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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Only to PMC women who are afraid of dirt. Men are only afraid of it to the extent that they think it is emasculating. Traditional elite women learned to handle filth by mucking out stables as teenagers. (Old money will buy their daughter a pony, but never hire a groom for her).  And working class women don't seem to have a problem with it either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Given feminist biopolitics, "I don't to gestate a kid" is a more socially acceptable line than "I don't want to raise a kid" because it riffs on the idea of women controlling their own bodies - but raising a child from birth to young adulthood is harder than gestating them from conception to birth and this is common knowledge in our culture. Hell, even if you only count the nine months after birth, a newborn is harder work than a pregnancy and any mother will tell you this. But most women who say they don't want to gestate a kid wouldn't want to raise it either.


I have met a very small number of women whose identity is wrapped up in their hotness but who are not party girls (motherhood is incompatible with a party lifestyle) for whom artificial wombs would reduce their anxiety around losing their looks due to pregnancy leaving them willing to have children. But the great majority of childfree-by-choice PMC women's true rejection of motherhood is that the time and energy commitment would ruin either their competitive-but-not-well-paid-enough-to-hire-a-nanny career in arts/journalism/NGO bullshit etc. or their hedonistic lifestyle.


Artificial wombs make single fatherhood by choice as available as single motherhood by choice is now (likely impact on overall fertility negligible as not many men will sign up), but the main impact would be that they dramatically reduce the cost and risk of babymaking for older couples with fertility issues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The topical example right now is surely "I can build electric cars and rocket ships (in both cases with a level of intense study that took me a year or more and would take someone without my IQ or work ethic decades) so I can run a social media company by winging it and still have time to shitpost."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a society where redistribution from old to young is privatized (except for the welfare class) but redistribution from young to old is handled by the State, the childless are free-riding because they are supported in their old age by children they didn't raise.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Islam, of course, permits polygyny (although I understand it is rare in most Muslim societies). Both Christianity and Hinduism prohibit it, meaning that dowry was near-universal among landed-class Christians and continued into the early industrial era, and is still a live issue in India.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Looking at the US,
Census report saying that 27% of children are involved in a child support claim. (This includes divorced and never-married parents)
 Fairly standard data showing 40% non-marital childbirth. (This includes unmarried cohabiting parents)


Essentially all single motherhood is a choice by the woman (women control fertility in jurisdictions with legal contraception and abortion, and file the vast majority of divorces where children are involved in all no-fault-divorce jurisdictions).


So I am comfortable that c. 30% of American women are choosing single motherhood.  (Figures in Western Europe are slightly less, but not much). And anecdotally most of them are doing so due to the poor quality of the men available to them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That would be bride-price, not dowry. More than token bride-price is normally a feature of polygynous societies where demand for brides exceeds supply - the market value of a wife in a Malthusian society with a monogamy norm is negative (dowry being a payment from the bride's parents to the groom, or in India his parents) because there are more women than men who can support a wife.


In other words, in our society, women entering marriage with debt is stupid.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Fertility has been dropping steadily since the early 19th century across the developed world.




Even earlier in France - probably due to declining authority of the Church.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suspect that idea is fully-automated-luxury-space-communism-complete. Post sexual revolution, women choose single motherhood over being a 30th-percentile man's first wife, so I don't think they will be lining up to be a median-quality man's second wife either. Someone is going to be subsidising all those single mothers, and it won't be the married mothers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not that I care about fertility itself - the only problem as far as I am concerned is that a society with extremely low fertility might eventually be outcompeted by societies with higher ones.




Low fertility can destroy Western civilization through population aging as well. The idea that democracy is unworkable because the poor will vote to eat the rich turned out not to be true in practice, but the old voting to eat the young seems to be a live issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree with you, but when I hung out with Polish people in London there was a lot of grumbling about "Romanians" and I didn't know if this was bog-standard Gypsy hate or if there was some local derby kind of hatred I was missing the context of.


