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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 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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Time Wars Have Begun.


President-Elect Trump has put his weight behind ending Daylight Saving Time. Pretty much everyone likes the idea, but immediately the perma-DST vs. Noon-Is-Noon factions drew up battle lines.


I’m not here to litigate that battle, it’s tiresome; all the points have been made elsewhere and basically come down to if 9-5 or 8-4 (solar time) is what our civilization should stick with, and what we should call them, for the sake of the children and for having some evening daylight after work.


Instead I propose that schools and businesses start using “sundial time”.


They’d open at, for example, one hour after dawn and be open 8 or 9 hours. Retail stores, bars, and other businesses that rely on evening business could base their workday around sunset, closing at (let’s say) three or five hours after sundown.


Their door signs could be IOT smart displays, automatically coordinating with a virtual sundial based on their GPS coordinates, with translation into noon-based time. Smartphones could show these times pretty easily, via a settings switch.


We even have the Latin abbreviations AL (ante lucem), PL (post lucem), AV (ante vesperum), and PV (post vesperum) ready to go.


The major plus would be health, as instead of one hour jumps in spring and fall causing heart attacks, times would adjust only minutes each day, steadily.


Would you be opposed to this in your city/town, and would you be more or less opposed if your political rivals suggested this? Do you have any priors re which political tribes would hold which opinions?


Are you PDST or NIN and a night owl or early bird, and do you think that influenced your other answers and arguments? (For transparency, I’m a Noon-Is-Nooner night owl.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Prelude: The Nashville school shooting is definitely peak toxoplasma, a day later: people cheering everyone who entered that school with a gun, both the shooter and the police. Aidan/Audrey’s acts are a near-perfect scissor statement.


The statement on the shooting by the Trans Resistance Network is particularly toxically tribal. It hearkens back to the days of trying to sympathize with the Columbine shooters, where the narrative is shaped solely by early reporting and people were asking “What made them do it?”


Tangent: drag shows. But the use of the word “genocide” in the TRN’s statement made me stop and ponder: the modern term “genocide” includes not only the actual killing of group X, but also the halting of cultural practices as a lead-in to the eventual rounding up and killing.


Here’s an odd little dynamic: halting drag activities in children's spaces is trans genocide for both sides, but in different ways!


    

  • 

    For pro-trans activists, halting them is halting a ritual cultural activity, and hints at a wider cultural desire for eventual trans elimination through murders of the outed and the suicides of the closeted. It also removes an avenue for trans youths to discover their true gender and thus leaves them in a spiral of depression heading toward suicide.
    

    • 

  • 

    For social-contagion theorists, halting the drag activities in children’s spaces is useful for preventing cis children from being memetically contaminated, and thus memetically sterilizing the trans community. Reasoning: since full transition includes sterilization (thus committing traditional genocide upon themselves rather effectively), trans people don’t breed genetically, but memetically.
    

    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Baphomet Has Fallen


How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?


The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:




Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”




The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.


Take that to its logical conclusion.


A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:


    

  • A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
    • 

  • A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
    • 

  • The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
    • 

  • Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
    • 



Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.




But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I consider myself a generalist. More specifically, I try to find patterns in one part of reality which are replicated elsewhere, in order to understand reality better. I filed “criminal law” under “science” in my mind when I recognized the epistemological similarities between falsification in science and “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal laws.


My belief in “beyond a reasonable doubt” was somewhat shaken by having watched the TV series “Bull”. However, I was fairly confident that American law, by and large, gets it right. Until today, when I ran across this article on LessWrong. Basically, there are so many confounders in most experiments that actually learning something new is unlikely if the experiment is made to test one variable.


If criminal law and science are twin methods of knowing, both based on eliminating all reasonable doubt, I no longer have faith in the death penalty except in the most absolutely obvious and clear-cut of non-cherrypicked cases.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It would be ridiculous for Republicans to not expect primary shenanigans: in 2024, I expect vast swath of Democrats to coordinate in reregistering as Republicans and voting with Never-Trumpers for a particular non-Trump candidate in every state, or at least states which are key electoral states for the primary vote. Obviously, then, Democrats would gladly switch back to their own candidate for the general election. (Rush Limbaugh coordinated Republicans doing this in 2008, Operation Chaos, to force the Democrat superdelegates to pick between the first Black President and the first woman President).


