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MadMonzer

Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Standing a long way from the windows, presumably.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Mostly, Puerto Ricans want statehood - in  other words formal democratic equality with the 50 states. But statehood doesn't run that far ahead of the status quo in Puerto Rican politics. Puerto Rican independence is a politically marginal cause in Puerto Rico, although Bad Bunny happens to personally support it.


What Puerto Ricans should want is repeal of the Jones Act. I don't know how much of a big deal it is in Puerto Rican politics, but a few CONUS libertarians who support this have said that they think Puerto Rican statehood would lead to repeal of the Jones Act in short order.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But Scandinavia with their generous social welfare is not really doing much better.




At the margins, Scandinavia (and France, which now has an even more generous welfare state) were doing better than other Europeans pre-pandemic, but Scandinavian fertility took a dive during COVID-19 and didn't recover. (Despite Sweden's successful lockdown-lite approach). France remains one of the highest-fertility countries in Europe.


Whatever the real explanation is, it applies across the west, and even more so in first-world Asia. Feminism has the wrong dose-response profile (within countries, patriarchal subcultures are more fertile, but if patriarchy was fertility-enhancing at a national level then first-world Asia would be doing better than Europe, Hungary would be doing better than the UK, and Korea would be doing better than Japan). Urbanism seems the most likely story on a superficial look, although it hasn't hurt either Modern Orthodox or Haredi/Hasidic Jewish fertility.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Farming in temperate climates is dramatically different from farming in the subtropics and tropics. When you don’t have winter, your growth cycles never really end. A well-run plantation would have fields constantly ready for harvest.




And yet the standard stereotype of climate effects on character is of hard-working Nordics and indolent tropicals. On any other board I could just say lol racism and it would end the conversation, but I actually think there is an interesting question here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Every culture does "salute to rural poverty" once rural poverty is in its past. As a committed urbanite, I find it strange too.


The Little House books are the Anglo American version.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The point is that the NFL is a full fledged market




It's a cartel, not a market. It participates in the spectator-sport-as-entertainment market, but the competition in that market is the FBS, the NBA, the NHL and MLB (in the US) or real football (in export markets, which do not call it soccer). Not the other teams.


One of the interesting questions in marketing spectator sport is how you handle the balance between sport as manufactured spectacle and sport as a profitable part of traditional culture. When the big team owners in European football got together to propose a US-style European super league with franchise teams protected from promotion and relegation, the hardcore fans mutinied. And the people who market European football think that the commitment of the (very local and traditional) hardcore fan base is part of the product they are selling to the Asian TV fans. Gridiron now has a market segmentation with the NFL being pure manufactured spectacle A/B tested for audience appeal by professional showmen while the FBS tries to stay true to its roots while absorbing a torrent of money.


FIFA and the IOC are as hated as they are because they are the places money is most likely to be able to break the traditional culture of sport - they have enough reach in the first world for the big money to be interested in them, but enough involvement from the third world that they can't resist the money by saying "no" the way UEFA or MLB can and do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


ruthless capitalist competition




American pro sports, including the NFL, are socialist. Drafts, salary caps, revenue sharing etc. The team that finishes bottom of the league gets a participation trophy in the form of first pick in the next year's draft.


European football (soccer for Yanks) is the ultimate capitalist sport. All players not signed to long-term contracts are free agents. Teams can spend as much as they want as long as the source meets "financial fair play" rules. (Basically, there is a limit on how much a billionaire owner can subsidise a money-losing team - there is no cap on money from ticket sales, merch sales, or genuine commercial sponsorship). The team that finishes bottom of the league gets relegated.


Paul Graham once said that the Europeans know that capitalism works, because when they actually care about winning they allow winners to get rich, but the only thing the Europeans care about that much is soccer. And we do care that much - football replaced war in the European consciousness after we discovered how destructive war could be when fought with the level of skill and determination you see in the Champions' League.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Many such cases. Woke whites lump together ethnic minorities in order to manufacture a political coalition that doesn't exist on the ground, and then act all *surprised Pikachu face* when said ethnic minorities preserve their own identities. Nobody self-identifies as BAME, POC or BIPOC, and as far as I can see the only Americans who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino are the ones who are so well-assimilated that they have lost touch with the specific Latin American country their ancestors came from. The only black people who self-identify as Black first (rather than with a specific tribe or country of origin and as Black second) are ones who lost their roots due to being descended from slaves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Trump removed support for Puerto Rican statehood from the Republican party platform, which is a step in that direction.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes - I was surprised how well Bad Bunny and the NFL pulled off the "No politics here - this is just a celebration of Puerto Rico's glorious Puerto Riconess." I can't remember the last time the establishment left had an opportunity to go full wokestupid in public and managed to avoid taking it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That's a definitionally anti-American sentiment




Only if you think America owning Puerto Rico is good for America, which people who want an all-English speaking America presumably don't.