It is also a premise of the "Brexit was about immigration and so the referendum is a mandate to reduce it" crowd - which includes most of the populist right of the Conservative Party, as well as Nigel Farage - that normies were opposed to Eastern European immigration (including non-gypsy Romanians) and that this was why they voted for Brexit. I think these guys are wrong and that there is a reason both leave campaigns (Vote Leave was Cummings, Leave.EU was Farage) focussed their anti-immigration messages on Muslim immigrants.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Royal Navy at its height automatically court-martialed every Captain who returned to the UK without his ship. The vast majority were, of course, acquitted. But given the social status of a captain, they were fairly easy to track down in practice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even in the current year, leftists are happy to make homophobic comments about the aesthetic of Naziism (and other all-male right-coded groups such as British boarding schools). The joke is on them, because the Nazi propaganda movies were directed by Leni Riefenstahl and so the erotic portrayal of the male characters is entirely heterosexual.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And suddenly everyone makes sense.


It is extremely annoying when a someone complains about "Romanians" you don't know if they are just a xenophobe, or whether they are a normie trying to complain about Gypsies in a polite way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When I was active in student politics in the early noughties (As a Liberal Democrat, I was part of the "minority right-wing faction" within the students' union, according to the student newspaper) the SWSS (student group of the SWP) was by far the largest maggot extremist group on campus. They were also the most organised group on demos - as well as being the ones handing out the "Free Palestine" placards at demos against spending cuts. As far as I could see, every left group that actually did stuff was an SWP front organisation.


Although the SWP claimed to be Trotskyite, the main argument against them made by other maggot extremist groups in rooms where it was assumed that everyone was a leftie was that they were closet Stalinists. The main argument made against them by everyone else on the left was that they were entryists who took over any attempt to do organised left-of-Blair politics and turned it into something that only appealed to the usual suspects.


It was the rape allegations that did them in - all the most competent people left.


Apart from Life of Brian, the best material on the culture of sectarian maggot extremist groups in the UK is the work of John Sullivan, who was a Trot with a sense of humour. The details of individual groups are out of date (As Soon as This Pub Closes is a 1986 update of an earlier pamphlet), but the culture has not changed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Already a major consequence has happened: a clarification of the Constitution in which the vice president’s role in the presidential election has been reduced in power from the novel political theory that Trump put forward as an attempt to return democracy after a bad election.




Regrettably, it hasn't. The first Eastman memo said that Pence should declare the Election Count Act unconstitutional and ignore it. The second Eastman memo offered a range of options, including ones where Pence ignored the ECA (and Trump wins, possibly after the election is thrown into the House because the contested states' electoral votes are treated as "spoiled") and ones where Pence tries to follow the ECA (and Trump almost certainly loses).


Various other commentators suggested that Pence could exploit the ambiguous drafting of the old ECA to weasel out a victory, but Eastman wargames those out and concludes that they don't work. So the first choice legal theory for a Pence coup was always that the ECA is unconstitutional (either because the Constitution assigns the authority to count electoral votes to the VP, or because the Constitution requires that all challenges be resolved in joint session without the two houses separating).


In other words, if Gavin Newsome beats VP Ramaswamy in the 2028 presidential election and Trump and Ramaswamy cry foul like they did in 2020, then the most likely scenario is that Ramaswamy gavels in the joint session, announces that he considers the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 unconstitutional and accordingly that he is obliged to ignore it, and then counts the electoral votes in a way which allows him to declare himself elected.


If Eastman is right (either that the ECA is unconstitutional, or that there is no effective way of challenging a VP who says it is), then the problem requires a constitutional amendment to fix. If Eastman is wrong, then the problem probably never existed in the first place.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my experience "Demons are real and modern-day occult practices like Wicca are dangerous because they might work" is a pretty much universal belief among Christians who actually believe their religion, even liberal ones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Per Wikipedia the boundary between Bantu and other Niger-Congo family languages is near the Nigeria-Cameroon border, with Igbo and Yoruba being non-Bantu. About 60% of the Atlantic slave trade took slaves from modern Nigeria and points west, and so would not have been Bantu speakers. The other 40% came from Portuguese Angola (which is Bantu), and mostly ended up in Brazil.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For virtue signalling to be useful, you have to believe in virtue ethics in the first place. Dishonest deontologists engage in casuistry to explain why they haven't committed a wrong. Dishonest utilitarians exaggerate the benefits of their actions and minimise the costs. Dishonest virtue ethicists signal virtues they don't possess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Identify those individuals in charge of policymaking within the agency. At my agency it’s a small department within a small division, constituting about 25 people. Fire them all. Also, fire every high-ranking attorney in each of the major offices as well as headquarters. This would be another 50-100 people. Don’t fire the executive leadership—they got there because they follow orders well. All you need to do is rewrite the orders and they might grumble but they know well how to fall in line.




