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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I think many of the Revolutions are less impressive as they always end up recreating the structures that actually work for human society.  It’s the same across cultures and times with various means of control being attempted or various social systems being implemented to try to keep civilization alive and functioning as technology changes around us.  But human nature doesn’t change and truth doesn’t change and the hard realities of life on earth doesn’t change.  I suspect we’ll probably settle into something that works just as we have every other time


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not convinced that anything has changed, that’s my point.  The way politics has always worked is based on power, and whatever the window-dressing might be, and if the actual power elites don’t want a thing to happen, it will not happen.  If those same elites want something to happen it will absolutely happen.  It’s been that way since the first brick was laid at the foundation of the first city.  Nobody with power has ever cared about what the public wants, nor do they care about the peasant population of their country.  As long as the little people shut up and obey (or at least not interfere too much in the affairs of their betters), the powerful do not care.


The control mechanism of democracy is basically mass gaslighting.  First convince everyone that whatever “the public” wants is what the government should do.  Then propagandize the population to believe whatever the elites want to have happen.  In the meantime you rig the districts such that those who the elites support have an easier time winning.  Once this is done, most people will vote as instructed, and most of the rest will go along because they’ve been taught from birth that the results of the election represent the “will of the people” and thus cannot be questioned.  So when the government serving the elites does something wrong, stupid, or evil, it’s your fault.  The people in charge, running the show were just doing whatever they were told to do by you.  So you vote as instructed and wonder why things don’t improve.


I’m fine with any sort of government that mostly works for most people without being too harsh on the average citizen.  The form of government isn’t important, customer service is.  By which I mean management should provide the vast majority a fairly comfortable lifestyle, they should build and keep up good infrastructure, to live in a stable and secure society, and to not have foreign governments attacking us, our trade routes, and so on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For individuals, yes, but I think on the national, let alone international level your representatives and elected government act a lot more like medieval potentates protecting and trying to expand their power and fiefdoms.  To give a fairly recent example, the government is supporting Israel (I personally agree with them, but whatever). This is despite a large, fairly active movement that might have tipped the election to Trump and is unpopular with democrats and is strongest in supposed must-win states.  By Democratic logic, it should be a slam dunk to support Palestine and go with the thing the public seems to want.  Or the BBB which is unpopular and passed anyway.  The government barely cares what people actually want, they care for their fiefdoms and maintaining power.  If they can do so, they do so by rigging the districts so they aren’t competitive.


If forcing dissidents whether liberal or conservative to shut up allows them to win power games, they’re perfectly fine doing so.  It will be hate speech or misinformation or state secrets.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not exactly surprised by this.  As much as people like to pretend to be in favor of the rule of law, as point of fact, nobody, especially those in power, are principled enough to support applying a law fairly.  I’m not even sure it’s possible to do so, as the tribal instinct is simply too strong to be easily overcome by mere principles.


Power doesn’t care and cannot care.  I’m convinced as I read more of history that our era isn’t really much different from any other.  Sure the aesthetics have changed, the means of control have changed, but power is still held and wielded in ways that the old monarchs and emperors would have found fairly familiar.  The constitution was never a particularly live letter.  It’s not a letter, it’s a legitimacy producing document.  It’s marketing.  You want to live here because we have rights.  Except that when the government really, really wants to do so it can easily get it done despite anything the constitution actually says about your rights.  There’s no way that any fair reading of the constitution would allow the full faith and credit clause or the interstate commerce clause to be used to override state laws.  It happens all the time.  It’s happened often enough that the states have become mere appendages of the federal government.  Free speech is mostly limited to approved speech that the mainstream likes.  If you get much outside of those lines, then you get punished by the unofficial powers often acting in ways that the government insists they do.  Your boss will get sued if he doesn’t fire you for racism or sexism.  Social media for a time feared regulation if it didnT curb crime-think on its platform.  That’s censorship, but because the people doing it are private individuals or companies doing so at the behest of the government, it’s fine.  Free assembly is only free as long as it’s not racist or sexist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I think reading this it occurs to me that the post-modern are behaving very much like modern conservatives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I regret clicking that link. But I generally agree that the ideas are so entrenched that most people don’t even think about them.  It’s in almost every scifi at some point that highly evolved aliens will transcend the need for physical-matter bodies and become pure spirit or mind.  Or in speculation about aliens you find the same reports (in ufo stuff) or speculation in general— the aliens are so advanced they no longer have or need physical bodies.  I don’t have personal strong feelings about cremation, as I think God can resurrect anything so it’s not like if I happen to be turned into powder that God cannot resurrect me.  On the other hand, I think it’s a crime against human dignity to throw ashes around in any place.  Just like bury the urn and respect that these are the remnants of your relative.  Also, Disney people are just plain weird.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The metaphor itself has been a part of ancient Western culture for millennia.  Gnostic thought goes all the way back to Plato.  The gnostic gospels are nearly 2000 years old.  It’s hardly surprising that a movie playing on those themes is going to resonate with modern western people raised with the idea of a separation between the mind and the body and who quite often react with surprise when they find out that biology influences your mind both from birth and because of the environment.  We think of ourselves as minds driving bodies and not as a whole being that contains a brain that is biologically wired to produce your thoughts.  It’s hardly surprising that Marxists and other gnostics can appeal to this pre Christian myth to push their beliefs.