We are in the slightly odd position that Bad Bunny and the people objecting to him agree that Puerto Rico is not America, while the people who booked him, most normie Americans who have thought about the issue, and most normie Puerto Ricans think it is.  "Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" is a vote-losing message to send, and the NFL and MSM covering the Super Bowl could easily have ended up embarrassing themselves by endorsing it, but MAGA shouted louder and ended up owning said losing message.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What do you think the post I was responding to meant, if I didn't understand it?


Under normal circumstances, that post would mean that nobody objected to Latin Americans "doing Hispanic activities" (whatever that means, but presumably including singing Spanish-language pop music) in their own countries, which is fine, but has nothing to do with a thread about a Puerto Rican-themed Super Bowl show sung by Americans in America. Either the post I was responding to is off-topic, or it is ignorant (if the poaster was not aware that Puerto Rico is part of the US), or it is racist (if the poaster was aware that Puerto Rico is part of the US, but nevertheless thinks that a Puerto Rican has a "country of origin" elsewhere to return to). Forum rules prohibit me speculating as to which, but my response is on point in all three cases.


Perhaps people who can't say what they mean should shut up. If what aldomilyar meant is "I support Puerto Rican independence because they don't speak English" he is free to say so. For what it's worth, Bad Bunny agrees with him, although a majority of Puerto Ricans don't.




Bad Bunny was representing a defiance towards America




This is clearly false, given what happened on stage. I can absolutely imagine that the NFL intended Bad Bunny to be a celebration of a particular vision of what America should be that is widely held by the Blue Tribe and rejected by the Red Tribe, and which Reds might therefore consider "defiant towards America". But the show Bad Bunny performed was a celebration of Puerto Rican culture with as little politics as possible given the existence of a culture war that Puerto Ricans didn't start.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This. For Trump's new coalition to work, he needs to keep at least a substantial minority of well-assimilated Hispanics onboard. This should be easy - we are talking about a demographic which are default hostile to negrolatry, left-endorsed sexual deviance, and overeducated stick-up-arse-ness; and strongly in favour of big-arse trucks and other symbols of blue-collar affluence.


"Puerto Rico is not America and celebrating Puerto Rican culture is un-American" is the worst possible message for this group.


I agree with @Opt-out that this could have ended up with the NFL and the pro-Hispanic left beclowning themselves, particularly if Trump had shut up and let the MSM brag about how Bad Bunny was successfully shoving Spanish-speaking culture down the NFL-watching normies throats. But MAGA doubled down and beclowned themselves even harder - starting immediately after the announcement with various MAGA accounts including Trump poasting about how Bad Bunny (a natural-born US citizen with US citizen ancestors going back a century) was not American. Bad Bunny and the NFL managed to turn down the politics to the point where Trump and Kid Rock look like the people politicising the Super Bowl, not to mention demonstrating the US right's low culture rating by putting on a mediocre alternative show. It helps that (although Bad Bunny has been outspokenly anti-Trump off the stage) the inherent politics of his act is pro-Puerto Rican independence, which has no partisan valence in mainstream America, rather than being generic-left or pro-immigration. To people who understand the difference, it was very obviously a Puerto Rican show and not a generically Hispanic show.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nobody at ICE or in MAGA is saying that you can't go do Hispanic activities in your country of origin




Bad Bunny's country of origin is the United States of America. Donald Trump (who I hope we can agree counts as MAGA) certainly seemed to be objecting to him doing Hispanic activities in his country of origin when he endorsed TPUSA's alternative halftime show.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That just returns FALSE. It's IsVacuum = TRUE you need to worry about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is related, I think, to something I often observe concerning abortion. Abortion is a young woman's game. The centrality of abortion to the culture wars is, I think, a direct outgrowth of mass media making "youth culture" the dominant culture of America.




I am not American, but my impression is the opposite - that abortion politics (on both sides) is, like almost every other political movement in the west, dominated by boomers fighting the last war. The exception is Very Online Feminism, which is a Gen X thing. (Jessica Valenti was born in 1978 and Amanda Marcotte in 1977). In the UK, the loudest pro-life voice was Nadine Dorries (born 1957) and the women Labour MPs who put full decriminalisation of abortion on the agenda in 2025 were mostly in their fifties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If there were hordes of military aged males at all, then we wouldn't be here.


Population aging (both due to declining birthrate and rising life expectancy) is the fundamental fact about Western (and first-world Asian) societies from which everything else follows.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The OG Tommy Robinson was the leader of the Luton MIGs, who were the football (soccer for Yanks) hooligan firm in Yaxley-Lennon's hometown of Luton. Organised football hooliganism was not explicitly political, but there was (and still is - there have now been two cases where an anti-terrorist have-a-go heroes in London turned out to have learned to fight with the Millwall Bushwhackers, and the traditionally rival Millwall and Charlton firms joined forces to defend businesses on Eltham High Street in the 2011 London riots) a sufficiently large overlap between organised hooliganism and willingness to engage in political violence in defence of your traditional community that both the far right (I'm talking about the BNP and Combat 18 for those who care about details, not UKIP) and the establishment left saw organised football hooliganism as far-right adjacent.


