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professorgerm

You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

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joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC 

				
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professorgerm


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1157


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A rule that if someone expresses a disagreeable sentiment, you are allowed to say "Wow, you're a racist, fuck off"?




The current "correct" response to someone expressing a bigoted sentiment is ignoring it, then? Would replying "This is a grossly bigoted statement" be considered a personal attack or what have you?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Removing likes from Scott's substack does not seem to have resulted in any meaningful change in comment quality.


Not a perfect parallel to the up/downvote, but some evidence that the votes or lack thereof have little effect.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There's just no way that the opinions on this site aren't tainted by racism.




Also true of anyone that's ever read Robin Diangelo or Ibram Kendi.


If you want a place with opinions untainted... enjoy journaling?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A very old black guy comes into the hospital and prompts a speech by the main white doctor about how a group of black doctors made some important medical discovery 50 years ago that is underappreciated today.




It was definitely a Special Episode kind of moment and speech, but at least that one was about working in Pittsburgh history like the old guy on life support having worked with Mr. Rogers and his family reminiscing before they unplug him.




I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of these.




Everything Santos and Mohan says or does? Slight exaggeration, but not much. Certainly not accidental that they keep getting rewarded for hubris, while nervous Whittaker is a punchline with the scrub changes and his living situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sometimes even the doctors don’t know what to do like in the case of an incel with some violent journaling or a patient who’s been poisoned by his wife




Those cases were ridiculous and even when there was the briefest glimmer of treating the incel like a human being and McKay being way too high on her own supply, nope, immediately back to her sanctimonious attitude being what was clearly intended as right.


Frustrating show, in that way. Did like the bit about the old man who worked with Mr. Rogers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If there's one criticism of Harris that's untrue, it would be that she's insufficiently ambitious.




Surely the anecdote about Biden telling her "no daylight, kid" and Harris agreeing to put that albatross on her neck displays either a lack of ambition, or a degree of loyalty to a ship already 9/10 sunk that overrode the ambition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


4 million deportations by the end of 2028




I have no interest in a bet of any size, just curious about the details. Do voluntary self-removals also count? I assume all removals have to be documented, not vague estimates like most immigration stats are?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


excepting of course that he may have been saying it with his trademark irony…




It is indeed somewhere in Innocents Abroad, so it was likely intended ironic but modern readers take it as literal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The entire point of this site is to allow us to discuss across ideological divides.




And the monkey's paw curled a finger hard on this one.


I've long though that people abuse that Twain quote about travel being fatal to prejudice and bigotry, and that travel- especially if it's only a limited exposure- has about a 50/50 shot of reinforcing it instead. Likewise here; if your exposure across the ideological divide is limited and of... particular quality, it only reinforces just how obnoxious/stupid/evil/whatever "the other" really is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rather like the joke regarding the expanding acronym that no one has less in common than gays and asexuals, no one should think a tradition that opposes hedonism and considers all pleasure to be a distraction would approve of gays.


That said, I can easily see how one would conclude that American Buddhism, such as it is, has had very little to say about interpersonal pleasure and much more about, say, animal welfare.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Disease eradication is probably the easiest to defend




And maintaining the screw-worm border.




I’d go to bat for various foreign aid and social programs to a lesser degree.




I'd be more satisfied if the people that go to bat for foreign social programs would just acknowledge that it's colonialism, but good when they do it.




I was actually thinking about edgy contrarians like KulakRevolt.




Okay, fair. You seem to consider them more common than I do, and I will not defend the relative proportions.




Whether or not they embrace heel tactics, you can dig down and find an intended policy




Well, yes. Whether or not that policy is insane is another matter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but to spread the benefits to others who are less fortunate.




The most straightforward reading of your word choice would be colonialism, which would not make you the most progressive person here.




Contrarian countersignaling that you'll make the world a worse place because bad things are good, actually.




A statement that nobody believes about their own position, of course.


It is just as easy to smear restorative justice advocates as believing "bad things are good, actually" as it is the right-winger calling for, say, England to sink the small boats.


