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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Quite apart from the thread below, where @self_made_human is right and you are wrong, the thesis that the "Hard times create strong men" works off genetics doesn't make sense, because biological evolution is too slow. The conventional version of the meme is that hard times create strong men within 1-2 generations - to get an appreciable eugenic effect that quickly you have to kill off so many people that the population goes through a genetic bottleneck.


I also don't see why good times are dysgenic in the pre-modern world. Good times equals population expansion, but these societies don't break out of the Malthusian trap so even as the population expands the reproduction of the lower classes is food-limited. Add even a little bit of soft polygyny and good times equals all classes growing but the higher classes growing faster, which is presumptively eugenic.


What really is dysgenic is the kind of war that preferentially kills off the warrior elite, like the English Wars of the Roses or World War One. The genetic and moral effect of WW1 on western Europe is the leading example of hard times making weak men, counter to the meme.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's hard for us to see it now, but in the Middle Ages, the urban merchants were the hard men.




Not just in the Middle Ages. The New Model Army (i.e. Cromwell's army in and after the English Civil War) was mostly recruited from the towns loyal to Parliament.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No - if your parent registers after your birth, you are SOL. My eldest is in this position - my wife was already pregnant when I started the foreign birth registration process after the Brexit referendum, and I didn't realise that there was a 10-month backlog. The only way I can pass on Irish citizenship to my eldest son is by living in Ireland (or Northern Ireland) with him and applying for naturalisation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the NGO-left is lousy with 'anti-Zionist' anti-semites for whom "Mossad is sponsoring paedophiles" is catnip in the same way "Jewish elites are sponsoring paedophiles" is catnip for right-populist anti-semites.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Proper Orthodox conversion involves living a frum life under supervision and getting a Beth Din to certify it. In the UK and the Commonwealth that means living as part of a frum Jewish family for several months, and they send reports on your performance to the Beth Din, as does the Rabbi at the local synagogue and your Torah teacher. The London Beth Din is stricter than average - I don't know if there are any lax Beth Dins whose conversions the Israeli Rabbinate recognises for Law of Return purposes.


So I don't think a talented wordcel could fake an Orthodox Jewish conversion with ordinary effort.


Note that the Israeli authorities do not recognise Conservative and Reform conversions. (They don't really recognise Conservative and Reform Judaism as valid forms of Jewish religious practice at all, and most Conservative or Reform Jews who make aliyah end up living as secular Jews or "Masortim" - i.e. religious-but-not-synagogue-going Jews - in Israel).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Ireland would take you if you were irish.




Where "Irish" means at least one grandparent born on the island of Ireland (including Northern Ireland), or a parent who was an Irish citizen at the time of your birth. The system is deliberately set up to exclude Irish-Americans whose ancestors emigrated during the Ellis Island era. You can now maintain diaspora Irish citizenship indefinitely if each generation registers as foreign-born citizens before having kids, but if you have lost it you can't get it back.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Employer lies --> start new job search.


I have now quit three banks shortly before front-page-of-FT level scandals broke at them. In two of the three cases the scandal was linked to the thing I was lied to about. The third case was when my boss told me my performance that year had been mediocre and that if I kept doing what I was doing, I would keep getting what I was getting (i.e. not promoted) whereas the MD who controlled the bonus pool thought that it was bad enough to get only a nominal bonus. (I had underperformed that year - the lie was about just how deep in the s*** I was).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My impression is that it's less developed as a hobby in the UK, as compared to the States. Sure, it has a following, but it's quite limited.




I haven't come across Airsoft, but paintball is fairly common - there are multiple sites within commuting distance of London, and most of them send a minibus to the nearest station every Saturday morning.