So using "Tommy Robinson" as a nom de guerre is Yaxley-Lemon's attempt to place himself and the EDL in the native British tradition of organised football hooliganism and Combat 18.


The irony in all this is that Luton is now Islamized (37% "Asian", which in practice means South Asian Muslim, and only 33% British) and the MIGs did not in fact fight this, or even try to. The MIGs main rivals were the Hell's Angels and the Millwall Bushwhackers, both of which are also all-white groups of hardmen. If white nationalist political violence was a Thing in the UK (it wasn't and isn't) then those groups would all be allies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Roma and Irish Travelers in the UK are different ethnic groups with similar lifestyles who would prefer not being lumped together, so there isn't a community-preferred term that covers both groups.


Irish Travelers avoid "Gypsy" - the Traveler families featured on British "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" (which featured zero Roma) all referred to themselves as "Travelers" when speaking English on camera. Roma prefer "Roma" but seem perfectly fine with "Gypsy".  Thinking "gypsy" is a slur in the UK is pathognomic for Woke Mind Virus.


"Gypsy" is also confusing in the British context because it isn't clear if you are referring to just Roma or Roma plus Irish Travelers - this is a point about accuracy and not political correctness. Given the advantage of short words for things that people want to talk about, having "Gypsy" as a generally acceptable word for Roma+Travelers (and thus a different meaning from "Roma") would be useful, but it isn't standard usage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If it was a bad shoot only if the shooter had precognition,




It was a legal shoot for the reasons discussed to death on this forum, but as a matter of policing technique it was a bad shoot because


    

  • if the car had been driving at him, it would almost certainly not have stopped it. (Cars don't have dead man's switches, and the shooting did not, in fact, stop the car)
    • 

  • if the car had not been driving at him, it would have been an unnecessary-in-hindsight shooting of someone the officer would rather not kill. (This happened)
    • 

  • the shot was fired in an urban setting without time to verify what was behind the target, so the risk of hitting an innocent bystander was high.
    • 



There is a reason why real police are trained not to shoot at moving vehicles as a first-line response to dangerous driving.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Discrimination by Ashkenazim against Mizrachim does not line up with any US protected groups, so western SJWs (who are either American or have American-addled brains) don't care about it. (See also widespread blindness to anti-gypsy racism in Europe). But given the demographics of Israeli airports most of the people hit by racial profiling of "people who look like Arabs or Muslims" will be Mizrachi Jews, and Ashkenazi-on-Mizrachi racism certainly used to be a live political issue in Israel.


I do not think that TSA can distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims by sight*, and the people who support racial profiling against "Muslim" flyers are the kind of people who are just fine with generalised government harassment of brown people in the US, which is what it would turn into in practice. There are enough white ethnic Muslims (Chechens, Albanians etc, including Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev), fair-skinned Arabs who could pass with some makeup (including Mohammed Atta), white converts, and ADOS/Black British black converts that an organised jihadi group would have zero difficulty recruiting people who would not be profiled to actually set the bombs off.


* Note that traditional dress of Islamic cultures is not a good tell for "likely jihadi" because jihadis don't wear traditional dress while blowing things up. The 9-11 hijackers wore business suits, and the 7-7 bombers in London wore sportswear. They also shave their beards.




so the 70 year old ladies are not as scrutinized




I support profiling by sex and age. Both German and Australian airport security profiled me when I was a military-age man, and were right to do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(Do I actively believe Trump would order ICE agents to threaten people into voting Republican? No, not really.




The point wouldn't be to threaten people into voting Republican. It would be to suppress turnout in blue precincts in purple states. There are a lot of US citizens who care more about not attracting the attention of hostile government authority figures than they do about voting.


Would Trump order ICE to run a major publicity campaign before the elections to say that they would be carrying out random immigration checks outside polling stations in Atlanta, Philadelphia etc? (State Republican parties have pulled this kind of stunt in the past) Actually carry out the checks? (probably not, although if it was Stephen Miller's call he would).




courts,




This is an interesting one. The key policy point here is that ICE should not be picking up illegal immigrants who came to their attention because they were victims or witnesses in criminal trials - otherwise you create bad incentives which undermine justice for US citizens and legal immigrants. But not arresting at courthouses is both over and underinclusive here - you do want to be able to arrest e.g. acquitted defendants, and you want a credible commitment not to arrest witnesses and victims outside the courthouse as well as inside it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It sounds like most of the problem here is even dumber than that. There is no law requiring cops to press charges every time they catch someone with contraband - but apparently some police forces have policies that cops should do so.


If police forces have dumb policies that have only survived because beat cops ignore them, then those policies should and can be changed without involving the legislature. In most municipal police forces it wouldn't need to involve elected officials at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@aldomilyar is the person who brought up the third term, not me. I explicitly said I think Trump is too old to run for a third term.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which is also what you would do if you really were planning to run for a third term and trying to normalise the idea.


If anyone who wasn't Trump was selling official merch with "Candidate Year" on it, you would say they were running.