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Hoffmeister25

American Bukelismo Enthusiast

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joined 2022 September 05 22:21:49 UTC 

				
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Hoffmeister25


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
American Bukelismo Enthusiast

				
				
				

				

					8 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 22:21:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think you’ve really thought through the practical implications of your stance on race. "HBD is probably broadly- correct, but even if it is, that should have no long-term political implications whatsoever" is incoherent. That’s why it’s so far outside of the Overton window. How could it possibly not have political implications?


You acknowledge in one sentence that it is perfectly reasonable and salutary for businesses to preferentially hire applicants who have the requisite skills, traits, etc. You even acknowledge that many of those traits are inborn — that the NBA can and should discriminate based on height, which, outside of desperately poor and malnourished circumstances, is nearly entirely genetically-determined.


By implication, you acknowledge that many traits along which it’s justified for at least some businesses to discriminate are unequally distributed between population groups. Perhaps the least controversial would be that if you’re looking to hire an actor to play Ron Weasley, you’re only going to be auditioning male actors of Northwestern European descent. (Or, I suppose, Udmurts, a small Russian ethnic group who also have a lot of redheads. Although good luck finding one who speaks English as well as Rupert Grint does.) This is probably somewhat hurtful if you’re an actor who is a huge Harry Potter fan, and Ron is your favorite character, but you’re black, or female, or just have jet-black hair. Although there has been, as of late, a move toward “race-blind casting” in order to prevent precisely this (supposedly unfair) outcome, most people, even progressives, appear to agree that this is silly and wrong-headed. Film studios and theater companies are making reasonable and practically-justified decisions, and the disparate impact of those decisions is an acceptable byproduct of those decisions.


Only slightly less uncontroversially, the NBA has very few players with significant Amerindian descent; while part of that is cultural — people from Latin American countries generally prefer soccer to basketball — it’s primarily a function of average differences in height between population groups. (The NBA has only had the number of Chinese players it’s had because the Chinese government decided to eugenically breed exceptionally-tall individuals to play basketball. Otherwise the number of Asian NBA players would asymptotically approach zero, Jeremy Lin notwithstanding.) We can acknowledge that this might make aspiring Asian and Latino basketball players feel discouraged and underrepresented, but we recognize this as an acceptable byproduct of NBA teams making sensible business decisions instead of using affirmative action to reserve roster spots for short guys to make them feel included.


Moving up the controversy ladder, the strong preference for physical strength is going to result in fire-fighting being a heavily male profession; female firefighters are few and far between, and the reality is that they tend to be worse at their job on average than their male coworkers. Again, this is probably discouraging for young girls who dream of fighting fires. However, because affirmative action would require putting a thumb on the scale to force the employment of less-qualified applicants into a high-stakes profession whose performance has momentous important consequences, most people are willing to let firefighters keep being overwhelmingly male, even if that makes some women sad.


And I’m sure you would agree that there are a great many professions for which mental and personality traits are also extremely relevant. Doctors, engineers, astrophysicists, quantitative analysts, take your pick. And it’s not just intelligence; traits such as diligence, selflessness, punctuality, and empathy are all very important across a wide range of occupations. In fact it’s difficult to imagine many professions wherein an employer would not have a strong preference for employees who display more of those traits, rather than less.


And if you take seriously the available psychometric evidence about racial groups, you can see that there are differences between racial groups which go beyond simple mental computational capacity. It’s not just “black people are likely to be a bit worse at math on average than Asian people are.” It’s also “black people are likely to be less fluent at written communication.” It’s “black people are likely to have poorer ability to regulate emotional impulses.” And when you start taking this seriously, you realize the likely ramifications of this: black people are likely to end up highly underrepresented in a wide range of prestigious and remunerative occupations, because those occupations justifiably select for traits (many of them substantially mediated by heritable genetic potential) which black people have less of on average.


And black people are going to notice this. Why wouldn’t they? It’s going to result in them being poorer on average, since they are going to be underrepresented in professions which pay well. They’re going to feel less empowered, less valuable to the society around them in general, because they are underrepresented in professions which provide the capacity to significantly impact political and cultural trends within society. You and I might privately understand that these inequitable outcomes are the (inevitable, barring corrective measures) of an unequal distribution of valued traits. But there will be — there already is, and has been for over a century — important policy questions raised by this state of affairs which will demand answers. Will affirmative action be imposed in order to artificially balance out these outcomes? Are the potentially negative impacts on the overall performance of the affected industries a worthwhile tradeoff? If not, and if colorblind meritocracy is a non-negotiable end goal, how do we deal with the massive cultural and political fallout resulting from entrenched, generational resentment and low performance among a large, culturally-distinct, politically-unified, and visually-identifiable segment of the population?


