to have watched it happen over my last five odd years here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That was their screwup.




If the foundation of your worldview is that liberal Jewish elites run the show/elections are just Kayfabe (insert your favorite variant here so we don't end up quibbling over your beliefs) and you work your way out from there, interpreting data as you go, I can guarantee that you'll find a lot of data that supports your worldview. Flat Earthers have long chains of logic where no individual link is completely bonkers, but it's built on a rotten foundation.


From my perspective, Hillary Clinton was a fairly strong candidate who was done dirty by a combination of conservative media (proto-Qanon cheese pizza/adrenochrome/comet ping pong beliefs? Collapsing like a sack of meat showing that she was on death's door?), email server bullshit, bad feelings around the Bernie Sanders saga (were the Kochs involved???) and genuine dissatisfaction amongst working class whites towards the system and elites. With this framing, conservative media isn't so worthless after all.


There's this odd dichotomy in Conservative circles; Trump will rant about how the media hates him and he's the underdog, then turn around and brag about how Fox News is the most watched channel while CNN and the failing New York Times are hemorrhaging viewers because the General Public is on our side and hate being lectured about trannies. Dan Crenshaw is some Alpha Male soldier bro who releases ads of him obliterating the libs, but everyone in DC is a feckless RINO who drops their trousers and bends over anytime the White House comes knocking for more funding. The libs are a bunch of soyboy faggot snowflakes who REEEEEE at our dank memes, but they're also shadowy elites pulling the strings in Davos that we're on a righteous crusade against.




Just because they screwed up doesn't mean they don't have power. (And of course the Supreme Court and abortion are downstream of that mistake.)




Just because they have power, doesn't mean they're omnipotent or even (apparently) that they get what they want most of the time. Furthermore, blaming shadowy elites for all your problems is usually (1) cope and (2) easier to confront than the fact that tens of millions of your countrypeople genuinely believe what they say they believe and they aren't just being manipulated by the media or George Soros or whatever else you want.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Consider instead that they don't arrest him with the information they have. Six months later, he blows himself up in a mall and takes a dozen people with him. Headlines scream: 'Mall Jihadist on FBI radar and they did NOTHING,' whichever political party not in control of congress spins up an investigation and media frenzy to score points in the next election, people hate the FBI anyways.


It's easy to just say the spooks are doing shady things again, but probably harder and more valuable to think about the systemic incentives we've given them to behave that way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Capitalism as a source of problems, perhaps, rather than an unalloyed good? There's likely a difference between textbook definitions in the communist manifesto or the little red book and the way people use these terms colloquially. If you want the former, I'm not your guy. I read both a decade and a half ago and that was about the extent of my interest. Reading Hayek now, it's interesting to see how much the meaning of the term 'liberal' has shifted in the last 70 years. Gives me a better understanding of the gap between the way my generation uses these words and the way I expect some of the older posters here think.


To turn the question on it's head - if I supported free markets, welfare and socialized medicine, am I a communist? It's advantageous for the right to say so because communism calls to mind Soviet Russia, gulags, starvation, stasi, etc. But I'd argue there's a very material difference between Canada and the USSR, and only the latter would widely be regarded as 'retarded.' I'd agree that many intellectuals on the left fetishize Canada (if Trump wins a second term, this time we're definitely moving meme), but the number who'd want to live in a USSR-style communist hellscape is much lower.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Since you have been asking questions and asking if it is fair for progressives to be calling others as white nationalists, let me ask my question in the same manner.




Brother, you can ask me all the questions you want. Generally I don't volunteer my opinions that often as they rub people the wrong way, but if you're polite I'll probably answer anything.




Do you think that progressives who have massive double standards and might in fact support making minorities or even the extinction of white people, are not racist? Couldn't such agenda be accurately labeled as anti-white racist supremacy?




I don't believe that progressives are calling for white genocide. You can probably find some people on twitter making jokes about how they hope all white people die in a fire, which I frown upon, but I don't think it's the same thing. Assuming you mean something along the lines of demographic trends and immigration meaning that white people will be a minority in America at some point this century, I don't believe it's an explicit agenda a la Great Replacement Theory. I agree that some people would cheer at those trends which I also find distasteful.


The phrase 'anti-white racist supremacy' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But sure, if you come up with some other negative term to describe people cheering on white people dying or being outbred then I would likely agree with using said term.




