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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)

What's something that you were wrong about?

I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.

Scott, as always, says it best:

My views evolved in something like the way Steve implicitly points at here: decriminalizing marijuana seemed to go okay, it seemed hypocritical and dumb for the law to be “marijuana is illegal but we won’t punish you for it in any way wink wink”, so (I thought) why not go all the way and legalize it? And the answer turns out to be: if it’s illegal but tolerated, then it’s supplied by random criminals; if it’s legal, it’s supplied by big corporations. And big corporations are good at advertising and tend to get what they want.

In any case, what were you wrong about?

it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)

Last time I just posted a top level comment, I got threatened-to-be-modded at. Perhaps people have too high expectations for these threads.

What's something that you were wrong about?

I was wrong to let politics run my life. It almost ruined the best relationship I've ever had, because I kept grinding away at the political differences between us, trying to finally show once and for all that leftists have gone crazy and were destroying everything. I kinda still sort of think that is true, but I learned that to be happy you gotta put this aside. Once I did that, I have had the best years of my life.

I was also wrong that there would be no end to the feminist escalation, 10 years ago, and for many years afterward, I thought that the future would be a boot stomping on men's faces for eternity, because both men and women feel more sympathy for women. I still can't stand feminists, but for what it's worth over the past couple of years there has seemed to be some return to normalcy, where not absolutely everything needs to be framed in terms of female oppression and we need to constantly be walking on eggshells for fear of being called out and fired from work.