What are ways that the Trump contingent could bring such a conspiracy to light without sounding like schizophrenic conspiracy theorists? And then how to combat such a scenario at the polls effectively?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How We Talk Past Each Other: understanding how the war over the future of Dungeons and Dragons is the entirety of the culture war in a nutshell


In a thread on Reddit Motte at least six months ago, I became enlightened to the fundamental difference between drag and crossdressing. The latter is fundamentally serious, a personal choice of expressing something important about one’s inner self. The former is a form of playing, specifically, performing a role meant to be absorbed as part of a fiction. It is part of the larger genre of performance known as clowning, which can be described as colorful character archetypes performing bold actions with obvious consequences for an audience. Clowning also includes professional wrestling, F/SF cosplay, Muppets-style puppetry, and political ads.


The same split is seen elsewhere in fiction; genre fiction is considered non-literary because it typically involves stereotyped archetypical characters walking a well-trod path in a specific type of world: Hopalong Cassidy, Zorro, Sam Spade, Batman, Spider-Man, Elric of Melniboné, and so on. I used words containing the root “typ” three times in that sentence because typing is the core of genre: any individual is an instance of a type.


By contrast, novels focus on individuals as beings-in-themselves, and might use types as something they struggle against. So do graphic novels, explorations and deconstructions of characters in a more realistic or nuanced way, even if they have types. They are more akin to the arthouse spirit of crossdressing than the clowning spirit of drag: the sitcom without the laugh track, the invisible and silent audience who appreciates instead of enjoys. And these two spirits cannot exist in the same world.


That brings us to D&D. Gizmodo/io9 published an article about taking biodiversity typing out of the stats of D&D playable species.


D&D is an RPG which is built on the clowning spirit of types and power levels, using fantastic biodiversity to tell adventure game stories. It is a core nerd culture property, enjoyed historically by oppressed people with autism to imagine being powerful people who don’t just fit into their milieu but who thrive as adventurers and heroes.


This little corner of the culture war turns RPGs from Fun With Action Figures to Serious Representation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				USA Election Day 2022 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fraud Subthread Mosh Pit


I will listen to allegations of fraud, dismissal of potential fraud, and attempted refutation of fraud here. Show receipts to add spice.


New York Times is on the beat.


The Maricopa County shitshow: the alt-right and conspiracy boards were lighting up about Dominion vote tabulators not accepting ballots in a big Republican section of Arizona.


Detroit voters were stunned to be told they’d already voted absentee.


Some Pennsylvania voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for errors were notified in time to cast an in-person ballot, some weren’t notified, and some were told they couldn’t cast a provisional ballot to replace it.


All in all, “red wave barely a ripple, Trumpism refuted, cope and seethe more” will once again be met with “y’all cheated, just give us a year to figure out how.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s the Matrix 3 effect, in my opinion. Matrix 1 was a modernist film about postmodernism, which is why it won big. Matrix 2 was a deconstruction of Matrix 1, and upped the ante on ideas, spectacle, and CGI, but focused on deglamorizing the lives of revolutionaries. Matrix 3 went full postmodern, with a “who do we root for?” ending which was barely explained despite its double big sacrifice.


Matrix 1 and Last Crusade are both practically perfect movies, Matrix 2 and Crystal Skull are both CG heavy cash-ins, and I believe I’ll feel the same way after watching Dial of Destiny the way I felt after Matrix 3.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s quiet admission


Bare link post: The Federalist covers the latest CDC admission about the vaccine: the myocarditis risk among the young and healthy is larger than official sources claimed.


Along with the recent addition of Ivermectin to the list of possible effective treatments, I believe this vindicates the front-line doctors and makes mass murderers of the censors, as well-intentioned as those who smashed sparrows for Mao.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				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 May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A clear and very delightful essay from Wayward Axolotl in 2017 on free speech being a means toward the unalloyed good “social rationality”:




What is freedom of speech?






People often confuse the principle of free speech with a specific law intended to protect free speech, such as the first amendment of the US constitution. Freedom of speech is not a specific law, or set of laws. Freedom of speech is the principle that coercion should not be used to suppress ideas.






What is freedom of speech for?






The primary function of free speech is to enable social rationality. Social rationality means thinking together. Discussion and debate are ways of thinking together. They are ways of solving problems and making decisions together. Freedom of speech creates a space in which people can freely exchange ideas, and thus think together.






Freedom of speech is necessary for social rationality, because otherwise alternatives cannot be presented for consideration. Without freedom of speech, the majority or official opinion is the only one that can be safely expressed. Under those conditions the social belief system is fixed. Errors cannot be corrected, and new ideas cannot be explored. Thought requires the freedom to consider alternatives. It requires an open mind. A society that does not permit free speech has a closed mind. It cannot think. Freedom of speech protects society from becoming trapped in a vicious cycle of conformity.