Are the people that care more about murderers than their victims just doing contrarian countersignaling? How should one decide they're sincere but the other side isn't?




Electoral reform along the lines of single transferable vote is literally my single issue, because I think it's actually a credible path to a more functional government.




Any thoughts on if it's possible/reasonable to fix the gerrymandering issue or is the catch-22 deliberate and useful for some reason?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Upon making a full recovery, they are released to Substack.




Or if they go too insane to keep safely in the preserve, surely?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


deportation




The context wasn't perfectly clear but I meant expelled from college, not from the country. IOTBW posters were mostly a college phenomenon, and while #killallmen isn't limited to colleges, I'm sure it's as common there as anywhere.


I like to think I could stand on principle enough that they don't deserve to be fully depersoned, just face the same consequences as equivalently-hateful people on the other side.


I do not share the interest in drawing a performative/satire/etc distinction, since such judgements are themselves so often biased. One can imagine the Russell conjugations there; one woman's satire is another man's violent manifesto, and so on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
11 years! What a performance, I appreciate the commitment to the bit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Genocides have a tendency to not repeat, so there's quite rarely "a history" of doing that kind of thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Your rules, applied fairly."


I don't think we should take them seriously. I think they should be tarred and feathered and expelled along with anyone that put up "it's okay to be white" posters. Trolls should be treated like trolls across the board, not given a scholarship on one side and treated like dogs on the other.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hardly anyone disputes that Jews have an outsized commercial and cultural impact on the world.




As Dave Chappelle put it, it's not a crazy thing to notice, it's a crazy thing to say out loud.


Even if "hardly anyone" disputes that, there are "a lot" that will get frothing mad at someone saying both George Soros and the Koch brothers might be less than good for society. But critiquing the Kochs, alone, they're fair game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Same. Something about the metabolism or focus at that age that dwindled over time. In grad school I'd still have that sometimes, but now I don't think I could do that absent-mindedly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But seriously, this autoformatting. Why is it designed around a use case where someone starts a numbered list with a number other than 1 but actually wants 1? When would that ever possibly happen? And what can one do to get around it?




IIRC, I'm not a programmer, it's been brought up before but it's part of the inherited codebase and apparently difficult to fix. Looking around it may be an issue with Markdown formatting, that both the motte and reddit use?


The easiest way around it is to just use lettered lists instead of numbered, and do nested lettering as you go. Maybe that spacing thing at the link will work? Let's try


    

  1. one
    2. 

  2. two

    

    
three
    3. 

  3. four
    4. 



Ah ha! It still won't do nested labeling correctly, but to get your 1, 2, 3 to number right, put four spaces in front of your 1a and 1b paragraphs. Or any other paragraphs that don't start with a list number.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They're basically all normal guys, plus rapey Kenneth and edgy Doug.




I have the strange sense that Doug is the rapey name and Kenneth would be edgy, and I have no clue why it would be that way. I've never known a Doug or a Kenneth! Anyways-




Anyway, if for whatever reason that locker room decided it wanted to actually be a co-ed discussion space instead, it would have a little problem, which is that any individual woman walking in would get the vibe — they're the barely tolerated outsider — and then leave unless they're like extra autistic/socially challenged.




Males in even slightly feminist spaces get the same feeling. Since The Motte moved off reddit I've spent more time at /r/blockedandreported than here, and while it's not "explicitly" feminist per se- one quickly finds oneself on the backfoot when certain issues or writers come up; say anything with disparate impact on men, or Julie Bindel. It has its fair share of type-B trolls, as well. And yet! There is some value to it. So I stay.


That said, there is still a line. Maybe Julie Bindel isn't quite equivalent to one of the JQ types that haunt The Motte. If Noel Ignatiev, Donald Moss, or even Tema Okun showed up, would I find it tolerable to stick around? Could I roll my eyes, downvote, and move on like with the JQ types? Maybe. But for how long? If they keep toeing the line, getting banned but coming back? Probably not.