Is someone who either supports or tolerates the existence hateful identitarian organizations, and mainstream organizations that promote the same agenda and large double standards and stigmatizes whites in particular, not in fact nationalist to an extreme degree for various progressive identity groups




No, I don't think they are 'Black nationalist' in a meaningful way. As far as I'm aware, the vast majority are not advocating for an exclusive 'Black America' based on race, they are advocating for equality of outcomes in (what they see as) a biased system. I also would dispute the language you use to describe them, although without examples (beyond the ADL) it's difficult for me to say.


But yes, I would denounce someone who supported the black equivalent of the KKK or stormfront.




Absolutely not. I think progressives calling others white nationalists as pejorative towards any legitimate white ethnic identity should be treated as an example of them engaging in extremist racism and this behavior ought not be tolerated. It is an uncharitable conduct that stigmatizes white ethnic groups in particular and their advocates.




The word 'faggot' was a pejorative for a long time, until it was reclaimed. Whether progressives consider it a pejorative is orthogonal to the actual definition of the word and whether you think it accurately describes the worldview you're describing. If you think 'white nationalism' doesn't accurately describe your views, then what view would constitute white nationalism and what would you call your views instead? But I assume you do agree with the accuracy and just object to the fact that most people think white nationalism is a bad thing based on:




If the term is used in sufficient number in a non charged and abusive context, then it might become more legitimate. But it is bad conduct to be used in this manner.




I had always been skeptical when progressives called conservatives and the MAGA crowd white nationalists, but here you are, espousing views that I think broad, bipartisan swathes of America would call white nationalist. I suspect that the vast majority of American conservatives disagree with your worldview, and in the old place, when this topic was discussed, the defense was invariably that 'no, conservatives don't actually believe those things.'




This framing of white nationalism can justify destroying all european countries/people. So if someone opposes it and think their people shouldn't go extinct and shouldn't become a minority in their own homeland they are just called a white nationalist under an one sided culture of critique.




I disagree with the base assumptions of this statement on multiple levels, as well as most of the rest of your post, but this is already getting too long for both of us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for taking the time to explain.




It is both moderate and right wing to think that white people have legitimate ethnic communities too. But in terms of identification, it tends to attract people who identify more as right wingers in certain countries. But is in fact the moderate position.




What, concretely, do you mean when you say white people have legitimate ethnic communities? As in, there are physical communities in the USA that should be able to exclude non-whites? Or even non-physical communities/cultural...events, or what-have-you that are necessarily white rather than race-blind mainstream American?


To lay some cards on the table, what you're arguing seems to be that most conservatives are some flavor of white nationalist. I assume at the mild end of the spectrum you describe, this is less blood and soil rhetoric and more 'it's okay that my tabletop game club is made up entirely of white men' or 'the president should be white as the USA is a majoritarian white country.'




While to oppose nationalism only for white people should count as the extreme far left. No matter how many people who identify with this want to frame their perspective as moderation.




I just don't think it is true that progressives or liberals oppose nationalism specifically for white people. Japan may be a fargroup for progressives in the US and as such doesn't receive much attention, but I've certainly heard people express discomfort at their attitude towards foreigners/non-Japanese and a national identity built on race. Any kind of nationalism built on race makes progressives and liberals deeply uncomfortable.


Furthermore, I don't believe that conservatives writ large support carveouts and national-identity/community building based on race. Perhaps I'm typical minding, perhaps my mental model is wrong and you're right - I'd honestly encourage you to tighten up your argument to something more concise and write a top-level post to see what people think so we can get more data.


If most conservatives do explicitly believe in nation and community building based on race, would you agree with progressives that call them white nationalists? And your argument is simply that being a white nationalist isn't a bad thing, because to you progressives are black/asian/hispanic nationalists?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I wouldn't say you aren't a liberal on ethnicity however. My impression is that you seem to oppose ethnic identifications and communities identifying with their group and interests and pursuing them, but oppose the liberal tribe for supporting it. So you are more consistent than them on that, but still take an ideologically more left wing perspective.




If I understand you correctly, your claim is that:


    

  1. Progressives support 'ethnic identifications and communities identifying with their group and interests and pursuing them.' I assume, specifically minorities.
    2. 

