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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Winning” the supernaturalism discussion is one of the philosophically/scientifically unfalsifiable questions on both sides, and to progress beyond strawmen, both sides must grudgingly acknowledge it.


The anti-supernaturalist can point to any time a miracle or magic seems to have occurred, and say it can be attributed to delusion, improbable coincidence, as-yet unexplained natural phenomena, or trickery. Fire, lightning, planetary motion, cellular biology, pulling the Queen of Hearts from a deck of cards on the first try, the hand in His side by Thomas, a narrative vision of the four future world empires beheld by Daniel, and a single yellow rose in a flowerbed comforting a woman who lost her Texan mother in a car accident years ago; nothing is undoubtable. Even being able to reliably summon a visible, tangible demon through ritual could be explained away as completely naturalistic, given a clever enough arguer.


The supernaturalist can look at any miracle of science or coincidence and say how marvelous are His ways, how complex His plans, how infinitely intelligent He must be to set things up so that moment or phenomenon can have occurred just so in order that someone might become more aware of the glory of God, His righteousness, His forgiveness, and so on. The supernaturalist can also always find another example of the unexplained or the absurdly improbable and call it evidence (or, as a bailey, “proof) of the supernatural.


So we find ourselves once more weighing Pascal’s Wager against the Cosmic Ogre, the Pink Unicorn, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and asking not “which is more probable” but “whose explainers do I believe are credible, knowing all that I do about human self-delusion and motivated reasoning”. We will always be able to find evidence for a conclusion we’ve already reached.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Some time during my initial philosophic/theological foray into what I now call Triessentialism, I encountered the idea of the anti-Trinity:


    

  • 

    Where the Father is ultimate power and causal impetus, the atheist universe can only have endless void and the inexorable flow of all usable energy over time into its maw.
    

    • 

  • 

    Where the Son is ultimate logic and infinite planning, the atheist universe can only have coincidences piling up through combinatorics over uncountable stretches of time to generate the unlikely human thinker.
    

    • 

  • 

    Where the Spirit is ultimate purpose and strong love, the atheist universe can only have cosmic purposelessness and apathy for those who abuse free will for their own reasons.
    

    • 



Were we to find “Copyright 4004 BC Jesus Christ” encoded in English or Hebrew in the DNA of nerve proteins, there would be someone explaining how it’s a total coincidence, an artifact of decoding and combinatorics. Were scientists able to summon a tangible demon (who can throw lightning bolts and use telekinesis) reliably through ritual, there would be someone explaining it as a purely naturalistic phenomenon, citing Arthur C. Clarke.


Baileys abound in cosmological discussions, and mottes are few and far between. Thank you for helping us keep our epistemologies tidy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, I believe because I’ve experienced God’s love when I was at my most doubtful, because I received His revelations of philosophy at my most confused, and because I received His healing in the most unexpected ways when I was at my lowest. But to you that’s anecdotes, not evidence.


I also believe that there’s a Heaven and a Hell just on the other side of death, that there’s enough forensic historical evidence to show a coherent picture of a young Earth created by the Hebrews’ God, and that Jesus’ forgiveness and baptism in water and the Spirit have a miraculous, transformative effect on the human animal.


Unlike Puddleglum the marshwiggle, I’d rather be right than happy. Like Thomas the skeptic, I trust Him who surprised me with more evidence than I asked for, and joy besides.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Jewish communists and Jewish fascists




…Jewish libertarians, Jewish Objectivists, Jewish capitalists, Jewish socialists, Jewish eugenicists, Jewish Muslims, Jewish Christians, Jewish atheists, Jewish Ukrainian Nazis, Jewish CEOs, Jewish actors, Jewish news editors, Jewish bloggers, Jewish poor people on welfare, Jewish homeless drug addicts.


Jews are so fully integrated into mainstream culture in every respect that they’re in every profession, creed, and political group. To assign any collectiveness to Jews as a whole at this point is as fallacious as making the same list with Irish-descended or German-descended people. That’s my answer to “the Jewish Question.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Categories are imperfect, sure. But what’s being defended by most people against the “trans agenda” is the idea that physical intersexual bodies are a statistical anomaly so small as to be bordering on anecdotal, and that gender dysphoria is a rare mental disorder resulting in a delusion, not an oppressed minority identity deserving of protection.


