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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m pretty much here.  I don’t understand just why these people are so allergic to the idea of having to prove to representatives of the elected government that they did five productive things in a week.  Like how out of touch are they, that they don’t think they need to answer a question that most people with private sector jobs have to answer — what is it you actually do here, any why should you continue to get a paycheck from us.  Rest assured, for even the lowest employee of any private business, if they are only doing 5 things in an entire week, they would be laid off as soon as possible.  It’s an absurdly low standard.  I think in most jobs if you only did five things a day, you’d be out.  That’s all the public wants— they want everyone in the public sector to actually be held to some standard of actual productive work.  We’re paying for it, and its unreasonable that they don’t think they need to do anything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The democrats suck as a party.  They just don’t seem to understand how anything works in actual politics.


1). They have insanely high standards especially as the minority party.  Like Al Franken was reasonably popular.  But Alas, he had a picture taken in the early 1990s of him pretending to touch a sleeping woman’s boobs not even actually touching, just hands near the boobs, and it was an obvious joke by a professional comedian.  But that’s the end of him because even though the picture was 15 years old when it came to light, it was just too much.  And I’m sure this has happened many other times as well.


2). They publicly in-fight and publicly refuse to accept party discipline and therefore cannot get a real coalition going.  Kamala lost, in part because she was not pro-Gaza enough for that wing of her party.  To the degree that GOP members and voters disagree, they are extremely disciplined in voting.  Disagree with your GOP membership’s position, you do so in the primary elections, but in the general, every GOP candidate gets the support of the party and the voters.  There’s not even public disagreement.  The party wants your support, and you are expected to shut up (at least in public) and vote with the party.


3). They lack media platforms in major markets.  If you want to hear conservative news, you have a very large network to choose from.  You have podcasts, YouTubers, tv news networks, radio, websites, substacks, etc. and they are generally agreed on what they support, or at least who they support. They have a mutual respect and understanding that you don’t attack other conservatives unless they’re going too far to the left.  The Left has individuals with TV, radio, or podcasts, but they really don’t support each other.  Raechel Maddow doesn’t tell the same story as Ezra Klein who doesn’t tell the same story as Thom Hartmann.


    

  1. they seem to lack any sort of clear, coherent vision of what life in a Democratic Party run America would look like.  And because they can’t articulate a clear vision, it’s really hard to get people to buy into it.  If they had a vision for America as Denmark, but multicultural, or something, sure they could probably get some buy in.  If they said “competent leadership” again, I think people would go for it.  When your best come-on is “ those other guys are nuts and want to have a white Christian nationalist fascist dictatorship with blackjack and hookers,” it’s hard to get past the question of “okay, but what are YOU going to do for me? Because he promised to make Americans strong and prosperous again, and all you got is he’s lying and a fascist”.
    2. 



5). They mistake procedure for power.  Democrats famously asked the permission of the parliamentarian to add “increase the minimum wage” to a budget bill.  This parliamentarian has no power, and can be fired at the whim of Congress.  But when the parliamentarian said no, they basically threw up their hands and gave up.  When a Supreme Court seat came open during and election, republicans suspecting they’d win, refused to confirm any Obama appointed nominee and thus took a lifetime seat on the SCOTUS for their side.  One group chooses procedures as a proxy for power, the other simply uses their power to get power.  And the party that chooses power wins, unsurprisingly.


I’m convinced that most younger Americans have generally gone to the GOP if they want power.  Theres just no way that a party who couldn’t tell an octogenarian with obvious dementia that he couldn’t run for a second presidential term is going to weird much power.  It’s a very weird thing.  The democrats want the trappings of power — the fundraisers, the ceremonies, the interviews on legacy media that pretend they’re important.  But for anyone who wants actual power, the GOP is the lace to be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There seems to be a big problem in the fact that the only reason that Abrego is in El Salvador is the United States government, of its own accord, sent him there.  It’s not a case of him flying to El Salvador for vacation and being picked up in the commission of a crime (which happened to a WNBA player who flew to Russia and had drugs on her person during a custom inspection).  It’s also not a case of an American in another country taking up arms against our country.  Abrego, had the government not shipped him to El Salvador would be living in Maryland and raising his kids quietly.  I’m not sure about the state of tge law here, but at least in the moral sense, if the US government is tge reason he’s in that prison, then there’s a good reason to think a judge can order tge government to provide due process and bring him back to face a judge in America.  I’d even find it acceptable to send a judge, prosecutor and defense lawyer to El Salvador to have tge hearing there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You realize that what you’re describing is marketing right?  Maybe the man will surprise me, but I don’t see actions that live up to the hype.  He hasn’t cleaned up Washington, he didn’t fix the border problems, he might have gotten lucky that no major wars broke out on his watch, but I didn’t think he was the cause of it.  So what I’m left with is an incompetent ruler with excellent branding.  Take away the branding, the hats, the merch, the big talk, and he’s really not that much different from GW Bush or Bill Clinton.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
🍿🍿🍿


