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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Otherwise it does feel like complete control of social media plus financing plumbing had been accomplished.




Remember that about half of the Patrick McKenzie article is about an attempt by the SPLC and allies to debank conservatives which failed. See for example this post where he points out that you can tell that there have not been large-scale debankings for conservative political speech because rich Republicans still pay for their lunches in DC using Chase Sapphire Preferred.


There were three sets of contacts between the SPLC and the banks discussed in the article:


    

  1. Maintenance of a blacklist of extremist nonprofits that various donation platforms used to deny service. McKenzie points out that this blacklist was not widely used to deny basic banking services, because the culture that it is banking does not (and to a first approximation never did) outsource its conscience to the SPLC in the same way that the culture that is nonprofit fundraising did (and probably still does). In so far as the article contains criticism of how SPLC maintained the list, it is that it was underinclusive of extremist organisations that the SPLC found sympathetic (like left-coded terrorist orgs), not that it was overinclusive of mainstream right-wing voices.
    2. 

  2. Fraudulently opening bank accounts in the names of straw orgs in order to pay off the informants used to maintain (1)
    3. 

  3. Mostly after the foundation of Change the Terms in 2018, an explicit pressure campaign to kick specific MAGA voices (including the Trump campaign) off the internet, including pressure to debank them. This wasn't done using an electronic blacklist, it involved a series of FTF meetings between activists and bank employees. What was said at those meetings was a combination of "if you don't do what we say, you are a bad person and should feel bad, in particular because you personally will have contributed to black people being murdered by extremists" and "if you don't do what we say, we will call you racist on the internet".
    4. 



McKenzie is carefully vague about the extent to which (3) succeeded - even more so re. banks than re. big social media platforms. But if there had been widespread debankings after January 6th in response to SPLC pressure, or even with no need for SPLC pressure in the climate that existed in early January 2021, he could have said so. What he says is that there were widespread social media bans, and that some bank accounts that were set up specifically to fundraise for the insurrectionists were closed. If you compare what he says about the post-Jan 6th environment in the US to what he says about the debankings in response to the Canadian trucker convoy, the logical reading is that McKenzie does not think there was a Canada-style debanking of conservatives after Jan 6th, but is not willing to explicitly claim it didn't happen because of the difficulty in verifying a negative.


I'm not going to claim that this was a storm in a teacup. Some bad things happened, and some similar bad things did not happened. Everything in the latest SPLC expose is consistent with the picture in McKenzie's first debanking post, which is that "Americans were denied access to core banking services based on right-wing political speech" is one of the things that didn't.


The world where a coalition of anti-freeze peach leftists controlled bank compliance departments in the way they controlled Silicon Valley Trust & Safety departments looks very different to the one we lived in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Everything is bank fraud" is a lot less troublesome than "everything is securities fraud" in that bank fraud still requires the same specific steps (a false statement of fact, made to a bank, under circumstances where you can convince a jury that it was intentional) that it always did. People don't usually do that unless either they are committing fraud or there is some other underlying wrongdoing they are trying to conceal.* Whereas securities fraud lawsuits have been brought based on innocent behaviour including true-but-potentially-misleading public statements, omissions, and honest managerial incompetence. On the other hand, "everything is bank fraud" is more dangerous because bank fraud is a crime whereas securities fraud is civil.


So the real argument about "everything is bank fraud" is


    

  • On the plus side, it makes complex white-collar cases easier to bring and therefore allows serious criminals who would otherwise skate on Chewbacca defenses to be convicted.
    • 

  • On the minus side, it turns a lot of non-criminal (like paying hush money to a hooker) or less-criminal (like small-time tax evasion) wrongdoing into federal crimes with a 30-year statutory maximum sentence because you lie to the bank about it.
    • 



There are two other practices which make this worse in practice:


    

  • Prosecutors pushing cases (both to poorly represented defendants and to the media and public) based on cumulating statutory maximum sentences across multiple counts, when the actual sentence will be a single sentence in line with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (and the guideline sentence for a first offence of bank fraud is probation unless the loss to the bank exceeds $15k).
    • 