All of these questions have obvious and unavoidable political implications. There has to be some answer to these questions, and if you believe HBD is true, I don’t understand how you can advocate for a solution that isn’t informed in some level by what you actually believe is true. Saying “it’s wrong to discriminate, unless the qualities for which you’re selecting are important to the job” has the same functional outcome as “it’s okay to discriminate based on inborn characteristics”, precisely because different groups have different characteristics on average! A “colorblind meritocracy” has the same end result as a “systemically racist” regime, assuming that psychometric differences are real and large.


It appears you’re trying to retreat to a position of “Actually, employers shouldn’t have a strong preference for smarter employees.” I suppose that’s one way of getting equitable results. Just decide that the unequally-distributed traits on which we’ve been filtering are actually not particularly valuable or desirable. An employee with an IQ of 120 isn’t likely to be any better at a randomly-selected job than an employee with an IQ of 90! If employers stopped caring about the qualities white people and Asians have more of than black people, we wouldn’t end up with more whites and Asian getting hired than black people!


This is utterly doomed to fail, though, because those qualities do matter quite a bit. Sure, pure cognitive acuity might not give one a decisive advantage as, say, a Jamba Juice employee. (Things like “reliably showing up on time” and “not ending up getting into trouble with the law and needing to miss work because of it” are, though, and those things are also directly correlated with intelligence and impulse control.) If your concern with “racism” is only about people not calling black people racial slurs, then you’ve already won; almost nobody does that. But that’s not what anyone actually cares about when it comes to the “racism” discussion. They care about unequal life outcomes, and those aren’t going away until the unequal capabilities go away. (Again, my proposal to make them go away is eugenics; what’s your proposal?)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As one of the most pro-law-and-order posters here, I would like to register that I think this is an awful decision — a total betrayal of those of Trump’s supporters who were (and still are) hoping that he will be an effective avatar for our ideology. Starting off your presidency by pardoning violent rioters is a highly counterproductive act as far as what I want from Trump is concerned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is a valuable and clarifying comment. I’m by no means even close to the most right-wing person on this forum; I’m sympathetic to progressives, because I used to be one, and one of the drums I’ve beaten most consistently (both here and elsewhere) is that progressives are mostly good people, and that their terrible ideas should not be taken as reflecting any poor character on their part.


That being said, I do genuinely think your stated positions are very bad. Thinking that “racism is morally abhorrent” is a genuinely wrong-headed, delusional viewpoint, given the tirelessly-documented and scientifically valid evidence of wide disparities in intellect between broad racial groups. Pathologizing and anathematizing people who are simply trying to respond rationally to this reality is a recipe for cultivating a society built upon a foundation of clouds.


Believing that “every human being has an inalienable right to shelter and healthcare” creates a bottomless obligation on the productive and normal members of society to subsidize the self-destructive (and socially corrosive) behavior of the most dysfunctional, mentally-unsalvageable individuals among us. It is a blank check for parasites who either cannot, by nature, contribute productively to civilization, or who otherwise elect not to. It’s a nice-sounding truism, sustained only by the fact that the people advocating it will, by and large, not be held directly and personally responsible for providing the relevant shelter and healthcare to the individuals demanding it.


“The moral imperative of LBGTQ right and acceptance” is simply a poorly-defined applause light. It could mean anything. Some plausible interpretations are fairly uncontroversial, while others are clearly extremely tendentious and enjoy close to zero popular support, which is why it’s necessary to fold them all under a superficially-anodyne umbrella statement.


Now, I also believe that the praxis of so-called “wokeness” consists of behaviors and tactics which are bad, independent of the ideological positions they’re being used to advance: coordinated bullying mobs; censorship of true but politically-inconvenient information; the use of weasel words and strategic equivocation (AKA the “motte-and-bailey” approach) wherein public statements are tailored to create a certain impression of the speaker’s meaning/intent, while in reality the speaker knows that his or her actual intent is quite different from that surface-level impression, and that the esoteric will be correctly understood by politically-subversive behind-the-scenes actors. These would all be morally-blameworthy tactics even if employed by people whose political positions I share. To the extent that right-wingers do these things, it reflects very poorly on them.