I don’t see how anyone intelligent can see the protests continuing when the NG can arrest and shoot people who interfere in a federal investigation.  Nor do I believe that Newsom is going to avoid prosecution for siding with the protesters assaulting federal officers.  They wanted this, they wanted to mess with the government because they have TDS.  Now they can paint tge ground with the blood of protesters who want to LARP as rebels.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hope they do.  The frustration of the whole thing is that because Hamas survived and is getting a deal, they’re going to use this plan again.  It essentially worked.  They’re getting their prisoners released, most of who, are members of Hamas, the Strip will be rebuilt, and they not only get to keep power, but because they have the sympathy of the Arab world, can rearm easily.


At the same time, Israel has essentially capitulated.  They get nothing except the hostages.  They are also much more hamstrung as to what kinds of action can be taken when Hamas rearms for another round.  The propaganda networks are in place, and the Palestinians have learned to play PR rope a dope by making sure that anything Israel does is seen as genocide.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says.  It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.


But I think hyper fixating on “omg” he doesn’t know the population doesn’t mean much for very obvious reasons.


First of all, he’s not remotely involved in planning the war.  The people who are absolutely have the relevant information and probably intelligence assets on the ground telling them where the targeting drones should go first.  It’s like being shocked that the CEO at apple doesn’t know exactly how much RAM the new iPhone has — he’s not the one designing the phone, he’s the one who demanded the phone be designed at built.  As with most high powered elites, he has people to handle the details and he has been told that the military can probably pull this off.  That’s all he needs to know.


Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on.  China has a billion people, but how many of them are in the military?  How many are rapidly aging members of the generation before the one-child policy?  How many are women?  Deciding Cruz doesn’t have any idea about Iran because he didn’t know off by heart tge exact population of Iran is really silly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Jews were officially excluded from golf courses and in some cases were denied hotel rooms.  And there was the open “No Irish need apply” signs.  It’s really not as simple as “whelp, you were allowed in a white public space, therefore you are white.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ukraine should never have been given any inking of joining NATO.  Had we left them alone and not supported the color revolution, there never would have been a war in the first place.  We’re bleeding ourselves white to support Ukraine, a country with no vital security or economic value to either Europe or the US.  Worse, we’re repeatedly crossing Russian red lines meaning that we’re doing all of this and risking nuclear war to do so.  And Zelensky has long refused to accept reality and negotiate a peace plan — mostly because the man believes if he can just convince us to give him just one more weapons shipments, he’s going to take back Donbas and be a hero to his people.  In reality, he can’t take back the land, because he’s down to running a draft by kidnapping old men off the street and shipping them to the front.  He’s almost out of Ukrainian people to throw into the meat grinder.


All of the above is why us giving Zelensky endless money and weapons is a bad idea.  This isn’t and never was our problem, and the only reason it ever became a problem is that we supported a revolution and then decided to dangle NATO. Membership in their faces.  It doesn’t change the reality on the ground and it doesn’t change the enormous cost of this war.  And it doesn’t give Ukraine anything that NATO needs


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A wet paper bag could have beaten Biden/Harris.  Biden has obvious dementia, but even beyond that, there was the economic crises (inflation AND recession), billions for Ukraine, the complete botching of hurricane relief (there are still people living in tents), and the border.  There’s no positives to vote for.