It follows from that perspective that altering gendered language in laws, issuing puberty blockers and sterilizing children, teaching children about gender identity in socially contagious ways, and issuing punishments for calling a male body in a dress “him” are absurd, cruel, malicious, and tyrannical, and evidence of a malign undercurrent trying to force those with eyes to deny what they can clearly see.


For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that it became politically relevant that of all the decimal numbers starting with 2, only 2.0 + 2.0 exactly add up to 4.0. Academics start discussing how the vast percentage of numbers which are approximately 2 do not precisely add up to 4. News shows start discussing the “2.3 paradox” nightly, and calling people who focus on 2.25 and below “anti-mathematical”. “Even 2.2 added to 2.45 makes 4.65 which anyone can clearly see is 2/3 of the way to 5,” says one top pundit, carefully reading from a TelePrompTer to avoid misspeaking. New math books are issued to younger school grades to ensure that five-year-old children never again blithely and ignorantly claim that 2+2=4. Pretty soon it’s accepted fact among news-watchers that only the small minority of numbers starting with 2 add up to 4 at all, and anyone who says “2+2=4 is common sense math, obviously true” is to be shunned and possibly fired.


“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended.” - Orwell, 1984


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Woke” is about intersectionality or power-critical narratives or character arcs, usually pedantically or with a lecturing tone, not just progressive / feminist heroic viewpoints. Brave was about a Scottish princess beloved by her kingdom and family who used her existing but unrealized privilege to make choices in her romantic life; that’s standard modernist feminism.


Moana, on the other hand, was marketed as woke: “here’s a brave, strong Brown woman, isn’t she brave and strong for being Brown and a woman?” I didn’t see it until it hit the second-run theater for that reason alone; when I did, I was surprised it was just a fun, well-made, coming-of-age Disney film. She saw a problem, had an adventure, fixed the problem, and was rewarded for her leadership with more leadership. Sure, she had no romantic co-star, but that’s not woke, just feminist. It had a flamboyant-coded treasure-grubbing giant crab, which edged into wokeness, but it was a minuscule part of the film, and it fit the story. Again, modernist progressive, not woke.


Lightyear was woke because it was power-critical: the white man protagonist was constantly wrong, not heroic, throughout the film. At the end, his heroism consisted of being an ally to the family he accidentally helped, against Zurg, another white man who wanted to turn back the clock to when things were good for him and hide his mistakes from the people who determine his societal status. Postmodern “power was wrong” narrative plus fecund Black lesbian equals the triumph of queer family over the success of a highly privileged white man’s career ambitions




“It’s not a small or throwaway part of the movie. The climax hinges on Buzz deciding Alisha meeting her wife is more important than his primary objective for the entire movie, the lost years of his life, any possible better alternative path. He sacrifices everything for their love story and for the multi-generational positive impact of their love story. I was gobsmacked at how hard it swings not just for gay people being tolerable in “family-friendly” settings, but for gay people creating amazing families themselves.” - Autostraddle article




The article then goes on to point out how Pixar’s meta-narrative made queer acceptance itself travel back in time to make the Toy Story universe retroactively gayer, and thus better, then ours. Lightyear is woke, it’s a political point masquerading as a story, and it’s not satisfying entertainment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I suppose the overhyped Spiderman is of the same mold, given his creator's stated beliefs




Brian Michael Bendis is a real piece of work. He’s hated among the Marvel and DC fandoms for being the anti-Stan Lee, reinventing classic characters to new motivations and messages drawn from the bleeding edge of the Culture War.


Bendis did some compelling true crime comics, and has a few good ideas here and there. Miles Morales, young Black/Puerto Rican Spider-Man, is an interesting character with an important story arc, as distilled in the Spider-Verse movies. In my opinion Miles, middle-class bilingual son of a Black American cop, takes a similar place in culture to the original Spider-Man, post-WWII Jewish orphan nerd Peter Parker rubbing elbows with Harry Osbourn, scion of a titan of industry. It’s the kind of odd circle of friends and cultures that just happens in big New York City.


How much of that setting-appropriateness is the editors reining in Bendis’ activism? I don’t know, but I suspect it’s more than one bit; Bendis with full creative control is full lecture mode, and one reason I rarely buy comics anymore.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is excellent nonpartisan discernment, and it is the kind of quality logic and erisology I love to see here on this forum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I start by recognizing that I never had a connection with them in the first place. After that, I look for connection elsewhere.