  2. Liberals oppose 'ethnic identifications and communities identifying with their group and interests and pursuing them'
    3. 

  3. Inferring from the fact that you don't think FC is 'right-wing' on this issue but rather liberal, true conservatives/'right-wing' people also support 'ethnic identifications and communities identifying with their group and interests and pursuing them.' I assume for white people?
    4. 



Is this accurate, or would you like to correct my interpretation?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.




I wouldn't say the West is minding it's own business - there seems to be a tit for tat in terms of proxies, espionage, fraud, hacking, etc. I would say that I've seen no evidence of attempts on Putin's life nor anything that could remotely be construed as NATO showing any interest in invading Russia or violating Russian territorial integrity. Would you disagree with that?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The main argument against repealing the Civil Rights Act is that if people have the option to discriminate against racial minorities in jobs, housing, and school admissions, they will do so.




What is the main argument in favor of repealing the Civil Rights Act?




In order to know if this is true, we would need to look at a country that has a similar racial mix to America, but no anti-discrimination laws, then compare the life outcomes of Africans or other historically oppressed groups in America to their life outcomes in that country.




I can guarantee you the general population has absolutely zero interest in this fact. Maybe it would help you win some arguments on the internet. That's likely why this isn't a priority for Libertarian think tanks, and if it is, is probably symptomatic of their general ineffectiveness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A recent study demonstrated that getting vaccine boosters is correlated with Long Covid.




Can you cite the study you're referencing?


I won't pretend to be anywhere close to up-to-date on COVID literature, but the top pubmed result was this review:




the odds ratio of developing long covid with one dose of vaccine ranged from 0.22 to 1.03; with two doses, odds ratios were 0.25-1; with three doses, 0.16; and with any dose, 0.48-1.01...The high heterogeneity between studies precluded any meaningful meta-analysis.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or still playing the bit, but if the latter you've pushed it far enough that I'm officially confused.


The system is fine; much as there are changes I'd like to make, I'm not so naive to think that they'd genuinely solve our problems. A large enough group of people acting in bad faith will tank any political system you try to build.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The system isnt failing the people, the people are failing the system.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He claims that even if we can't tell there's objective good, most people aren't willing to bite the bullet and will call the Nazis, or Japan's rape of Nanking, or other horror stories objectively evil. From there, even if we can't necessarily agree on what's good, we at least have an idea of what not to do.




The Nazis and invading Japanese would likely strenuously agree with you that objective good exists, and furthermore, that their actions are objectively good. Pushing ethical relativism to the point that you're reserving judgment on genocide is a recipe for disaster, but having such conviction in the objective righteousness of your cause that you're willing to commit atrocities in the name of the greater good is just the mirror image failure mode. See the people in this thread ranting about our Great Enemy - do you think that attitude is any more conducive to a thriving society than the people they loathe?


Planting a flag wholly in the objectivist or relativist camps is fraught for different reasons, in my opinion. Perhaps planting a flag wholly in any camp is fraught, and everything in moderation (except for moderation) remains the wisest course.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hardly. YIMBYism is gaining steam and as doglatine points out, it sure seems like the pendulum is swinging back towards law and order among the left. Perhaps there's a lack of self-awareness in failing to say 'wait a minute, wasn't there a group of people telling us 20 years ago that restricting housing supply/being lax on crime was a bad idea?'


But the question in my mind is, what does updating look like to you? There are no more leftists as we come to Jesus and everyone updates to your narrow slice of the overton window? Do we just set up a new political spectrum shifted far to the right? Or do we update by discarding failed policies while keeping the gestalt intact?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte: A Working Glossary
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And who can forget the dogpill?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not certain how popular it is, but I've seen it come up in a few contexts in the circles I travel in. People around here will cite obscure Larry Niven books fairly frequently ('On the gripping hand'...thankfully the much more crass 'Rape my lizard!' from the same novel never caught on), so I thought there were decent odds that Beggars in Spain was also well known. Particularly given the themes of transhumanism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Indeed. As far as I can tell, that makes him exceedingly qualified to run for president.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trump was indicted in New York for business record falsification, Florida for the documents case and DC/Georgia for election interference, denial, conspiracy, whatever. Replace those with whatever words you like so we don't have to haggle over how to describe those indictments.