Trump is winning because he at least wants to upend the system.  Whether another person could win that handily, I don’t know, it’s possible.  But only the ones who promise to fix the broken system so Americans have a functioning government again.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be fair, Ukraine is only holding its own because we’re sending trillions a year into the country, and that’s quite simply only until they run out of people to draft into the war.  They’re already needing to kidnap people off the streets to force them to fight.  I don’t think that’s sustainable as a long term solution.  Add in that the war has increased food prices because the “breadbasket of Europe” can’t plant crops, and the increase in fuel prices because we’re at war with a major oil producer, and it’s a giant mess.


I’m also concerned that spending so much on Ukraine is going to mean losing Taiwan to China.  Taiwan makes many of the world’s top end microchips, and losing that to a hostile rival is insane. But that’s where I think we’re heading.  The public’s will to continue propping up allied states is nearly gone.  The money is going fast, and the weapons systems we’re sending to Ukraine probably won’t be replenished in time for a Taiwan war.  It’s insane.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They’re a net negative at present because most companies are tooled for a free-trade environment.  They generally outsource the labor needed to produce goods by building factories overseas or importing goods or inputs.  Depending on what happens, 5 years from now it might not be a problem at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Neutrality isn’t good simply because the needle is so fa to the left on campus that I think using antisemitism to clean house, even if overzealous, cannot help but make things better.  Colleges should be places of learning and research, not places where kids become leftist anarchists.  Unless those anarchic elements are removed, you really cannot get to free thought or speech.  Kids are afraid of blowback from expressing even mildly conservative opinions on campus because of those mobs and in class because the professors are leftists and they need the degree for their future careers.  Removing the leftists from college campuses is a good thing for free speech.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean celebrations of deviant sexuality is definitely a rite of Civic Religion, as are denouncing the Old Ways (Christianity, European derived cultural elements, white people themselves, and capitalism).  Basically, while a lot of people see it as cultural Marxism, I see Civic Religion as cultural Maoism — it’s certainly pro-socialism, but just as importantly it’s about shaming, blaming, and disempowering anyone who openly supports those Olds.


And if you go into a public school you’ll see most of it happening.  Literature classes no longer focus on English or American literature, instead the focus is on teaching the works of other cultures — Arabian, Latin, Chinese, African.  Now while some of it is interesting (im fairly big on Korean Drama and music, personally), I can’t help but notice the double standard here.  Kids can read the opening verses of the Quran in a public school, but not a Bible.  We can spend a month reading a book written from the POV of and African American oppressed by white people, but not the perspective of white people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not in a formal sense, but managers are held to justifying every employee, and yes, employees do have to sometimes write up their own job descriptions to send to HR.  Other times, your direct supervisor informs HR of what tasks you are doing.  The only really unusual thing is that the employee is asked to send that information directly to DOGE, and that there aren’t these kinds of job audits happening regularly (which is why DOGE is necessary).  The interesting bit is that not only are the employees shocked by the demand that they show some form of actual productivity, but their immediate supervisors are telling them not to comply.  If there’s a giant red flag of “these people know their employees do shit all all day” it’s them saying “don’t you dare tell DOGE what you do all day.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there are a lot of the true believers in government posts, because the person most likely to take a job in government is the one with the least realistic outlook on most issues mostly for lack of experience.  They’ve never been to a ghetto at all with or without police, they don’t know anything about people who live there.


Second, excluding the very top tiers of government, the job is one that you take as a middle class job of last resort.  Thus those in the government are likely to be uncritical of anything popular that they’ve been told.  They went from their communications degree at some middling university to answering emails on behalf of the government because the6 honestly cannot get a middle class position in the private sector.


Put those together, and you end up with isolated mandarins who believe exactly what the cathedral has told them about the world and who know that not toeing the line is dangerous anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Most of academia works this way outside of the sciences. I suspect a couple of things lead to this.


First, most of these topics are literally useless outside of the academic world.  Nobody who isn’t majoring in a particular branch of the humanities gives any thought to the subject.  And to an extent, they’ve always more or less been something like what they are now — useless subjects studied by essentially nerds who are just really into the subject.  And much like there’s no need for serious rigor when a bunch of Star Trek nerds discuss the Trek canon, there’s no real rigor in discussions about English literature.  (This is somewhat better in a history class which still requires that a description match up with primary sources) if Shakespeare has a queer reading, it can be anything you need it to be.  Nobody outside the subject is going to interrupt because seriously, who else is reading these papers?