The simulation of proximity the Internet brings us is parasocial, like the experience of watching a performer or reading an author. They don’t know me. The purpose of a tribal ritual is to reinforce tribal cohesion; interrupting the ritual would be like answering a rhetorical question spoken in a play by calling out an answer to the actors.


I would also question my desire to talk with “tribal ritual people.” If my goal is rationality, I know immediately that 3/4 of people are not interested in changing their worlds with thought like I am. I value truth, logic, and knowledge more than I do experiences, exercise, and emotion.


I would argue that obtaining rational goals and pursuing them is our tribal identity, and seeking connection on that basis is our tribal ritual! So, find people who share this and connect with them instead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cory Doctorow’s identification of “enshittification” is a valid and cogent examination of how platforms go to die, and when abstracted, how markets, empires, and other middlemen in general go to shit and either collapse or become niche, or capture the market and become permanently shitty.


It occurs to me now that one of the great strengths of American libertarian-capitalism, as it was in the 20th century, was an environment competitive enough to reduce the incentives and pressures to enshittify, primarily by the freedom to open a truly competitive business. The old could adapt and become competitive once more, but in doing so, they’d lose the benefits of enshittification; great for the customer, but hidden from execs on the bottom line.


But larger organs of power and money have both adapted, the way evolving systems tend to do, and have found ways to capture market forces and regulatory oversight, and entrench their enshittification without fear of ever being unseated. Late stage (enshittified) capitalism and late stage democracy are feeling their oats.


Most noticeably, in my opinion, was the way the American power-sliding-leftward culture captured academia and media, which used to be the oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism. Now, all problems in society are laid at the feet of capitalism and free markets without examination of other possible governmental or societal causes. Any power shifts to the left are framed as “reforms,” and power shifts to the right are framed as “corruption” and “fascism.”


But that’s just leftism, not enshittification, you may (rightly) point out. Ah, but the fiscal effects: taxes must increase because budgets must increase. Why? Solving problems is no longer the goal of the government; now, issues must be managed. Societal woes must be serviced by specific groups of unionized government employees. Union contracts have to be renegotiated because wages have to increase with inflation and/or remain a multiple of the minimum wage. Training programs have to be run during working hours to avoid systemic oppression affecting intersectionally underprivileged clients. Multisyllabic words have to be repurposed to adequately and loquaciously describe innovative and ever more lucrative forms of enshittification.


This is a problem. What are some solutions?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I found an angle of attack on this analogy, by way of an alternate analogy.


I’m a Christian. My religion was started by a Jewish rabbi we believe to have been Messiah. It was promulgated by other Jews; its clams of promises rest on the Torah covenant. Our holy book has a part where a Jewish lawyer explains how and why the difference between Jew and gentile is no longer a factor in God’s judgment, and that we believers are gathered into the promises of God. We also identify the Spirit of God living in our hearts as the successor Temple to the one the Romans destroyed, and Jesus as both the final high priest of Judaism and the final lamb of sacrifice.


By my reckoning, that makes me a Jew. If transwomen are truly women, Christians are Jews.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Let's suppose I provided counseling services for unhappy people. And I define an "unhappy person" as anyone who feels he is unhappy.




Pedantic reply:


Since you have no first-hand knowledge of their unhappiness, you are smuggling into your definition “anyone who communicates he feels he is unhappy”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s the combo of high intelligence and apparent anti-my-group alignment that anti-semites tend to be against. (Tongue in cheek, of course. The Yudkowsky irony amuses me greatly.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just want to say, I am thrilled that my single point of pedantry has resulted in this particular thread of slight misunderstandings.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Probably the single most manipulative person I know has a documented mental disability (low IQ) in addition to her autism (which I share, which is how we met). She tried to manipulate my emotions to get me to be on her assisted decision team, which I know she will hector until they bow to her wishes and let her go to Disney World for a week instead of fixing her roof with the savings.


She has had her rights thoroughly and fully explained to her throughout her public schooling in Special Education. She insists upon them at every turn when someone says something she doesn’t like. She uses threats of suicide to summon the police Crisis Intervention Team to try to get her caretakers at group homes and even her mother to give her what she wants.


But her deficit is real. Attempts to explain, by people she genuinely trusts, go over her head and you can practically hear them whizzing by. Try to stuff into her head a concept not directly concrete or tied to her health and wellness, and you will find nothing but misery and confusion.


