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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Wow. Trump Derangement Syndrome has killed Tenacious D. On stage in Australia yesterday, when asked to make a birthday wish, Kyle said "Don't miss trump next time."

Today, Jack Black cancelled their tour and appears to have killed the band.

I've found the reactions of intense disappointment that Trump wasn't murdered to be really disappointing but unsurprising. My parents (who I was with when it happened and I broke the news to them) immediately expressed disappointment that he was still alive. Watching people post these sentiments publicly online as if they are completely unaware that advocating for the assassination of your political opponents is really bad and completely unacceptable has left me amazed. How can people not realize that it's a bridge too far? They're literally saying that to preserve democracy, they need to assassinate the leading candidate, a level of cognitive dissonance beyond anything I've seen.

That said, I also find the current cancelations hilarious. The very people who are calling Trump "literally hitler" are now pearl clutching that it's not okay to try kill Hitler. The catastrophizing wasn't acceptable before either - maybe this snapped people out of their delusions?

I was surprised by my own reaction, too. I was a lot happier that he survived, and a lot more impressed with his immediate response than I expected to be. Trump grew in my esteem a lot.

When some random schizo tried to kill nancy pelosi and ended up severely injuring her husband, plenty of people on the right spread some bizarre spurned gay lover conspiracy and made fun of the victim for it. There were people on this forum taking it somewhat seriously. I don't think any side gets a high ground on this.

Centrists get high ground on this.

I've been consistently anti-violence, anti-terrorism, anti-riot, anti-extremism, etc, my entire life. Every gives centrists crap for not getting things done, but some things are better undone, and some better things would actually get done if it were possible to get more sane centrist candidates elected.

I have the high ground Anakin. Don't try it.

I feel like this is a little too convenient.

Centrists get crap because they are perceived as supporting the status quo. Therefore, any sins that are part of the tapestry of the status quo get imputed to centrists, because whether they say they support them or not, they are perceived as being useful idiots for whoever has the power to make the status quo a certain way, and keep it that way.

If a libertarian ardently believes that taxes are theft, then centrists support government theft. If a dominionist theocrat believes that anything but a Christian government is a subversion of God's will, then centrists subvert God's will. If a woke progressive believes that any policy that is not aiming to end racism is itself racist, then centrists are racist.

I certainly think a kind of institutionalist centrism can have the high ground compared to partisan electoral politics in many cases, but I think telling people who believe in change of some kind that you have the high ground is going to fall on deaf ears.