Trump was impeached by the house, but not the senate, for the Ukraine dealings. Setting aside the absurd way zeke is describing those events (the burisma investigation was reportedly dormant at the time, there were compelling reasons to push for the ouster of the prosecutor completely unrelated to Burisma, everyone who testified to the senate claimed there was no connection between the Bidens nor was Joe influenced by his son's business interests - all this despite the best efforts of a Republican controlled investigation), do you agree that Trump was not indicted for those reasons?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He discusses the calls on Hockey Night in Canada Broadcasts as though they were the definitive icons of the game, even if the game involved two American teams.




They were though. Don Cherry is a legend and the announcers were an order of magnitude better than any of the American ones who knew (and still to this day know) absolutely nothing about hockey. Like, lacking basic terminology about the game and substituting generic folksy expressions for their ignorant viewers. Then there was the FoxTrax glow puck debacle, because American sports fans were apparently incapable of keeping up with a game that wasn't 75% advertisements and breaks in play a la NFL/MLB.


Anyways, then Hockey Night in Canada they sold the trademark music to RDS and Don Cherry's dementia progressed to a point where Ron Mclean couldn't drag him through the weekly programs. RIP.




I hope Canadian teams lose and lose early for every year here on out because the Canadian media deserves it. I'd like to talk about how Canadian hockey fans suck and most Americans parrot the same bullshit because they assume the Canadians know better, but that's a rant for another day.




This is the year. McJesus is bringing Lord Stanley's cup home.


But yeah, fuck the Leafs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Didn't he point out that the issue of AIDS and other STDs is already preventable?




He never mentioned other STDs




If he hates them, it seems to stem from the lack of precautions they are taking, rather than them being gay.




The idea that he decides which demographics to hate based on whether they avoid preventable diseases or not is laughable


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This, right here, is exactly the thing I was talking about.




Ah. Was I 'gaslighting you while celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?' Slamming the Overton window leftwards on you? Or something else you edited out of your post?


I don't think my post was particularly celebratory, nor do I think I made any comment on the object level issues you raised in your post. But whatever, the one leftish leaning person who bothered to reply to your post managed to perfectly demonstrate all the problems you were complaining about. Bravo.




My friend is feeding his new daughter on the free expired baby food he gets from his grocery store job, while this instagram play-farmer writes grants for more money than he makes in a year.




Alright. Forget about the black person who got taxpayer money for a moment (we can go back to it later if you like). Imagine that I'm an actual human being and I want to help your friend and people like them - what should I do? What set of policies do you think would be most helpful to your friend? Was he significantly better off when he was stocking shelves five or ten years ago? And do you think grocery store workers had it better in 1990, 2005, or 2020ish?




I don't believe your motivation for engaging is to discuss the culture war. I think you're waging it by manipulating people into passive acceptance.




Hello, pot. Kettle here. You're black.


But then, give me some advice. How could I reply to your post in a way that wouldn't be 1) denying these are problems or 2) manipulating people into passive acceptance, short of agreeing with you on every point and accepting that leftists are evil? I'd invite you to sketch out a very brief outline of what such a post might look like such that you think you could have a productive conversation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw?
Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?




Are you suggesting that the existence of Ukraine is an abstract geopolitical goal of NATO? The fighting today may center around the east, but the Russian invasion was clearly aimed at decapitating the Ukrainian regime and either installing a puppet government or annexing it outright. If the Ukrainian army crumbles, is there any doubt that Russia would roll into Kyiv and Ukraine would functionally stop existing as an independent nation?


Since you seem concerned about the right to self-determination of Ukrainians, let me ask you which course of action better serves that goal - arming them so they can defend themselves, or paternalistically telling them 'Sorry, we've all decided your cause is hopeless, now you have to take peace on whatever terms you can get it. Good luck!' People below have argued that Boris Johnson (and presumably the US was on the same page at the time) sabotaged early peace talks - I'd agree with them that this was bad, and Ukraine should be able to choose for themselves - but others have linked polls showing strong support among the Ukrainian public for the war.


As for your language about Ukrainians just being our hapless puppets that we carelessly throw into the meatgrinder, I feel like you've fallen for Putin's narrative. The west has a propensity to believe that they are the only actors on the world stage with any kind of agency; see the oceans of ink spilled about how the west is solely responsible for every conflict and humanitarian crisis in the past 100 years whether they've been directly involved or not. The one actor responsible for this war is Putin, and all the kvetching about NATO expansion and Euromaidan elides the fact that Putin singlehandedly launched an expansionary war of aggression to conquer territory, massage his ego and restore the glory of the Russian empire. Putin was under no personal threat from the west, nor was Russia.