In a better, more functional, less divided country, progressives would have to compete on equal footing with every other ideological faction; I would oppose most of what they’re attempting to achieve (because their ideas produce bad outcomes, and because their analysis of the world is based on false premises) but I would recognize them as a valuable counterweight and as a complement to other factions within an ideological spectrum. I wouldn’t want them ostracized or imprisoned (even in the fanciest and most comfortable crystals) because many of them are great people who contribute immeasurably to society, independent of their political beliefs. They’re my friends, my family members, my coworkers, the men and women who create the art I consume and the products I buy. I would simply have to coordinate, to the most effective extent possible, to thwart their efforts at political change, and to demonstrate to them the profound error of their ways. (As the error of my ways was persuasively demonstrated to me, which is why I no longer hold the beliefs I used to hold.)


This will, necessarily, involve the use of political power to not only reverse the effects of progressive governance, but also in some cases the disempowerment of progressive organizations before they’re able to achieve their stated ends. This will probably appear hypocritical to you — “I thought you guys said you just wanted to grill! I thought cancelling people was bad! I thought you don’t hate black people, or gays, or women, and that you just wanted everyone to live and let live!” — and to a certain extent you’ll be correct, because there are a lot of people who haven’t fully thought through their actual core disagreements with “wokeness”. People who barely understand what “wokeness” is. People who think the Civil Rights movement was the greatest thing to ever happen to America, but that somewhere along the way people just “took it too far”. (Or, amusingly, that modern black activists have “betrayed the vision of Martin Luther King”, not realizing that King was a socialist and that his speeches were ghostwritten by a literal member of the Communist Party.) For those of us who are actually committed to opposing the ends of progressivism — rather than just whatever means Fox News and Right-Wing Twitter are able to meme into the news cycle this week — I agree that it’s important not to get distracted by chopping at the branches instead of the roots.


You ask what you should do, as a committed progressive who wants your side to win, but to win fair-and-square without any underhanded tactics. My only answer to you is: stop being a committed progressive! Stop believing in ideas that are bad, and that have bad outcomes. Channel your pro-social impulses — which I believe are real and valuable — toward ends which are actually conducive to the flourishing of civilization. Keep your eye on the prize of climate change and vaccines, and you’ll have no conflict with me. Tinker around the edges of government policy, and find avenues to expand the safety net for the people in our society who are actually equipped to be able to create a return on that investment, rather than wasting your efforts (and other people’s money and safety) on worthless schizophrenic bums who will never appreciate nor reciprocate the compassion you’re trying to extend to them. Extend personal warmth and friendship to whomever you wish, but do not demand that equitable outcomes redound to populations with severely inequitable distributions of traits. (Or, alternately, join me in supporting non-coercive eugenic policies which will actually ameliorate those unequal distributions of intelligence and aptitude.)


I hope you stick around and keep posting here. We could use a lot more intelligent progressive voices here. (And, hopefully, over time your mind will be changed, as mine was, and you will be persuaded out of your progressive commitments.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I believe @Celestial-body-NOS was referencing Oliver Hardy, not Charlie Chaplin.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Ostensibly due to poor weather (the forecasted high temperature for Inauguration Day is 28F/-2C), although other Presidents have had public ceremonies in cooler temperatures.




I’m sure there are many who would be happy to see Trump have his own William Henry Harrison moment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But the problem is that any ideology or system of government has to survive contact with actually-existing human beings. People are telling you that the problem with liberalism is that it requires a population that is pretty much 100% virtuous, and you’re saying, “Well, that’s a problem with people, not with liberalism!” But of course liberalism is (ostensibly) designed to govern humans! Not angels.


So, if our historical experience with liberalism has (for the sake of argument) shown us that liberalism is particularly vulnerable to manipulation by coordinated illiberal campaigning by groups claiming victimhood, that is actually potentially a major flaw in the system as designed.* Your system has to have sophisticated ways built-in to identify when such a thing is happening and to muster resources in a coordinated way to prevent it. And if one of liberalism’s central flaws is that it makes it difficult for a government to do that (because it assumes everyone will act like rational individuals maximizing their own well-being, and it in turn seeks to give them the maximal freedom to do so) then it seems like zealous supporters of liberalism are simply resigned to the fact that their society will go through period cycles of the same pattern, without a way to stop it. (Because to do so would be illiberal.)