This got me thinking about Google, which is in a round of layoffs of thousands of employees. I find myself thinking conspiratorially: this would be a great time for them to purge all remaining wrongthinkers from their midst, possibly using their AI to pick those who hold such “hateful” ideas as James Damore.


I have no evidence at all, nor have I heard of such a thing happening. The thought was partly inspired by the military having a similar purge under Obama and now Biden, such that the top generals and admirals are reported (on rightward and far right media alike) to be fully “globohomo” at this point.


Those of you in Silicon Valley or STE(A)M professions, do you know anyone recently laid off from Alphabet, and what their views are?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FairTax is still the best solution I can see to the economic disruptions of AI/ASI/AGI.


    

  1. 

    It would decouple revenue from employment, tying it instead to consumers buying products/services from producers, for which all other taxes are just a proxy and collection method.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    It would lay the bureaucratic groundwork for UBI / Universal Flat Welfare by instituting a universal flat tax rebate with no loopholes, the FairTax Prebate. It’s calculated to refund 100% of the FairTax paid by someone at the federal poverty level, defined as someone whose subsistence costs every dollar they earn, and currently would result in about $300/mo per adult and $200/mo per child.
    

    3. 



As AI takes over every sector of the economy, the realities of poverty would change. People would become spend-slaves, funded by government UBI to purchase from private/publicly held companies. FairTax would set up the system in the first place, automating the pipelines of money, reducing bureaucratic overhead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What erosion of democracy do you believe Donald Trump, avatar of your outgroup, to want?


Steelmanning voting concepts, I have observed that my fellow Americans either want:


    

  • zero fraudulent ballots cast at the cost of stringent and sometimes onerous requirements that may result in fewer legitimate ballots being counted, or
    • 

  • zero legitimate voters prevented from having their ballots cast and counted, even if that may result in a few illegitimate votes being included in the count.
    • 



Accordingly, I refuse to countenance the strawman of “Republicans just want to suppress the legitimate vote” without the flip strawman, “Democrats just want to stuff the ballot box.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I dislike the whole premise of this post. The phrase “default white Americans” is a categorization I’d wholeheartedly reject, as a supposedly positive variation of the Chinese robber fallacy hinted to be synonymous with “volk”. I assume most of the Jewish staffers are “default Jewish Americans” and the Black staffers are “default Black Americans,” absent any further info. “Americans who chose to be American by legal immigration” is a much more meaningful category.


“Jewish” and “white” also need some breakdown. Alexander Vindman, central to one impeachment of Trump, was a Soviet citizen at birth, to a Jewish family in Kiev (at the time). Without any of that knowledge, I’d think him one of your “default white Americans”.


I’m an American by birth and default choice in a land which accepts all comers. I care less about underrepresentation by bodies like mine and more about hearts and minds like mine. I want Allen West as President, David Mamet as White House speechwriter, Thomas Sowell as head of the Fed, and so-called Ultra-Orthodox Jews on the Supreme Court bench.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for March 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How To Shower Right


How To Set The Temperature


If the water is painfully hot, it's too hot. When you shower with water hotter than a fever (>105F), you scald the "horny layer" of skin, leading to dry, chapped or cracking skin which doesn't provide the natural antiseptic barrier of whole, unbroken skin. You shouldn't need moisturizer on your back after a healthy shower.


Dry skin is a great place for bacteria to enter the body. You may be able to eliminate unnecessary back acne within a week.


How To Breathe


Your nostril hair is a great air filter for keeping dust and germs out of your lungs. However, when you're breathing high concentrations of warm water vapor through your nose, all of what previously got caught in the filter gets sucked right down. Blow your nose before you shower, and breathe through your mouth during the shower. This can keep you from getting many colds. I have gone much longer between colds since stopping breathing through my nose during showers.


If you have a cold, still breathe through your mouth. This can keep a head cold from becoming a chest cold. Never suck that snot backwards.


How To Shampoo


Shampoo is mostly a detergent. Detergents work as surfactants. They lower the surface tension of water, making it less likely to stick to itself and more able to bind with oils and soiling particles. The first batch of shampoo you use on your head should not foam up. That's how you know it's working: the soap is sticking to oils, not making bubbles.


Rinse and repeat with a smaller amount. This should foam up, indicating cleanliness.


WARNING: If you're breathing through your mouth, you may get some shampoo in your mouth. Spit it out. Swallowing hair-cleaning surfactants will give you physical diarrhea (as opposed to germ-caused diarrhea) as surely as drinking a single drop of Dawn dish detergent dissolved in a cup of water.


How To Dry


Have you ever noticed how one side of your towel is fluffier than the other? Use the fluffy side first.