Lastly, for those complaining about the atrophied defense production capacity of the west and shipping money off to Ukraine: two thirds of the 60 billion is earmarked to be spent with American defense manufacturers. If your goal is increasing defense manufacturing capacity in the west, how would you do it if not spending money on domestic defense manufacturing?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We'll see. Cell culture media isn't cheap though. For the time being, I suggest exercising a lot of skepticism about what the financial inputs for lab-grown tissue are if someone claims that it's actually quite cheap.




If you buy the individual components and formulate you own media, it's some like 1-2OOMs cheaper than what they sell you commercially. I looked into this awhile ago.


You run into problems (currently) with growth factors like IGF/FGF which is where the 50$ burgers come from. From what I've read in the literature though, fermentation of these would scale well once the demand is there and we could make them very cheaply in bioreactors. What I haven't seen a solution for yet is (surprisingly, to me at least) Albumin which increases the yields very significantly but seems to be hard to produce at scale. I'm curious whether people can break down the various functions of albumin into separate, easy to ferment at scale proteins or whether we need to find better production methods there as well. At least that's what I've been able to glean without having an insider's perspective into the industry.


More broadly, keeping the government out of many of these industries does seem ideal. At the same time, our car companies are about to get fucked by subsidized Chinese EVs (and, to be fair, often flat out superior products) without government intervention. America's rise to power in the late 19th and 20th centuries was hugely influenced by oil; if solar panels do indeed end up being 'the next oil,' well, Chinese government intervention has given them a near monopoly there too. In essence, they learned the lessons of the tech industry on a national scale - absorbing losses for a few years/decades is fine if you end up with a monopoly. It's not clear to me that we can compete without doing the same. Perhaps the winning move is subsidizing some of these growth factors for a few years and giving out some grants for replacing albumin and seeing if we can build some American (or Western/'friendshored') companies that can dominate the space.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?




Indeed; the automaton peasants (who lack agency) of Ukraine were told by their CIA handlers (who have agency) to riot and oust the hapless Yanukovych (who lacks agency) and was replaced by American puppet Zelensky (who has agency and should use it to sue for peace). This led noble leader Putin (who lacks agency; anyone in his shoes would do the same) to regretfully declare war.




"Presidents come and go but the policies remain the same." - Vladimir Putin




Makes sense. As you say, they're beset by the same scenario and conditions. Anyone in their shoes would do the same.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Anarchonomicon REAL Banned Book List
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


REAL Banned Books are decades out of print with publishers who refuse to rerelease them despite used copies going for hundreds of dollars due to pent-up demand.




The null hypothesis is that very few people care about these books, not that there's a government conspiracy to stop you from reading dangerous ideas and tend to their happy flock of sheeple. The fact that someone is willing to spend 200$ on a rare book does not mean that the market will bear the printing of tens of thousands of new copies of said book.


I can find a bunch of books that fit your methodology, but unfortunately didn't make your list; do you think Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story being out of print means that TPTB are terrified you'll start rioting if you read about the sex lives of teenagers in the 80s? Birds of Britain has some pretty women I guess. Maybe if you read Promise me tomorrow you'd think poorly of Nora Roberts, and we can't have that. Here's a couple dozen more you can add.




Then of course there’s Nabarkov’s Lolita (1955)… Which yes, is a Barnes and Noble “Banned book” but 1) It is actually banned in several countries and 2) It will still make you squirm, its the story of a man sexually abusing an underaged girl told in 1st person, it has been on my to-read list forever, ever since Christopher Hitchen’s praised its black humor in an essay I read years ago, but I’ve yet to get around to it.




Not to pile on other people saying the same thing, but I literally borrowed this from my library a year ago for a book club a decade ago. You aren't missing much.




Yet, I don’t know about you, but the Siren song of forbidden knowledge is too much to resist. I dug through too many dusty rare book libraries looking for lost or evil works…




I'm genuinely curious - broadly speaking, what do you think you've learned? If you were trying to sell me on your favorite book or two from your list, what would they be and what do you think I'd gain from reading them?