We actually have a lot of those pre Christian myths in our culture.  The myth of the perfectibility of human kind — which should have died the day we discovered Auschwitz’s gas chambers — has been going strong for centuries.  This is another piece of the liberal system of thought.  If only we could teach people to be good, they’d actually be good.  If only people had more money they’d stop being criminals.  If only we could give people what they say they want we could have utopia.  It’s never worked that way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I find this true with a lot of moralizing movements.  They never really think about how many barriers to entry the6 put in front of people who want to do these things.  And really the thing that would change farming (just for an example) is millions of plant-based eaters who might include fish and eggs and cheese rather than 5000 hard core vegans studiously reading labels for obscure food ingredients that might have come from an animal of some sort.  5000 people is a rounding error, a million is a movement.  And for most Altruistic movements, they have such high barriers that nobody can take on unless they have high enough income and enough time to actually do that.  Normies have lives and don’t have extra money to search for and purchase the “pure” foods that would make them “pure” vegans.  If you throw in organic on top, you’re restricting the movement to the comfortable middle class to upper middle class who have the money to purchase food that costs 33% or more over the normie food they’re eating now.  It would be much more effective to have those people choose to limit meat consumption to a side dish or veggie heavy casserole or a veggie burger with cheese than to play purity games.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean just to make the point from the perspective of Russia, this is to them much more like the civil war — rogue states decide to break away and the Russians not being willing to allow them to leave and to make alliances with rival powers.  The color revolution to us looks like they chose us, but to Russia it looks like a hostile state being formed on its border, potentially armed with weapons supplied by its enemies.  If Puerto Rico declared independence, allied with Russia and started buying Russian weapons, we might well invade too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s stupid because nobody really bothers to argue policy (and probably never really did, unless you’re a policy nerd), they’re arguing on the basis of propaganda and vibes.  Tge West and especially America are absolutely soaked in propaganda all day everyday and don’t even realize it.  Name any issue, and people will be able to quote various talking points for what they want to be true, but won’t understand it.  Get them off into the woods where there are no talking points or standard arguments available and people will absolutely sputter trying to come up with any sort of argument or explanation of what they actually want or how the policies they say they want will get them there.


But until people actually see themselves as embedded in the machine they won’t even understand that they understand nothing about the world.  So they argue about it and spend a lot of time trying to convince others they’re right.  And each set of propaganda has the same feel good stuff in them.  My side is the educated side and if the other side wasn’t so uneducated and stupid, they’d agree.  My side is the moral side, they’re evil.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thats not democracy, it’s stability.  And I agree.  I don’t necessarily put democracy on a pedestal as though it’s automatically and axiomatically the best form of government you could have.  It’s a social technology much like anything else humans have developed to create orderly societies.  I think I’m personally much more interested in the meta part of the question of government— what produces the kind of society where the majority prosper, where the rule of law is more or less kept, and where people are generally left alone to enjoy life.  A lot of times, that’s democracy.  On the other hand, sometimes it’s something else.  The high Roman Empire probably was a pretty good place to live, some of the better monarchies did quite well.  On the other hand, there are lots of failed democratic societies as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That being said, I don't think society is unfixable. I just think that political solutions are pointless. We need what has always been the core of strong societies - a culture that promotes and encourages personal virtue. Without that, you have nothing.