A mod in a different forum once said that she didn't do a permanent ban "to not create a certain kind of martyr." Instead that particular problem returns on schedule, almost but not quite clockwork, to make an outrageous post and get banned again. That forum is small enough it doesn't matter. Maybe if it was only one, who showed up annually for a day or two, it wouldn't matter here, either. Alas.


I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll end it here. If you go, I'll miss your comments, though I completely understand why you'd find this place uncomfortable to stay. I do hope you'll be better than I would, in the alternative situation, and find it in you to stay.




but if the forum can tolerate holocaust denial I think it can also stretch itself to tolerate libtards.




That is one of the unfortunate side effects of moderation based largely, though not entirely, on tone. B&R shares that issue. The calm denier gets a pass, the gasket-blowing lib does not. They get a pass for calling Appalachians retards (it's not a direct insult of another comment, you see); I get a suspension for calling them a bigot. So it goes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


how much of a cost would you say you and your people have borne only to end up (statistically) at the bottom of the ladder?




I'm from a backwoods holler of a resource colony. The rate of interpersonal violence may be somewhat lower than the darker half of the melanin spectrum, but "my people" are still statistically at the bottom of the ladder in everything except kindergarten vaccination rates.


To answer your question directly, I think I'd be quite nihilistic about politics achieving anything at all. Hopefully I could recognize how much worse the alternatives could be (as I try to be, even while I rant that we could- easily- do so much better), but that wouldn't make me much happier about explicit racism (towards anyone). Or at least I hope I could still stick to the principle of the matter.




They mean what the people interpreting them thnk they mean, no more and no less




Well, not quite, we have a system designed with certain people to do the interpreting, balanced by having no direct enforcement mechanism. Harvard, UNC, Michigan, and Minnesota are doing no interpreting at all; they're flipping two middle fingers up at the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and everyone else who doesn't think racism is a good thing.


That is, everyone is free to ignore the Supreme Court unless the court has enough of the executive and downstream bureaucracy on their side to enforce decisions by pointing guns at kids. However, that was part of the bargain of avoiding explicit war, as you pointed out, and the racism we have now hasn't left people quite so radicalized.




I'm ok with headwinds for my kids, they'll be fine either way.




Indeed.




My bigger concern is that Affirmative action et al doesn't actually primarily help the people its meant to help.




Ain't that the truth? Squandering high-minded ideals and not even achieving what it should for those tradeoffs in return. What a moral offense that is!


I am not opposed to helping the less fortunate. I am opposed to enshrining and deifying race the way people have, and creating designated punching bags of society.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


From Founding to the Civil Rights movement was what 200 years give or take?




Why measure in time, and not lives? Or GDP, as reparation advocates want, with numbers larger than the wealth of the entire world?




Would 200 years of the things you don't like now worth 200 years of what black people had to go through in their 200 years? Or is that too great a moral price to pay?




Two wrongs do not make a right, so why would four centuries of opposing wrongs make a right? The past cannot be undone. Do the principles matter, or not? If the principles matter, then they shouldn't be violated over and over, no amount of violation fixes what's wrong. We are individuals, "created equal," "endowed with unalienable rights." And saddled with blood-debts and those rights left contingent on our protected class identities.


If the principles don't matter, than such arguments are bullshit and the problem isn't that we failed to live up to them, it's that we pretended they exist at all. But now that's moving away from concerns of moral improvement and into a suggestion of moral anti-realism.




I think being a white man in the US is pretty good even with whatever headwinds being faced.




It is, it could certainly be worse, and the social psychosis is a little less fevered than it was 2016-2023. And yet! Black-letter law says discrimination isn't allowed. And yet!


How many Supreme Court cases before Harvard and UNC and Michigan give up being racist? Or the state of Minnesota, apparently. Alas, they have taken the Jacksonian stance on such things.


I like it when laws mean things. I like it when words mean things.




I'd choose to be white over than black in a heartbeat from a flourishing point of view in the US right now and I don't see that changing particularly.




If the only choice is black or white, I too would choose white, even if that means zero chance of being Idris Elba and nonzero chance of being on the meth transformation list. But why limit the choice to those options, if choice is to be imagined? Anyone would choose to be born to a rich family rather than abjectly poor, given the choice. To be born in fair weather and healthy lands than next to an EPA brown site or tornado alley. Beautiful rather than deformed, smart rather than stupid, et cetera.