And critically, we know that Trump's people are actually preparing to do this - Schedule F removes civil service protection from policy-making civil servants across the Government, and during the last 3 months of the Trump administration the system appeared to be co-operating with the process of drawing up a list of affected posts. And Project 2025 is drawing up a list of reliable MAGA Republicans to replace anyone who needs firing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Biden has a disqualifying senior moment, Dems are unable to replace him with a non-senile candidate, Trump landslide with coattails picking up multiple senate seats seems to me to be within the bounds of plausibility. But even with a landslide, I don't see how the Rs get to 60, which is de facto what you need for a large majority.


The reverse scenario where Trump has a disqualifying senior moment and Biden wins in a landslide probably still isn't enough for the Dems to hold the senate given how bad the map is for them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Depleted uranium is barely radioactive - to the point where it is used in preference to lead for radiation shielding because of the higher density.


Like almost all heavy metals, uranium is a dangerous chemical poison, but you can order lead in the mail and expect it to arrive with no issues, and nobody has a problem with this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The apartheid government in South Africa tended to refer to South African blacks as "Bantu" - mostly accurately, although the small number of remaining pure-bred Khoisan got lumped in with them - hence the names of apartheid-era laws like the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act (which created the Bantustans). My experience is anyone who uses the term "Bantu" outside linguistic contexts (where it refers to a group of southern African languages) is dog-whistling support for apartheid.


That goes double for people like OP who use the term to refer to blacks who are not Bantu (or, to use modern politically-correct terminology, whose ancestors did not speak Bantu languages) - the vast majority of ADOS African-Americans have roots in west Africa, not southern Africa. So do most, but by no means all, recent African immigrants to Anglosphere countries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is a trope of right-populist complaints against the pro-immigration lobby that advocates for generous asylum policies are doing virtue ethics. As a practical point about the noisy bits of the pro-immigration lobby, this is mostly correct - hence language like "What kind of country does this?" The person of hair colour supports generous immigration policies because she/they is kind, anti-racist, not a xenophobe, sympathetic to the oppressed, tolerant, cosmopolitan, etc. and a person who is those things is the type of person who supports generous immigration policies.


The effective bits of the pro-immigration lobby are doing consequentialism - Bill Gates supports generous immigration policies because he believes that the types of immigration enabled by liberal immigration policies are good for the immigrants and (on net, applying Kaldor-Hicks aggregation of gains and losses to individual host country citizens) good for host countries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


they have the right to make whatever arbitrary dress code rules they want




Legally yes (subject to antidiscrimination laws and such like), but it sounds like this was a discussion about morals rather than law.


Free speech is a (contested) moral principle, which in its shortest and most principle-based form is "thou shalt not speak power to truth", and the 1st amendment is a law enforcing that principle against the US federal government (before the 14th) and all US governments (after the 14th). But if you think free speech is a good idea, it is still a good idea when the speech restrictor is a private school. If free speech is a good idea, then a school that imposes unnecessary speech restrictions is a worse school - just as a knitting circle which kicks you out for criticizing the latest woke-stupid fad is a worse knitting circle.


So the moral question of "Should a school prohibit boys wearing ponytails?" is more complex than "They can, so they should." Clearly there are schools where the answer is "Yes" - if the school has a purpose beyond academic education and enforcing gender roles is part of that purpose (for example a Christian or Jewish school that takes Deuteronomy 22:5 seriously) then the school is a better Christian school because it prohibits ponytails on boys. But this doesn't apply to a pure academic crammer, and I personally don't see how it applies to Eton. A knitting circle which exists to encourage knitting should not kick people out for blaspheming against the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But a Pastafarian knitting circle which exists to promote social interaction among the knitters in the local Pastafarian congregation probably should - and in fact might want to go further and require people to knit correctly designed noodly appendages.


This goes to why wokeness looks totalitarian (right now it isn't a totalitarian threat because there is no woke Hitler, but there are plenty of people lining up to be work Hugenberg and woke Papen should she show up). Wokeness believes that every organisation should be a purpose-driven organisation with wokeness as one of its core purposes - that every knitting circle should be a woke knitting circle.