The cut strands on the fluffy side are where water will end up eventually, through a purely mechanical process. The whole fibers on the smoother side wick the water away to the fluffy side. If you use the smooth side first, the fluffy side will already be damp if you flip it.


Hang your wet towel up with the fluffy side out, for faster evaporation.


Your Turn


Do you have any useful showering or bathing tips?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for this post with a completely alien perspective of my faith. It shows me where the real battle for understanding is.


I have worked for a Christian businessman before, and were it not for that job, I would have found less professional success in my life, and less freedom from my emotional turmoil. It was the job with the healthiest emotional environment I’ve ever been in. Yet his small business, his petit bourgeois success, is exactly the kind that Marxists would make impossible.


C.S. Lewis would have said that the Saturnalian reversal was an echo in pagan thought of the later true divine reversal in which the Son of God washed his followers’ dusty feet and, instead of taking over the world and ruling it, willingly dying for the sins of all. Satan the rebel wanted God brought low, but not like this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ever since a police standoff with a homeless man ended in the prosecution of two policemen, I’ve Noticed that my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico seems to be functioning as a testbed for leftist movements in coastal cities and inner cities across America. We seem to be a perverse Peoria.


Here’s the next one coming your way: Solomon Peña.


A thief and felon, who somehow managed to convince the right people to let him on the ballots, ran as a Republican to be state legislator in a heavily blue district. Predictably, he lost. He hired a literal conspiracy of people to shoot at Democrat office holders’ homes.


The national news media is calling him a MAGA candidate / MAGA Republican in every news article. I’ve heard from a local who know him and apparently he was always a little off his rocker, not a steady America-First patriot.


Police arrested him ONE DAY after the Bernalillo County Republican Party convention, which I attended along with hundreds of other GOP locals, mostly my parents’ peers. The MAGA wing was out in large numbers, and together we elected a new Treasurer and Vice-Chair. The Chairman retained his seat, the Chairman under whom Peña was allowed to become a candidate. The next day, Peña, who had been the prime suspect for a little while, was arrested.


I cannot overstate how much this one lone nut tarnished the local party in our semi-megalopolis, and I cannot overstate how non-representative he is of the people I met and caucused with. Peña is, in my estimation, one of a tiny minority of politically active Albuquerque Republicans who would even know how to contract with other criminals to shoot up politicians’ homes. I literally only had to Google “Albuquerque Republican” to find the NPR story I linked above.


This stinks of “sources and methods” in my opinion. That story will forever be linked with Albuquerque Republicans. It has been a rousing success for the left in New Mexico’s biggest city. So, I expect similar stories to start popping up in other big blue cities, probably with higher body counts. And it only takes one dead legislator to call MAGA an insurrection movement and make it legally stick. No Republican will be allowed to denounce Peña (or any future similar incidents) and still laud Trump without being called a liar on the denunciation by the media.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Calvinist predestination (which is the only truly contentious point out of the five in Calvinism) is basically Schrödinger's cat: the only way to know where one is predestined is to die, and there is a single truth value in the future which cannot be directly known from the past.


However true it may be, though, it is also possibly the single stupidest way to approach Christianity, faith, free will, and eternity.


Jesus has guaranteed that whoever turns from wickedness and asks Him for forgiveness will have eternal life in the presence of overwhelming love; the kind of love which cares for all victims of others’ misdeeds, and seeks that none should be wicked. If you ask, then, what God finds wicked, He asks you what you find wicked when others do it and asks you to shun it from your choices, now and forever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From a comment on Reddit’s Daystrom Institute, a Star Trek subreddit:




scared people don't evaluate a potential authoritarian's worth on how many boxes they've checked on the formal etiquette checklist, but by their ability to convincingly sell an illusion of prosperity just around the corner if only they would hand him the power.




The framing of this statement made it clear they were switching from talking of a specific fictional character to obliquely mentioning former President Donald Trump. So, I have a question for the non-Trumpers, never-Trumpers, and former Trumpers of The Motte: prior to and excluding the events of January 6, did you honestly believe Trump was a Hitler-to-be, a potential ender of democracy, a dictator thug, or any other sort of authoritarian who would end the rule of law and instead rule by might? And if so, whose opinion on the matter did you value?


(Please note that you will probably not convince me personally, and a Gish gallop will make me even less likely to listen to your arguments.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
NATO was (since the 70’s) a Disneyland vision of Europe propagated by American thinktanks and intelligence, propped up by US aid and USAID. A place for young PMC progressives to take a summer break, as real as Cabo or Cozumel.