Clay pigeon shooting is also easily accessible in southern England (given UK gun laws, it is the main entry point into shooting sports), although you probably want a car to access it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bongino first complained about how much his wife hated their new life in May 2025, implying that he would end up divorced if he stayed in the job. Sometimes politicians really do want to spend more time with their family - in my misspent youth I was a campaign manager in the City Council by-election resulting from one such incident. Naturally I took the opportunity to tease the resigning councillor about the difference between "resigning to spend more time with your family" and "resigning to spend more time with my lovely children" (which was not a Russell conjugation in this case).


Assuming that Bongino was happily married before he took the FBI job, he would probably be willing to risk his marriage to save America from a vast criminal conspiracy, but not to be a marginally above replacement performer in a prestigious bureaucratic job. Why FBI deputy director is the latter and not the former does not require explanation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not all the time, not as the expected result, but often enough that very clearly wealth, population, or whatever other technocratically legible KPI one prefers are not deterministic.




This does not constitute support for "Hard Times Make Strong Men" or disagreement with Brett Devereaux. I don't think "Hard Times Make Strong Men" has to be parsed as "Hard Times Make Strong Men 100% of the time", but given the rest of the meme it should at least mean "Hard Times Make Strong Men more often than good times." If you agree that states usually beat non-states, and rich states usually beat poor states (as you seem to suggest with "not as the expected result") then you agree with the core factual claim of the Fremen Mirage series. In which case what is it that "Hard Times Make Strong Men" means that you find both true and interesting? "Hard Times sometimes Make Strong Men, even if that isn't the way to bet" is trivially true and uninteresting.




Why is this? What causes upsets? What causes the mighty to decline? What injects mortality into the putatively super-mortal? This is a fascinating question, but Devereaux appears mainly interested in cauterizing such interest in anyone he can, and is enthusiastically willing to employ the argumentative dark arts in doing so.




I don't think Devereaux is uninterested in this question - he wrote another long blogpost series on the Fall of Rome. But he doesn't see it as directly in his wheelhouse as a military historian - like most modern historians, he blames the Fall on internal political and economic factors (in his case including climate change) and not on a decline in the quality of Roman soldiers relative to the enemy. The point of the Fremen Mirage series is to debunk a specific theory of imperial decline which is seen as fully general by its more extreme supporters - that empires decline due to "decadence" (i.e. a loss of the martial virtues) brought on reasonably predictably by excessive wealth. He doesn't propose an alternative fully general theory of imperial decline because there isn't one.


You claim that Devereaux is (a) wrong and (b) obfuscating this. You have not stated a concrete point where you disagree with him, or a false belief you think he is trying to insinuate. I think he has a very clear agenda (that the set of views about masculinity and martial virtue he calls the "cult of the badass" is widely held, wrong, and actively harmful in a liberal democracy) and his opponents on this thread are the ones trying to obfuscate the actual disagreement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fox News has always been broadly sympathetic to the MAGA regime, the Wapo has bent the knee in exchange for Trump going soft on Bezos' other business interests, CBS has been bought by an ally. The WSJ is also owned by an ally - that the WSJ is now mostly hostile to Trump is an unforced error on his part. And of course politically engaged Americans no longer rely entirely on the MSM - they get some or all of their news from algorithmically-curated social media feeds whose algorithms are controlled by pro-regime oligarchs (Twitter, new TikTok) or billionaires going along to get along (Facebook). The idea that MAGA faces a uniformly hostile media environment is cope.


The Trump administration is losing the propaganda war over immigration enforcement because "deport them all" was never particular popular with the median voter. There is a reason why the campaign messaging focussed on mythical pet-eating immigrants and not nannies, day labourers, military spouses with paperwork issues etc. Sending federal law enforcement into a community where they are not welcome is going to look ugly - there is a reason why it almost never happens. And "Deport otherwise law-abiding illegals, plus legal migrants whose status can be revoked on a technicality, and don't go easy on any US citizens who happen to be in the way" is at best a 50-50 proposition before it turns out to be ugly in practice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Every other paragraph was about how evil and oppressive and patriarchal the Spartiates were.