She has been convinced, in those terms, that literally every Republican wants to take away her Social Security and let her starve, and she was genuinely suicidal during Trump’s Presidency, and grateful that someone let her vote. No concept of the deep philosophical reasoning behind the right to vote, just a bunch of motivated reasoning.


I find myself remembering that IQ 100 is an average, and realizing how many more Americans like her I’ve never met because I never go where they are; my ingroup is clever talkers, and she is adjacently a clever-talker by the quirks of autism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remember a review which said there are more hours of gameplay after the “end” of the game than before it. Were they playing it wrong?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fetuses take only time and the mother’s standard care for herself, with relatively minor differences. If the process is uninterrupted, the child has a good chance of surviving gestation and birth. This is far, far lower on that scale than random lumps of unprogrammed matter, or even piles of formerly living biowaste with identical proportions of elements and tissues, such as corpses.


EDIT: Ninja’d by your edit, where you added the second paragraph.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The underrated Arnold Schwarzenegger film Sixth Day takes the moral position that clones with copied memories are their own people, whether their original still lives or not.


By contrast, the Star Trek transporter moves someone’s consciousness-in-brain instead of just copying it. The transporter in The Prestige you really should see the film before spoiling or discussing it here, but if you have, you can probably figure out why I referenced it in the Star Trek section.


As a Christian, I follow the teaching of my Rabbi upon seeing the dead girl, before resurrecting her: "Do not weep; for she is not dead, but sleeps." I am an odd duck on theology; I do not believe the mind can exist without a brain (mind-machine, not mind-container). Thus I expect upon death to have my mind moved into an upgraded, backwards-compatible, spirit-stuff mind-machine, a flawless brain in a body made of something more substantial than Fermionic matter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The adversarial justice system requires that criminal defence lawyers exist. So if this statement is true, you kind of have to accept one of the following propositions:






    

  1. "This system is fine, but it can't work without bad people"
    2. 







    

  1. "The adversarial justice system is bad"
    2. 







    

  1. "Criminal defence lawyers should exist but should all suck at their jobs"
    2. 





The existence of competent, good-faith criminal suspect defense lawyers forces the system to only bring to trial those suspects they can reasonably expect to convict. Those lawyers are there to protect the citizenry from overzealous policing, badly motivated judges, win-hungry prosecutors and easily swayed juries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My only impressions of Mormon theology come from biased sources and the Ender’s Game novels, so I have no reason to doubt your descriptions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Neurotypical” used to exclusively mean without neurological structural differences from the norm, ie, without autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, and anything else identified as being physical, not chemical.


It was adopted by the bipolar community, among others, creating a neuro-atypical disability pride community which now includes every emotional disturbance and memetic misconfiguration, including the dysphorias and dysmorphias.


“Neurotypical” is now used as an insult for “people who don’t know what it’s like to be us.” It’s another power-critical term intended to make “normal” unutterable without a sense of guilt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That’s such a Virgo thing to say. I bet you’re also a blood type O.


(This was an example of how nonconsensus and/or technical terminology can be used to insult someone.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Embryo Selection: Healthy Babies vs Bad Arguments
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Quite the knotty moral tangle you've presented here. Let's pick it apart.


(But first, a pedantic terminology point: Life as a separate, unique biological human begins at fertilization, according to science. A new human life begins when two germ cells provide the recombinant DNA and cellular machinery to generate a multicellular framework of tissues and organs which can support a sapient nervous system. The science on that is settled. The moral issues are about personhood, for which mere biological life is a prerequisite and thus (in most other circumstances) a proxy. Thus, your moral tangle can be restated more directly, "If you seriously believed that personhood began at fertilization, you should stop having procreative sex entirely, because the risk of creating a zygote who fails to implant is too great.")


Restated as a syllogism, with expansion of a few built-in assumptions:


    

  1. 

    Major premise: Those who believe a fertilized egg is a person probably consequently believe his death before birth to be a tragic miscarriage.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Minor premise: The risk of creating a fertilized egg which fails to implant, and thus dies before birth, is high.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Conclusion: Therefore, to avoid tragic miscarriages, those who believe a fertilized egg is a person should not perform the acts which create a fertilized egg.
    

    4. 



This is a valid syllogism. Assuming both premises are true, the conclusion must also be true.


