Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
I am actively attempting to deradicalize myself. I dislike puritanism and intolerance. DM me if you want my Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
User ID: 1719
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
So the argument isn't that he's doing any harm in the present, but that his decision to solicit children to produce his artwork, rather than adults, is a red flag. That makes sense.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I appreciate your response and aspire to your level of rationalism. I'd say I'm most interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument, though I wouldn't mind the other three.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
That makes sense. And if you place a higher value on protecting children than on not shaming adults for their behavior, then I can see why shaming Nolan would be seen as justified. If I understand you correctly, the steelman wouldn't be that he hurt anyone or was trying to, but that there needs to be an enforcement mechanism to disincentivize this behavior. Am I correct?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
We need to hire paid shills. Not to advertise this site, but to post on it. Maybe we can find some Correct the Record or JIDF alumni!
Nolan got kicked off the Pizza Party Podcast almost three years ago, so it's certainly "old news" at this point, but a comic someone made about the incident surfaced on my Twitter feed this weekend, as someone was using it to illustrate the concept of fetish mining to people who are unaware.
The first link is the original posting (AFAIK) of the comic. The second is what appeared on my feed. I'm including the second because the person's bio says "Transmale Aro Ace/ He-They", which is interesting given the circumstances.
I'm starting to lose track of grooming and why it's bad.
My understanding is that grooming is the act influencing kids to make decisions they're not prepared to make, with the implicit understanding that they technically won't make these decisions until they've reached the age of consent, even though they've already been acclimated to the concept for years prior. This is why some consider teaching kids about gender to be a form of grooming, and why an adult talking to a minor with no clear intent of romance is seen as potential grooming.
Commissioning an underage artist to draw a character wrapped in a spiderweb is so many steps removed from sex that, regardless of whether the commissioner gets off on it, I don't know why it's any worse than just talking to the child about cartoons. Nolan was openly talking to children on social media before he was #cancelled because most of the fans of the podcast were children. It only became a problem when he commissioned artwork for his niche fetish from them.
If anyone can provide a steelman against Nolan that isn't based on disgust, I'd be interested in hearing it.
(Also, I don't think grooming is a black or white thing, a "you did it or you didn't do it" thing. There's no clear line that makes something grooming or not grooming. Defining it by intent is pointless, because you can't prove intent, and defining it by outcome means that you can't identify grooming until it's come to pass. It's always a judgement call, unlike actual child molestation, which I'm sure we can all agree refers to engaging in a necessarily sexual act with a child.)
The Jedi cannot be a force for good, because in 2023 everyone knows that everyone with power is oppressive. You cannot have a government that isn’t secretly evil or broken by infighting because everyone knows that doesn’t happen
Those things are true, though. There is no such thing as pure uncomplicated good, only good enough.
What I liked about the prequel trilogy is that (even though Lucas stubbornly denies this) it portrays the Jedi as incredibly flawed, but still obviously better than the Sith. They take children from their families at as young an age as possible and forbid them from starting their own families so that they never form loyalty to anything above the Jedi order. The novelizations go even further in creating a sympathetic defense for the Sith, to the point that they're not obviously better than the Jedi until Order 66 happens.
I've always thought that a sequel trilogy should be about Luke starting his own Jedi order that is less oppressive than the original one, but running into the same problems that those harsh rules were created to solve. (Kids missing their families, questioning the Jedi ways, potentially creating new Anakins.) I haven't read the Harry Potter books, but based on what my friend has told me of them, the Wizarding World is similarly morally flawed, despite meaning well and being the good guys of their universe.
But back on topic: to me, the problem with our popular culture is the exact opposite of what you're describing. The issue isn't that people don't believe in pure, uncomplicated good. The issue is that believe it exists and that they represent it, while their enemies do not. This is why before JK Rowling became a "TERF", leftists would compare themselves to the Wizards and their political enemies to Voldemort. It's why they describe themselves as the Jedi, and their enemies as the Sith. It's why their definition of "fascist" always boils down to "cartoon supervillain who is obviously evil".