  • The fact that "fraud-for-housing" (lying on a loan application to get a loan you wouldn't otherwise qualify for, but do make a good-faith effort to repay) is almost never prosecuted unless there is a quick default (in which case it looks much more like "fraud-for-profit" where someone is planning to abscond with the loan money) - even if there is an eventual default with a crystallised loss to the bank. So some types of fraud-for-housing (like the occupancy misrepresentation Letitia James was charged with) become common behaviour and are magnets for selective prosecution.
    • 



* I don't know why Trump systematically and spectacularly lied about the value (and even the square footage) of his personally-owned real estate in the case that led to the Letitia James lawsuit given that both the Trump Org and the banks insist that it didn't affect the credit decision, but normal businesses absolutely do not do this - partly because it is a crime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In every jurisdiction where the issue has been subject to democracy (mostly countries outside the US, but now including red and purple states which have had abortion referenda post-Dobbs) the voters behave a lot more sensibly than the advocates. "Abortion legal until the baby is pronounced alive by the duty paediatrician" is not an electorally serious position except in places where trolling conservatives is more important than policymaking. "Abortion banned from day one and the law actually enforced" is not an electorally serious position in post-sexual revolution societies. If it is still the case in ten years time that every non-referendum state in America is at one of those two poles, it will be because state-level democracy no longer works.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I tend to be a federalist on a meta-level, and so I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice. Especially since I assume a federal ban, or a return to federal permissiveness will probably continue to have a corrosive effect on American politics.




This isn't going to stick. In a world where abortions were minor surgeries and where travelling across state lines to have the surgery was (a) hard to conceal and (b) likely to be a long way because abortion policy would follow the red/blue divide, which is approximately sectional, rather than being an idiosyncratic feature of each state, this could stick. But in the world we live in, most abortions involve a small number of pills which can be posted from a legal clinic in a blue state, or in extremis illegally by a private citizen who obtained the pills with the tacit approval of her blue-state government. So either the federal government enforces laws* against mail-order abortion pills, or red state abortion laws are unenforceable. And enforcing those laws against the wishes of the (people and governments of) the blue states where the federal crimes are being committed is likely to become an ongoing ICE-in-Minneapolis level ugly political standoff.


Admittedly all this is an improvement because it takes federal abortion policy away from SCOTUS and puts it back into democratic territory.


* One relevant law is already on the books - the Comstock act prohibits sending abortifacients through the US mail. My understanding is that there is also a broad power for the FDA to restrict prescribing of drugs which are at risk of being illegally diverted without the need for new primary legislation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is she's talking to you, your preferred pronouns are "you/your". If she needs a third person pronoun on the first date, it implies she gossips about first dates, so not a keeper. See, easy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By its own lights, it's supposed to be the for-real, actual undistorted picture of reality, no myth-making or noble lies.




The same is true of Christianity if you actually believe in it, which by all accounts Tim Keller does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It isn't many votes in the grand scheme of things, and they are low-value votes because they are not in a purple state.


The Argument did some issue polling and came to the conclusion that both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine messages were unpopular in general, and more unpopular with independents than partisans. This is consistent with my practical experience of British politics, so I am inclined to trust the results.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As long as the GOP is still MAGA, Ukraine will be a left-coded cause. Trump and even more so Vance have put a lot of work into staking out not-Ukraine as a MAGA cause, and politics is reactive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do you have any idea how rare this sort of psychological self-awareness is? You are nothing like representative of pretty much any major movement that's ever existed. That's true of more or less each of us here.




You don't need this kind of psychological self-awareness to bow out after an electoral defeat. "The people have spoken, the ungrateful bastards. I have heard them and will retire from front-line politics and cash in as a lobbyist" is an ego-protective alternative.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A correct autopsy (the party needs to publicly and noisily repudiate Defund the Police and TWAW and boast about the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the work left) would be even more controversial within the Democratic Party than either of those possibilities.


This is a difference between the UK and US centre-left - centrist Labourites bellyfeel that the left of the Labour party is mostly useful because you can punch them as a costly signal of alignment with the median voter, centrist Democrats see the left as the conscience of the party.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very much agreed - parties don't renominate losers.


Since the Civil War, the only people to be renominated after losing in a Presidential general election were Cleveland and Trump (as former one-term Presidents), William Jennings Bryan (as the obvious leader of a powerful faction in the Gilded Age Democratic party, and also as a man who was only 36 when nominated the first time), and Nixon. Nixon is a precedent for renominating Harris, in that he ran and lost the first time as a sitting VP, in an election that was extremely nasty and generally perceived as extremely close. But it isn't exactly a good precedent, and in any case Harris lacks Nixon's political talent and pre-Watergate broad popularity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In the current year, neither. Both the expressed and revealed preference of men who are not pumping-and-dumping is for the highest-IQ woman they can get (other things being equal, which they rarely are).