The point is we don't choose. Isn't the lesson from Rawls' veil that we don't want laws where such differences matter?


Moral luck rules the day. So shall it ever be. Unless we're aiming for Harrison Bergeron communism, we can only do so much to account for moral luck, and the more we account for it the further we are from those principles that supposedly matter to have failed.




But how much of a cost (if any at all) anyone person is willing to bear for the mistakes of Americans past, is going to be invariably a very personal thing.




The cost I am willing to bear for history has gotten much, much lower since becoming a parent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean America is pretty great in my opinion.




I haven't seriously tried to leave yet, so I must agree.




Moral improvement should have costs surely?




Cost, yes. In perpetuity, no. The largest costs should be opportunity costs- taking the moral slow route rather than the immoral fast route. Saving a drowning child should not imply that your great-grandchild is indebted to theirs, even if you also knocked the child into the river.




It's easy to go back and think we should have just killed them all. It probably would be easier.




Obviously the best "time machine" choice is to stop the first European that intended to take slaves from Africa. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.




America you will note, managed to not have the union destroyed




What came before is not what followed after. Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicanism lost to federalism. America emerged from that forge stronger in many ways and weaker in others, but most definitely changed.




The Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action and the like




America failed to live up to its founding ideals, and tried to repair that by carving away further.




The white guilt you speak of as a mental illness was vital in charting a course that has made great strides.




We're using that phrase differently and maybe I'm drawing the boundaries too narrowly to be truly fair. I would like to draw a bright line between people like William Lloyd Garrison and Tema Okun or Robin Diangelo. Or anyone else that has written positively of "critical race theory" rather than damning it to where it belongs: in the Valley of Hinnom next to the most odious theorists of Hitler and Mao and history's other monsters. What I mean by "white guilt" has been nothing but poison in the veins, harming the very people it claims to want to protect and everyone else in the process.


Perhaps I am relying too much on hindsight, and that "racism is good, actually" of modern progressives does have a true and consistent through-line with "maybe black and white people are reasonably equal" of the abolitionists. But I certainly hope not. Surely one should be able to call evil evil, and good good. Abolishing slavery is good. Suggesting that white people shouldn't be vaccinated to reduce the surplus population produce "health equity" is the vilest evil short of war. Somewhere in between is that line I can't quite define but am confident exists.




But assuming you think genocide is bad, the outcome has to be measured against that. Not against perfection.




I think many things are bad. Letting perfection be the enemy of good is bad, but I'm not sure that measuring against what society has declared the worst possible thing instead is much improvement in itself.


Genocide is terribly bad, of course. So is slavery.


Tiers of justice, ceding the commons to the lowest common denominator, deciding that racism (or sexism) is good so long as you target it at the right people, restricting the right of association based on certain protected classes but not other categories of those classes, so on and so forth are also bad. Less so. Does that make them reasonable prices to pay for moral improvement? Does that make a functional multicultural society? All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Whites had the nation you are envisaging and even more than that.




This assumes more continuity of people and culture than is advisable.




actually this makes us feel pretty bad when we look at in comparison to our theoretical national values.




When appealing to those national values and the ideals of the Founders, modern folk do tend to forget John Adams' ominous line- "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." And so we reap that failure mode.


If the rule brought you to this, of what use was the rule?


Or one of those other pithy lines, like "liberalism is not a suicide pact." A libertarian arguing for open borders is not a result of mental illness. For any other ideology, the root cause is at least mental illness adjacent. By extension, "white guilt" (and many other racial sicknesses) should be in the DSM.


There's a really nasty lesson here; that moral "improvement" has incredibly high costs for a culture. Either a culture has to be fully right and never commit even a single evil act, or go Full Evil and salt the earth behind you; anything in between tends to result in a blood curse.




The things you complain about are already the tat for white peoples tit! (so to speak!)




Sounds like a subcategory of Onlyfans, or an Aella stunt. English is funny.