When a self-identified socialist disparages tankies, what they're saying is "I want to do exactly what the Soviet Union did, but it'll work this time, because we'll put a Snowball in charge instead of a Napoleon. We learned from our mistake and won't trust obviously evil people like Stalin, only obviously good people like Lenin or Trotsky."
I don't know if popular culture influences the way people see the world, reflects the way people see the world, or merely gives them a vocabulary to discuss their experiences. Regardless, I think we need more depictions of moral ambiguity, not less.
I'm with you on therapy culture, though.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
They didn't ban me for not being a leftist, bro. They banned me because of my significant personality problems that made me impossible for the management to deal with. They had a number of right-wingers there as of the last time I checked (which is admittedly over 3 years ago), and I hear the new admin is an anti-woke libertarian (so basically right-wing).
I just want to be challenged more.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I like this place, but I think it's gotten too right-dominated since the move from Reddit. I come here to be challenged by people to my left who are both smart and intellectually honest, a rare breed. The only other place where I could find them was the SSC Discord, and they permabanned me. (The adjacent servers also have a uniform rule to ban me if I ever talk politics.) So I'm stuck here regardless of my criticisms, but I wish it was leftier.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
They're removing people who support Israel for also wanting white people to have an Israel, or for acknowledging HBD. Support for Israel isn't the relevant trait.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
That they're in favor of Israel isn't the problem.
Also, I don't agree with the idea that human nature is infinitely malleable, and the desire to stand up for oneself against a constant torrent of hatred is a part of human nature. But the people in China have yet to overthrow their totalitarian government, so maybe I'm wrong.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
"Zionist" isn't the word you're looking for. Zionism is complementary to nationalism, especially ethnonationalism.
Anyway, giving white people no options other than self-loathing and extremism is going to lead to extremists.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I blame them, because their short-sightedness will come back to bite them just as much as it will everyone else.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Yeah, I made a mistake. What she apparently did was say she was going to wear it after the trial's conclusion.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Either The Post Millennial is providing a skewed version of events, or a defense attorney just defeated Andy Ngo's civil case against two of his attackers through blatant juror intimidation. I tend to assume the media takes things out of context, especially openly partisan media, but it's hard for me to believe that a lawyer wearing an "I am Antifa" t-shirt every day in court, rather than formal attire, is anything other than a breach of protocol. Maybe the "I will remember all your faces" line was taken out of context, and she was just talking about her photographic memory. Maybe the Post Millennial was exaggerating when they said that the arguments were all ad hominem attacks. Or maybe this really is as bad as it seems.
Regardless, I'm surprised that the Motte isn't talking about the case.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
That's arguably what happened to the Proud Boys, even though their nationalism was rainbow colored.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
"Historically". This ain't the 50's.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Anti-white racists (who aren't considered racist), yes. But do pro-white racists have a major impact?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
"He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in political science and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Afterwards, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2007 with a J.D., cum laude."
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
I appreciate you as a dissenting voice, but I genuinely believe Hanania's upcoming book is the most important conservative book of the last 20 years and possibly the most important American book of the past decade. I can't afford for him to lose status because I can't afford for this book not to be a smashing success.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
That's the hope.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Exactly. But that's not stuff he's believed in the past decade, and he's the only person arguing against them from a place of sympathy and understanding. To cancel him is to say that "fascists" can't change and/or that you don't want them to.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
Because he's deradicalizing us and giving us hope for a way out.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
He talks about how wokeness is in large part the result of government policy and Supreme Court decisions, and how we can fight to overturn these.
To my knowledge, Caldwell is the only other one, but he never got as popular.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
2yr ago
He's legitimately the only person who understands how to defeat wokeness. His career being terminated would be sad for him, but not an absolute disaster for the movement, so long as someone with a cleaner history is able to pick up his talking points and run with them.
But I fear that that won't happen. We've gone decades without mass opposition to Griggs or the other excesses of the Civil Rights Act forming. It could take decades for another influential figure like Hanania to pick up the torch. (Yes, I know about Caldwell, but he never reached the popularity of Hanania.)
Brilliant analogy. Thank you for your post. I'd aware a delta if we did that here.
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