The Ukraine war is the culmination of Europeans believing that fantasyland. A million dead with almost no gains and Nordstream 2 gone. Do not believe my country’s military/industrial decisionmakers. We cannot hold your borders locked in their postwar positions forever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories are shaking things up again, this time regarding the blood supply. An alternate blood donation infrastructure is growing. (If you don’t want to read the vaccine-skeptical take from TGP, here’s the Vice article on SafeBlood Donation they were reporting on.)


This comes after the release of the Suddenly Died documentary blaming the vaccine for the surge in heart attacks, including really odd blood clots.


I have given blood for twenty years and do not plan to stop. I don’t give through the Red Cross but rather through Vitalent, formerly United Blood Services. I am not vaccinated for COVID-19, and will continue to vehemently, vociferously, and assiduously avoid those injections, on both medical and religious grounds (though my reasoning is different than one might expect). I don’t plan to switch my donations to SafeBlood unless they can assure me it won’t be wasted, by my definitions of wasted.


All of this may seem to be a fascinating new front in the Culture War, but it’s actually an attempt to recapture territory: the denial of organ transplants to COVID-vaccine refusers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FairTax as the fairest tax


The concept of a market as a business fascinates me. It's a business that's a container for other businesses.


The ur-example is a hair salon in a strip mall (business apartment). The manager of this strip mall business (who may or may not be the proprietor/owner of the business) rents one of the suites to the proprietor of this salon. The salon in turn furnishes each of the salon booths and rents them to the individual hairdressers, each one an independent contractor. This salon has a single payment system where the money is divided between this hairdresser and the salon, but any tips you give the hairdresser are theirs to keep. (This example is not how all salons operate.)


In this example, is the hairdresser paying the salon a booth rental out of the total cost of the haircut, or is the customer paying the salon a fee for getting a haircut there instead of having the hairdresser come to her home and cut her hair in the bathroom?


I've decided it makes the most sense to call the salon's cut a "market fee", a part of the price which the customer pays but the hosted business doesn't get to keep. It's a true three-way transaction, not a pair of two-way transactions.


So how does this become a conversation about taxes?


Three simple models of taxation


Philosopher Robert Nozick famously came up with a way to philosophically justify private property in a society, but failed to find a way to justify taxes, which derive from private property, other than the sheer necessity. (His Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a magnificent book.)


    

  1. The King's Due: The king is the rightful owner of all that's in the kingdom his army protects, and so he has the right to tax your wealth as a subset of his. He makes sure to tax the wealthy more so they can't afford to raise an army against him and become the new king.
    2. 

  2. The Common Pot: The people of the community each give a share of what they all have, and usually the ones who earn more give more. This way they can pay an army to keep them safe.
    3. 

  3. The Market Fee: The country is a meta-market, paying an army to create a safe place where businesses and marketplaces can exist safely, without fear of disruption by foreign armies. They and their customers pay a portion of their economic activity to fund the army, proportional to the business they do.
    4. 



(Please note, whichever model of taxation you prefer or use internally, modern-day taxes can be seen as any or all of these. This is a simplistic philosophical model.)


In cases 1 and 2, the obligation of the nation's people to pay taxes is based on what other people want (1) or need (2), and only respects personal property if there are safeguards in place, and only while the king or the people respect those safeguards.


The FairTax is a Market Fee form of taxation which automatically respects private property by only taxing business transactions, and by allowing anyone to resell property that has already been FairTaxed once without ever paying tax on it again. It even builds in a dividend for the people, the owners of the national market, equal to the taxation they'd pay at the poverty level, making the government free on the net calculation for the poor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is good that you are disturbed.


It’s a trope in fiction of malign regimes requiring that a logical paradox be treated as official truth, such as 1984’s “two plus two equals five”, but it has a long history before that of being used to illustrate fashionable or politically advantageous absurdities. And of course, the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is a tool to immunize children against swallowing such propaganda.


I have proposed facetiously that there be four categories for clarity: male men, female men, male women, and female women. Of course, nobody who accepts the trans paradox wants this; they want “trans woman” to be treated as the same type of category as “red-headed woman” and “short woman”, and anyone who disagrees to be shouted down for their offensiveness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The society is largely controlled by the rich and affluent. As long as they can escape to charter schools, catholic schools, or hire private tutors, they will do that instead of using their wealth and affluence to fix public schools, so those being horrible will remain solely poor people's problem.




Wasn’t the point of charter schools to allow tax money to travel with the children to pay for private(ly owned) schools instead of public(ly owned) schools? Are charter schools now considered places for children of the rich? Did I miss something big?