This is why our politics is broken.  The political machine has borged almost everything, and thus the other rival institutions have become rumps of what they would be in a healthy society.  Education has been swallowed by the state in the form of mandated curriculum and state testing.  Churches have little influence on culture as they have been mostly reduced to the few things that don’t touch politics and then trying to avoid the IRS crackdown for even broaching the subject of some politicized issue.  Families are weakened because now that mom works 9 hours and commutes for 1 hour, her children are raised by daycares and the school system, with the parents as minor players in their kid’s lives mostly for a couple hours on weekdays and then on weekends.  When politics is everywhere and running everything and no other institutions can match it, people hyperfixate on politics.  When it’s not something most people deal with, nobody but us nerds care.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the college level cheating stuff is kinda overblown.  Kids have always looked for shortcuts up to and including hiring other students to write essays for them.  We made college about the degree and get big mad when kids know that’s what matters and min max the system like old school rpg players would minmax Morrowind.


I don’t get cheating at a game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


None of this is casting shade on individual teachers, who mostly care about how the kids are doing, would like to be paid more but wouldn't everybody, and are simply very conformist women who've been taught that people pulling ideas out of their assholes are 'experts' who should be listened to. Union heads and admins, on the other hand




I think the lack of concern foe whether the methods actually work, and thus you go through fads that are dumped for other fads rather than trying to actually figure out what methods actually get kids to improve in a given subject.  This would absolutely never fly anywhere else. If I try a new method at work, and I don’t see any improvement, im not going to be allowed to keep going.  If I’m just doing a new process and don’t even bother to see if it works at all, it’s going to probably get me canned rather quickly, especially if when the results are measured, it doesn’t work.  Teachers and administrators can flit from idea to idea, have kids do worse, and nobody cares.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean demand for news by 24 hour cable news stations and the people who watch them would create the transparency because if the workings of government are not disclosed they’d dig until the information that they need to keep the station on air.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m arguing that having a citizen in the family does in fact benefit the entire family including entitling the child to benefits that might well be unavailable in the home country thus creating a strong inducement to do anything possible to have the baby in America.  And that without skin in the game of some form, it’s a big problem.


And the whole thing is about the immigrant because the baby doesn’t drop down from outer space.  The stork didn’t deliver the baby, Scottie didn’t beam down the baby, the baby came from a woman who had sex with her husband.  And therefore creating benefits for the baby by necessity creates benefits for tge family that created the baby.  And I think you should very careful about how tge thing is handled.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is functionally a reward though, and one that people are keen to give to their kids.  First because the kid get access to all the benefits of being an American, but secondly that a lot of immigration law can be gamed by having a minor child who is an American.  Things like priority for immigration through family connections.  Or being able to live in Mexico and send your kids to American schools, or access to American healthcare.  There are cases in which women will wait until literally in labor before crossing the border in hopes that the baby will be born in America and be American.


I’m not opposed to granting citizenship to a child born to legal immigrants who have lived in America for years and work and pay taxes and are working toward citizenship.  It’s reasonable that if the family moved here and wants to remain that the child gets to be born an American.  What isn’t right is a person sneaking in with the intention of giving birth in America and no actual legal connections to America beyond popping out a kid.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it can be fixed.  If your parents were legal at the time of your birth, you should be a citizen.  If your mom crossed the border while in labor specifically so you’d be born in America, you should not be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The “third term” thing has always been crazy to me.  The guy is 78 now, if he wins a third term, he’ll be 82 at the start and 86 at the end.  I don’t think anyone could do the job at that advanced age.  I’m not sure about Eric Trump in any case, but he’s much more logical than Trump term 3.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In part, the other part is social media and the 24 hour news cycle effectively preventing compromise.  The government used to be much much less transparent, in large part because whatever news there was traveled slowly enough and was infrequent enough that by the time the public found out about something, chances were pretty good that the deals had been worked out in the back rooms of congress before you could find out about them.  In the 21st century, that’s impossible— the media is broadcasting everything in near real time with social media encouraging everyone to opine, get mad, and call the switchboard to demand that the only acceptable way forward is to do exactly what we want you to do.