I contend the minor premise, "The risk of creating a fertilized egg which fails to implant, and thus dies before birth, is high." Current science says that the greatest risk to the extremely young human is within the first two weeks from fertilization through implantation. A commonly cited number is that 70% of naturally fertilized eggs don't get through this filter. Yet, this article on use of a 25% survival statistic in a court case hints that you've retransmitted a meme which is fairly standard among abortion advocates:




Natural human embryo mortality has often been linked to the ethical status of human embryos. For example, in their brief article, Roberts & Lowe state that “If Nature resorts to abortion … by discarding as many as 3 in every 4 conceptions, it will be difficult for anti-abortionists to oppose abortion on moral and ethical grounds.” Ronald Green, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Dartmouth College, points out, incorrectly, that “between two-thirds and three-quarters of all fertilized eggs do not go on to implant in the womb” and asks: “In view of this high rate of embryonic loss, do we truly want to bestow much moral significance on an entity with which nature is so wasteful?” A report of the Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1983 states: “Knowing as we do that in the natural process large numbers of fertilised ova are lost before implantation, it is morally unconvincing to claim absolute inviolability for an organism with which nature itself is so prodigal”. This link has been considered by many others. Thus, McLean’s assertion, in evidence, that early embryo loss is not only of biological interest but also of political and legislative significance, was clearly correct. How specific estimates of embryo mortality inform an ethical calculus is, perhaps, not so clear. Nevertheless, for those who consider it germane, McLean’s exhortation that “It is therefore important to obtain as accurate an estimate as is possible for the occurrence of early human embryo loss”, must surely be correct too.




So, what is that accurate estimate? A second article, also originally published on F1000, puts the percentage at a coin flip with a caveat: 40-60% for normally healthy and fertile women. Opinions differ on whether F1000 is a legitimate peer-reviewed journal or merely a pay-to-publish platform, but these authors cite about 40 papers in going against popular wisdom, and reach this conclusion:




Based on this analysis, a plausible range for total embryo loss from fertilisation to birth is 40–60%. This is consistent with estimates from both older and more recent text books. Even with the wide range of mathematically possible outcomes, it is likely that estimates of 90%, 83%, 80–85%, 78%, 76% and 70% total human embryonic loss are excessive.




"Even so," one might ask, "isn't a death rate of one out of two children worth avoiding the one death?" That's morally equivalent to anti-natalism as a prevention for cancers and other causes of suffering and death. Since there's no other way to get new children, and since everyone dies anyway, preventative anti-natalism is equivalent to species extinction, whether for pre-birth or post-birth deaths.


The opposite question becomes, "isn't a life rate of one out of two children worth seeking life?" Even if the life rate were the dismal 20-30% cited by memes, the majority of humanists and Christians have long agreed that children, new people, are worth the attempt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Russians might or might not manage to keep Donbas and/or the Crimea but the rest of Ukraine has remained an independent country and that is not going to change.




When Putin said all he wanted was Crimea and the Donbas, people called him a liar, an imperialist, and a murdering conqueror. If the bear stands down and leaves Ukraine alone once it’s finished biting off those two chunks, as he stated, I won’t be surprised.


If Belarus is next for a weird contested election, I expect to see a repeat of wars and rumors of wars.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
#”We’re coming for your children.”


The LGBTQ+ movement kicked out NAMBLA, genuine pederasts, in the 80’s in order to get sodomy laws aimed at consenting adults off the books. The American anti-pedophilia majority took a generation to accept this disavowal at face value.


The Pizzagate section of the Q or QAnon movement revived the bailey that gay people generally want to rape children to cultural relevance, and did so around the time the trans rights movement was pushing acceptance of transition. The motte version is that the gay community reproduces through social memetic contagion since they won’t reproduce sexually. One potent variation is the ironic and practically self-parodying “trans genocide” meme


The drag queen story hour program made the idea scarily realistic even to parents who didn’t subscribe to any of that conspiracy theory nonsense. And now there’s a new twist.


As chronicled by NBC News:




In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”


To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.


But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.


Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”


“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”


The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.


Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.


“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses.”




This seems to be equivalent to the Charlottesville “White Rights” event where “Jews will not replace us” was supposedly chanted. The outgroup only hears “WE ARE A THREAT TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED,” while the ingroup appreciates the nuance and gets a bit freaked out at the outgroup seeing only the surface level interpretation.