One of these things is not like the others - the Spartans were slightly less patriarchal than other Greek city-states, and Devereaux acknowledges this. But yes - the whole point of the Sparta series is to make it clear just how badly Sparta sucked. What else is there to say about Sparta? The Spartans themselves were clear that they didn't even try to not suck off the battlefield. Once you establish that Spartan troops have a mediocre win-lose record against peer competitors (and were not worth shit against Macedonians, despite the equal tech level) the only remaining interesting questions are


    

  • Why did a society which proudly traded off everything else for military strength and then turn in a mediocre win-lose record survive so long?
    • 

  • Why did Sparta have such a strong unearned reputation for military excellence?
    • 



Both of which Devereaux offers answers to, although not particularly thought-out ones - as you say, he is far more interested in explaining just how badly Sparta sucked. Most of this is drumming in what the facts you used to learn in prep school classical studies actually imply - just how much suckitude (even relative to the baseline of pre-modern suckitude due to the lack of antibiotics and steam engines) is implied by the abusive nature of the agoge or a society with 80+% slavery. Neither of these facts is a secret, but classics teachers don't encourage you to stop and think about them.


If you think Spartans are cool, then you are wrong. Pop quiz - name a famous Spartan military victory not involving an alliance with Persia. Not a pop quiz - you can't name something other than military victories that is plausibly cool about Sparta. Devereaux wrote that many blog posts because he thinks that making people like you less wrong is important.


A big part of Devereaux's project is to push back against a specific wrong idea of martial virtue - what he calls the "cult of the badass" - of which Sparta is the ur-example, and Pete "Leaking war plans to journalists doesn't matter if you look as good shirtless as I do" Hegseth is the MAGA-era personification. In so far as acoup.blog has a political message rather than being a fun place to laugh at bad movie military history, that message is that you don't need to trade off the creature comforts of civilisation in order to build badassitude, because civilised beats badass on the battlefield more often than not. A number of other posts in the thread are asking about the question of "why did someone who is obviously not a conventional left-idiotarian humanities scholar get so rabidly anti-Trump?" and I think this is the answer - MAGA assumes that the pre-requisite to making America great again is to make America badass (or at least to put people who embody badassitude in charge with no consequences for testosterone-fuelled misbehaviour). Devereaux thinks that this involves giving up things that matter and not getting any strategic advantage in exchange.


I'm British, so I have the luxury of admiring the fuzzy-wuzzy's martial virtue from my armchair after my compatriots kick his arse. A lot of former world leaders who were gay for Leonidas looked at the British and thought "they may have the men, ships, and money, but we have higher testosterone so we can beat them". It is one of the ways world leaders become former.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What do you think the fundamental reality he is trying to obfuscate is?


The Fremen mirage series is very clear that it is rejecting the "Hard times make strong men" thesis, and the first two posts present evidence that it false (in post 1, that states usually beat non-state societies, and in post 2 that richer states usually beat poorer ones). Nothing is being obfuscated here - Devereaux might be wrong, but he isn't obfuscating his argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I probably overgeneralise some of these things. I am still trying to promote "metre" as a colloquial term for 10^9 Euros.


[Joke explanation for non-traders - "yard" is a corruption of "milliard" which was used in old-school British English to refer to 10^9, with "billion" being 10^12. (This convention is still used in French and German.) So a "yard" was traderspeak for 10^9 currency units, assumed USD unless otherwise stated]


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Low/mid three figure millions. Online guesses of peak net worth are 300-500 million for Epstein and 150-250 million for Weinstein.


Dropping the last six figures when talking about client net worth/deal size is a financial professional shibboleth. (Even relatively successful financial professionals are not rich enough to do this when talking about our own money). I should probably stop doing it on the Motte.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think they would have got the same amount of attention in the first few months after coming out. But it is the "outsider" (including fake outsiders like Trump when he was in opposition) conspiracy theory-type interest in Epstein which makes the scandal run for years, and I can see that "was he Mossad" is a huge part of that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And when one Duke student date rapes another, nobody cares, even though both perp and victim are celebrities by @thrownaway24e89172's definition. (Feminists claim to care, but not enough to stop getting blackout drunk at frat parties in their youth, or sending their daughters to be raped as adults.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Stranger rapes with a "perfect victim" (roughly, middle-class and hot) get a lot of attention locally when they happen regardless of the perp.