The second is that because these subjects are useless and worthless, nobody who is smart really chooses to do them.  If you’re a smart individual looking to study something, you’d go toward things that actually matter.  Studying physics can unlock the secrets of the universe.  Chemistry can let you invent some new materials to solve real life problems.  Accounting can be used in business.  So immediately you have a problem because the people doing the work are people who don’t really have the intelligence to recognize bullshit.  In fact, they’re constantly making their works difficult to understand with absurdly complex vocabulary to hide that they’ve said nothing interesting.  Philosophy especially seems to be really bad about spending hours debating the meaning of every word used that it obscures the fact that the papers rarely make any sort of claim with implications outside of academia.  In other subjects, jargon is used to describe things happening in the field and to make it clear what my results actually mean.  When I redefine common English words in philosophy, the point is quite often to make a simple argument sound profound.


And as a final point.  Because of the first two problems, it tends to create bubbles.  The people in these subjects are not moonlighting in attending physics symposiums on quantum mechanics, or reading books outside of the field.  They’re in one world, and thus to them, these silly papers about nothing sound intelligent to them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for May 22, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
France hasn’t been a superpower since Napoleon.  I mean im pretty sure 1900s France was doing the “stop or I’ll send a letter to the League of Nations” up until they got invaded in WW1.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The last republican president assassinated was Lincoln in 1865.  The last successful assassination period was JFK.  The last attempt was Reagan in 1980.  In general, times of massive popular unrest, highly polarized politics.  Not really something that I’d worry about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean weapons do not fire themselves.  You can arm Ukraine all you want — they are still toast more or less.  And Ukraine is rapidly running out of people.  If you’re resorting to abducting senior citizens off the street to fuel your army, you are in no position to defend much.  And this is the calculation that NATO missed — Ukraine didn’t have the population to sustain this effort, and so any weapons given were useless because eventually you’d have no one left capable of firing them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech.  The principle of free speech is that the government cannot prevent you from speaking.  It does not mean the government is obligated to protect your job in the event your boss doesn’t like what you’re saying or to keep you on staff in a university.


It also doesn’t mean that you can protest in any way you like.  You are free to March around with signs.  You are not free to block access to buildings, harass people, deface property, or block traffic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve never understood how the Turing test measured anything useful.  The test doesn’t even require that the AI agent understand anything about its world or even the questions being asked of it.  It just has to do well enough to convince a human that it can do so.  That’s the entire point of the Chinese room rejoinder— an agent might well be clever enough to fool a person into thinking it understands just by giving reasonable no answers to questions posed.


The real test, to me, is more of a practical thing — can I drop the AI in a novel situation and expect it to figure out how to solve the problems.  Can I take a bot trained entirely on being an English chatbot and expect it to learn Japanese just by interacting with Japanese users?  Can I take a chatbot like that and expect it to learn to solve physics equations?  That seems a much better test because intelligent agents are capable of learning new things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not uncritical of the Russian version of the story.  Both versions are likely at least somewhat true in the sense that while the Revolution seems to have been organic, it was helped along by the West.  But to my mind, you really can’t engage with the war and the causes or likely outcomes unless you can explain what all sides actually believe is going on and why they’re making the decisions they’re making.  The most important part of the Russian version of the color revolution story is that this is what Russia believes about the color revolution.


If I want to understand Vietnam and the American war in Vietnam, im going to have to know what Americans thought they were fighting for and what they believed was going on.  Does that make Domino Theory true?  No.  But refusing to engage with that theory just means I don’t understand it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How many other countries has he invaded since the Ukraine war began?  If he had any interest in other territories, why hasn’t he tried to take them?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you’re right about Pax Americana having ended.  For most people it ended decades ago.  It’s just now reaching the professional classes.  But if you drive through the rural parts of the South, it’s already happened, probably 2 generations ago, and these places look like the ruins of a civilization rather than a thriving one.  Rusty, dirty, shabby, abandoned buildings everywhere.  The people themselves live in poverty for the most part.  Urban cores have been war zones for decades and everybody knows it.


I see Trump as a manifestation of the problems of American Empire, rather than the cause.  We are not the same steady, stalwart and practical people who built Pax Americana, we don’t have the ability or the willpower to keep it.  All that’s left is to tear it up and hopefully squeeze out the few good years we have left.