Liberalism is just an abstraction, created by specific people at a specific time. It’s not imbued with some divine essence that makes it the best of all possible models for society. If it has serious flaws and failure modes which keep recurring, that seems to be a good reason to reassess it with a critical eye. If liberalism is proving unequipped to deal effectively with the specific issues facing a specific population, then why is it so bad to consider replacing it with another model which might be better for the historical and political moment in which we actually find ourselves?


The alternative, of course, is finding some way to actually alter humans in a comprehensive way such that they become more suitable citizens for a liberal government. One could point to eugenics (coercive or otherwise), mass cultural reprogramming via media and censorship, or mass incarceration of criminals. But, of course, those would all be illiberal means in order to remake humanity in liberalism’s image — and I know that many devoted acolytes of liberalism such as yourself will balk at them for this reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think he was attempting to channel Tolkien with that; I think he was going more for Dungeons & Dragons, which notably has an iconic faction of dark (in both the physical and moral senses) elves. Although, as others have pointed out, the metaphor still wouldn’t work in D&D, as the Drow are not some secret subversive faction exerting influence on the high elves behind the scenes; they’re a totally separate culture, who live underground and kidnap people (including other elves) to feed to their spider goddess.


Taken as its own metaphor shorn of any attempt to fit it into another mythos, though, I think Yarvin’s dark elf thing is evocative and effective enough.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Obviously the big ones that immediately come to mind are “Rio” by Duran Duran, “Who Can It Be Now” by Men At Work, “What You Need” by INXS (they’ve got a number of great saxophone parts, played by the great Kirk Pengilly) and “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (another band with a great full-time saxophonist, Clarence Clemons, who also has a great saxophone solo on his duet with Jackson Browne, “You’re A Friend Of Mine”).


EDIT: I read your post as specifically asking for 80’s songs with saxophone solos. A modern pop song with a great sax solo would be “Ancient History” by Marianas Trench. (Although TBH I think this is actually a synth mimicking a saxophone.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Presumably somebody who noticed that it has bubbles in it, and bubbles pop.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And what happens when a hugely disproportionate percentage of the people ending up with unfavorable outcomes are part of the same racial/cultural population? The ones who also coordinate culturally and politically with each other, and who just happen to all be directly descended from the people who were enslaved, and then after that legally shut out of higher education and positions of power? When those people start to notice this, which they will, do you expect them to take “so what?” as a satisfactory answer as to why no illiberal measures need to be pursued in order to redress their grievances?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When I saw that this interview happened, I expected it to be strong evidence in favor of the “vibe shift”. However, it’s clear that interviewer did not want this to be a neutral way to showcase Yarvin’s ideas for the audience to weigh dispassionately.


He is clearly made psychologically uncomfortable by being asked to step outside of the progressive liberal frame, even as a thought experiment; he says more than once, “I can’t believe I’m even arguing this…” He also seems determined to smear Yarvin with the taint of racism and sexism; he brings up out-of-context quotes about slavery from over a decade ago, which have nothing to do with the supposed focus of the interview.


He also appears to have been instructed to optimize for brevity and for saving the reader from having to do any homework; any time Yarvin tries to go on one of his deep history tangents to support his argument, the interviewer accuses him of obfuscating. This means that the reader learns very little about Yarvin’s actual reasons for believing what he does. (The interviewer even at one point attempts to insinuate that Yarvin’s whole ideology is simply a manifestation of his insecure personality.)