Historically, men were supposed to (and presumably did) want a woman who wouldn't talk back to them in public. Pretending to be dumb on a date, particularly if the man knows you are not really dumb, is signalling that you are that kind of woman.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You don't see a concerned propaganda effort to stop men going to the gym, which is, at least in part, a Red Queen's Race too.




In the (UK establishment lib) circles I move in, I see a mild concerted attempt to ensure that gymbro culture does not rise in status. As several fitness commentators have pointed out, there is a default message that you don't always see in a fish-in-water kind of way in "blue" culture (including the British traditional elite - even the parts of it that are not left-wing) that endurance events are higher-status than strength, although I don't know if it is the result of a concerned propaganda effort or if it is spontaneous and bottom-up.


To put it more bluntly, I actually believe that lifting heavy is for niggaz of all races, but I have no idea how I came to this opinion and I have no rational basis for holding it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(A very simple test, if a woman being told that she is just like her partner would make her feel proud and happy then her partner is respectable)




This is incorrect because what is respectable in women and what is respectable in men are different. In particular, giving a woman too many compliments for her personality without complimenting her looks sends the implied message that she is ugly, in a way which wouldn't for a man.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"women are attracted to dominance" is very useful as a guiding principle that points you in the right direction.




This one is particularly useful because the dating advice in mainstream sources has been filtered to make feminists feel good about themselves and therefore men who get their dating advice from mainstream sources are told the opposite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In fact, I'd be more wary of an urban young woman who somehow decided to go "based". It may not be an issue but it seems they somehow couldn't fit in, either because they are very disagreeable and contrarian, or they had to rely on this strategy to stand out and attract men, which is also suspicious.




I think it is also relevant that both wokism and the "based" right are malignant from a normie or establishment liberal perspective. If your worldview is normie or establishment liberal, you shouldn't date a wokist or a "Nazi", excluding the scenario where you are a man going for a pump-and-dump in which case the fact that she is a human being with thoughts and feelings is mostly irrelevant anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The high-testosterone eastern European woman who is a hard-charging bank executive by day and a dominatrix by night is too memetic to check. I assumed she would look like she was on the Romanovian dodgeball team, but she is reasonably pretty and doesn't even have a visible manjaw.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
All major Christian denominations discourage interfaith marriage - not being unequally yoked is in the Bible. Catholicism explicitly discourages interdenominational marriage, because it creates conflicts about which denomination children will be raised in. Islam only permits interfaith marriage if it is a muslim man marrying a non-muslim woman who he does not intend to treat as a human being. Ethnic religions like Judaism discourage interfaith marriage for different reasons, but it becomes a load-bearing part of the religion and associated culture. And in a world where most people actually believed in their religion, religion is a proxy for core moral values.


So "Don't date someone with different core moral values" is lindy, and the reasons why it is good advice, at least as regards potentially babymaking relationships, still apply just like they always did. (Either one of you will have to abandon passing on values to their children, or you will end up raising the children as moral relativists.) And in the 21st century people define their core moral values by their politics, not their religion. Someone who actually believes in wokism would struggle to co-parent with someone who doesn't. Obviously the same is true of the political-religious hybrid that is red tribe evangelicalism, and I would say it is true to a lesser extent of red-hat wearing MAGAism and establishment liberalism.


There is a separate issue that left-wing women believe, correctly, that right-wing political views are correlated with anti-feminist attitudes that the women in question consider misogynistic (and to a lesser extent with views that really are misogynistic), and that right-wing women believe, correctly, that left-wing political views are correlated with feminist misandry. I'm a liberal, and even my dating strategy included an early filter to rule out feminists. So politics are an actually-useful filter in a world where there are enough apparent options that you can afford to use a noisy filter.


Finally, there is a signalling aspect. Publically stating that you won't engage in interfaith dating is a signal that:


    

  • You are committed to your own faith
    • 

  • You are dating for potential marriage, not just for casual sex.
    • 



Both of these are signals you would want to send. If Tinder existed in the 1950's, it would provide a filter so Catholics could avoid seeing Protestant profiles and vice versa, lots of people would use it, and there would be a mild stigma to not using it.