How do you solve real problems when you’re on Big Brother 24 hours a day?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think anything taken to extremes is bad, no matter what the noble intentions are.  Most “failed trads” are the ones who went from 2024 to 1824 with their lifestyle and then get shocked when 1824 lifestyles don’t work well in 2024.  The fails that I saw were trying to live a picture perfect version of a 19th century lifestyle in which they dress like they’re Amish, bake their own bread, homeschool the kids, and so on until they burn out.  The people who end up rejecting religion tend to be the unbalanced fundamentalist types who want to get everything perfect rather than try to live in the imperfect real world.  They’re the ones researching whether potential common things have connections to “witchcraft and pagan or new age ideas” down to whether or not the logo of Starbucks is Satanic.  Nobody can live that way because it’s impossible to maintain.


I don’t think that means give up.  The traditional lifestyle is better than what we have now where everyone spends more time with strangers than with family and friends and kids are essentially kenneled in schools or daycare for most of their waking hours. But I think there’s a tendency toward treating the project like a game where the goal is to win by being the most traditional person possible, rather than trying to build a real life that works for you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s the decline of social trust coupled with the decline of religion.  People no longer have the sort of bedrock idea that things are “true and right”.  They think that society is full of cheats and liars, that everyone is lying to them, that the political class either doesn’t care about them or hates them, that there’s no person or group out there that actually cares about the country, and that essentially you can’t fully trust anyone or any institution.  You also don’t have religion in an organized sense.  You might vaguely believe, but it’s not a bulwark of truth where you can trust that you have it right.


In that situation a person who promises to fucking fix it is a relief.  It’s how humans evolved.  And whether or not it works, humans evolved to hand power to a guy who promises he can and will fix it.  Even if you don’t agree with him, it’s a relief to finally put down th3 burden of having to worry about costs going up, crime, corruption, housing crisis, and wars.  Trump or Obama have it, go back to grilling and watching baseball and living life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 25, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean in the most technical of senses, sure.  The problem being that the “cheats” rely on leverage which really only works when you do the technique exactly right and the opponent has not trained a counter.  For almost all real world, this doesn’t work as well as advertised.  As such, even in competition of these arts that supposedly have these types of techniques, you still have weight classes.  MMA has submissions and chokes and so on, but you still have weight class divisions.


In reality, a woman would have to train her art to near professional levels to get to the point of being able to take down a median male even if that male had never learned to fight at all.  It’s why I laugh at the concept of “women’s self defense” classes.  It’s not only useless, but unfortunately gives the woman a false sense of security where she ends up doing risky things she shouldn’t be doing because the mcdojo she trained at taught her a few moves (but didn’t tell her she has to be in great shape and practice daily to pull them off) and never had her try to fight off a man fighting at full strength.  She goes out to sketchy places and stays out too late at night where she’s putting herself at risk of attack and does so thinking that whatever techniques she learned but doesn’t actually practice more than once a week means she can take down a rapey man who goes to the gym once a week.  Good luck.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m in total agreement here.  There’s almost no upside to going into the medical mental health system, which doesn’t even work that well anyway, and is pretty much used by the state to keep people from exercising their rights.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My greatest fear of all this is that since the records can come back to bite several decades after the fact (in this case the man had been hospitalized 40 years ago) and might not be able to be expunged, this will only discourage people who want to own guns from interacting with the mental health system.  It’s bad on both ends — it doesn’t protect the public from crazy people with guns (or at least those smart enough to understand that going to a doctor means losing the right to a gun), and it likewise means that people suffering from those illnesses continue to suffer as they avoid treatment— possibly to the point of self-harm or harming others.  There’s no better way, in my view to keep someone from self-reporting a mental health problem than to tell them it will negatively affect them for the rest of their lives.