I think this interview is a huge waste, and is only interesting insofar as it’s a small step in the right direction that the NYT even published it at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Another possibility is that Britain (or Europe in general) has a wider distribution of intelligence than Japan does; more geniuses (which would explain the great feats of innovation) but also a much larger (relatively) low-IQ underclass. Japanese people seem far more clustered around an IQ and personality median than Brits are. If Britain was simply better at unlocking the potential of its small number of geniuses than Japan was, you’d get pretty much the result this theory would predict.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right, Jared Taylor used to get invited to debate people on mainstream news. Here he is on the execrable Phil Donahue’s MSNBC show in 2003. Here he is in 1998 on Fox News debating Puerto Rican statehood, and nobody is treating him as beyond the pale. Here he is on Hardball with Chris Matthews in ‘99. He was even called as an expert witness by the defense at a black man’s murder trial, explaining why the man was right to feel threatened by two other black men whom he said he shot in self-defense.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This already is one of the main arguments used by white identitarians. It has been for decades. “We must jealously guard what remains of the European genetic legacy; we will be overwhelmed by replacement migration and our genes will be diluted beyond recognition, as we simply are not numerous enough (nor fertile enough) to remain genetically separate under those conditions.” The whole “global majority” gloating has been in use for at least a few years now, and many figures on the online right have noticed it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is extremely based, although I maintain my preference for public executions for at least the more heinous class of crimes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The convenience store at one of the major public transit hubs in San Diego still has a pay-to-use toilet that works precisely this way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve found that this is only sometimes the case. I’ve had plenty of places give me the code upon asking, but I’ve also had a number of employees tell me it’s against their policy to let non-customers use the restroom. Chain restaurants seem to have stricter guidelines around this, probably for liability reasons, or just employees not feeling empowered to make autonomous common-sense decisions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Being able to pop into a restaurant or coffee shop or bar to use the restroom real quick used to be a totally normal thing. As someone who commutes exclusively via public transit, I frequently find myself needing to find an available restroom wherever I’ve gotten off the bus or trolley. Some places still let me walk in and use their restrooms without paying; however, even the food court at my local shopping mall now has a lock on the bathroom door, requiring a code which has to be provided to paying customers by one of the food vendors. I found this shocking when they implemented it, but the reality is that same bathroom has often been closed for cleaning at very inconvenient hours of the day, usually because some homeless junkie has made it filthy in some way. This is just yet another tax which normal people are forced to pay because of the existence of a massive parasitic underclass of homeless. A normal middle-class person should be able to enter a public establishment and take two minutes to use the bathroom without impediment, just as a basic courtesy offered between human beings, but such a system cannot survive the proliferation of a class of individuals who are by nature abusive of that trust.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The American right has, probably, a literal single digit number of people with any sympathy for Palestine whatsoever.




I think we have more than single digits of people on this site who fit that description.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Post Season + Super Bowl
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I want to give my most sincere thanks to Sam Darnold and the Vikings for taking all of the “shocking and embarrassing choke job” heat off of the Chargers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This isn’t actually a meaningful response. Firstly because it just kicks the can one step up — how you define “social justice”? Secondly, because “performativity” is neither exclusive to wokeness — God knows I’ve seen plenty of conservatives wearing in-your-face Trump memorabilia, putting American flag and/or Thin Blue Line stickers on their trucks, etc. — nor actually the primary issue with wokeness; there are tons of woke NGOs and anonymous woke bureaucrats doing plenty behind the scenes, unheralded, to advance specific causes and to cause material legal and political change. Focusing only on the “performative” stuff actually misses the point and allows those less “performative” actors to continue their work unnoticed and unimpeded.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you square this with how many Hollywood celebrities (particularly actresses), whose job it is to look good on video, are Jewish? Some of the most attractive and telegenic women in the world are Ashkenazi.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Post Season + Super Bowl
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This has been a terrible game by Herbert’s standards, although some of that is just his pass-catchers besides McConkey just hanging him out to dry. This team is at least a year, realistically two years, ahead of schedule in terms of roster development and cap space, so I’m trying to keep this game in perspective. I’m more shocked by how poor the Chargers’ defense has been in the second half of this game. (Turns out the Texans weren’t just a paper tiger propped up by a weak division.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It reminds me of one of the 1989 revolutions (am I thinking of Hungary?). The dictator was getting worried at the people's lack of enthusiasm and bleak countenance, so decided to hold a huge rally in the capital.




You’re thinking of the end of the Ceauşescu regime in Romania.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Having been to rural Kentucky, it is genuinely very dire. I’ve never seen that kind of visible poverty before. I’m talking little burnt-out shacks in the hills where people clearly live. The people I met there struck me as markedly stunted. I’m sure there are plenty of capable people interspersed throughout this population — and I’m sure there are plenty who were born in such circumstances but got the hell out because they were too good for that life — but overall there just doesn’t seem to be any significant amount of human capital left in the region.