Putanumonit's The skewed and the screwed is a good discussion of the negative practical consequences of this.




but they replaced the word with something called the Tories




"Tories" refers to members and supporters of the Conservative party - it is an informal term used both as a self-descriptor and as a slur, dating back to the era where the Whigs and Tories were aristocratic factions rather than organised political parties. I doubt the chick in question is using the word accurately - I assume she would be even less likely to date a Reform or Restore supporter than a Conservative.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As discussed below, no Europeans think of themselves as white in a politically relevant sense. We think of ourselves as English/Irish/German etc, like to think we can distinguish different European sub-populations visually, and find the fact that some of the lesser breeds without the law (Kipling was talking about the Boers here, not the blacks) have the same skin colour as us morally irrelevant.


Historically the superordinate identity that Europeans reached for when they wanted one was Christendom, not whiteness. (Whiteness didn't work, because the actual outgroup was Muslim Arabs and Turks, who are no more swarthy than southern Europeans). There is now an alternative left-coded superordinate identity - the EU is a political community that can be the locus of civic nationalism. But neither Christian nationalism nor EUism are popular among European nationalists compared to the nationalisms of individual countries or secessionist regions. (Single-issue anti-Islamism is, which could be considered an extension of Christian nationalism) White nationalism is an American invention, developing in a context where you wanted to outgroup 15% of the native population but couldn't reasonably claim they were foreign.


The wogs do begin at Calais, but Christian (and post-Christian) wogs are not enemies by default. Heck, even the snail-munching, sexual deviant frogs have been on our side for 120 years now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Internal divisions hurt political parties. If the party is divided about an issue normie voters do care about, it makes it look like they don't know what they will do if elected. If the party is divided about an issue normie voters don't care about (like Israel-Palestine), it makes then look like out-of-touch political obsessives. If the party is divided about personalities with no obvious political valence, it makes them look incompetent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Victorian era in the English-speaking world has a reputation for bad sexual hangups. It is the period where Americans started calling cocks roosters in case they were mistaken for the male organ (that happened) and put skirts on piano legs so they weren't sexually alluring (that probably didn't). It is the era where British wives were encouraged to "give little, give seldom, and give grudgingly" (the advice manual is real, but was intended as satire - it just isn't clear what it was a satire of) and when the French said that BDSM was "la vice anglaise" and insinuated that the British were so sexually repressed that we couldn't enjoy vanilla sex.


I have no idea how well-deserved this reputation was, but it definitely exists. "Copy Victorian strategies for socialising the sexes with each other" is going to get laughed out of court as a result.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Apples and oranges my friend.




The preferred terminology is "whisky and milk"


Although "apples and oranges" actually works - apples are climacteric and so can continue to ripen after picking, whereas oranges and other citrus fruits are not and need to be picked fully ripe and eaten quickly. But this is not obvious because (unlike, say, bananas) intentionally ripening apples in your fruit bowl is not a big part of how you eat them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They develop a literally insane view of female attractiveness and will be completely and totally unable to rationally discuss it under any circumstances.




I think most women have a sane view of female attractiveness, despite being completely and totally unable to discuss it directly. 4s know that a man with a choice will pick the 7 every time. "Don't go out on the pull with a significantly hotter girlfriend" is standard female dating advice. "What does she see in him/he see in her?" type calling out of apparent SMV differences in relationships are common gossip, and require accurate SMV assessment to participate in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Second, the trope of the man who ditches his wife for some young hottie is kind of like stranger kidnappings and police shootings of unarmed black men. These things get a lot of attention because they resonate with peoples' emotions but in reality they're pretty unusual. Most men in middle age simply don't have the combination of looks, social status, and wealth which would allow them be attractive to young women. Most young women don't want a guy who is balding; out-of-shape; broke because he's paying alimony and child support; etc. Of course it's different if the guy is highly successful, is in good shape; etc. ;or if he's mediocre but the woman has a thing for older guys; but these are both very unusual.




Even the man who is rich enough to do so effectively doesn't usually leave the mother of his children to marry his mistress unless the first wife kicks him out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It would be like 60-40 today.




Worse than that because women are affirmative-action eligible.