Nobody gives a flying flamingo about date rapes or rapes of chavettes unless they happen to reinforce a partisan narrative. The Weinstein and Epstein cases have the legs they do because "blue-state white male 'billionaire'* elites are depraved sex pests" can be used to reinforce both partisan narratives, and the (((perps))) having an obvious ethnic skew that powerful people don't want to talk about gives you double super conspiracy theory memeness.


* Epstein liked people to think he was a billionaire, and is widely referred to as one by his left-wing political opponents, but his net worth peaked in the mid three figures. Weinstein never claimed to be a billionaire, and his net worth peaked in the low three figures. This is part of a general problem talking about the super-rich, which is that the level of wealth needed to qualify is between $30 and $100 million depending on who you ask, and neither "millionaire" nor "billionaire" is a useful description at that level. The midwit leftists complaining about "billionaires" absolutely mean to include Weinstein and Epstein in the group they are complaining about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't know whether "Only commit one crime at a time" is somehow difficult advice that you need to be smart to follow, or if criminals are even dumber than I think after grokking that criminals are the dumbest people alive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apart from the split profession in England*, which doesn't actually add much to the cost because junior barristers are cheaper than experienced litigation solicitors, this is true basically everywhere. A company can't self-represent (it has no mouth to speak in court and no hands to sign documents) and non-lawyer employees are banned from representing a company almost everywhere (for "grownup Court" this includes England, Scotland, and AFAIK all 50 US States). The English system at least allows non-lawyer employees to represent their corporate employer in small claims court, which not every US state does.


* Solicitors do general legal work, and are not usually allowed to argue in the courts that handle high-value civil cases and serious crimes. Barristers do trial work, and are prohibited from doing certain types of administrative work in a way which means only a sophisticated client can hire one directly. The normal way you litigate is to hire solicitors who will handle pre-litigation correspondence, file the case, deal with discovery and settlement negotiations, and hire a barrister for you to handle trial prep and the trial itself once it becomes clear that the case will probably go to trial.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The easy answer there is that the maxxing-type men want sex not as an end in itself, but as a means to gain approval from other men.




Broscience has always been comfortable with the idea that the muscular figure that impresses bros is more cut than the figure which is attractive to women, which itself is more cut than the optimal athletic figure you see among e.g. World's Strongest Man contestants. Just don't suggest that a bro's interest in his bro's cut figure is homoerotic...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The crimes were discovered in September 2020 after Dominique was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket




One crime at a time, man. One of the most egregious cases I have seen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You should also be scared of yourself carrying a gun if you don't know what you are doing yet. Guns are fairly high up the list of things which can kill you if handled with merely common or garden stupidity. (Consumer product safety is all about designing things so that killing yourself with e.g. mains electricity requires aggravated stupidity).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For track and field specifically, there is an organic interest in Olympic athletics that doesn't exist for the intervening 3 years and 50 weeks. The 100 metres final is the most expensive event ticket at the Summer Olympics (after the opening and closing ceremonies), and athletics is the only sport that regularly gets on to national broadcasts even if your country isn't a medal prospect.


For something like artistic swimming or archery, I agree with you in general. But even artistic swimming can become a big deal if your country has a good chance of an Olympic medal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for February 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Given that Iolanthe is described as looking 17 (despite being an immortal fairy, and the mother of 25-year old Strephon), does this mean that Iolanthe is now banned in Australia as simulated CP? I suspect not, but I know that G&S would want to set the resulting lawyer jokes to music. Perhaps you could add a comic dance number after the Fairy Queen turns the Australian Parliament into kangaroos.