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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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If you will pardon some hysterical left wring political doomerism:

I think I'm having an AI risk moment, and you guys are doing it to me!

I was always kinda skeptical of leftist claims re. right wing fascism in the US.

Yes, claiming the election was stolen is a little ehhhhh, but it is also just more traditional right wing signaling about corrupt institutions and blah blah blah.

Yes, circling the wagons around Trump and friends when they were doing clearly sketchy/criminal shit was a little fucked, but could I honestly say the left or the libs wouldn't do the same thing in exchange for the presidency? Of course not.

Yes, conservative justices are openly political and have only enough respect for precedent to secure the fig leaf with blue tack, but come on now. Roe v Wade, anyone?

The reaction of right wing populists, elected officials, intellectuals, and media regarding our lovable insane maga hammerbro doing a little trolling are making me wig out. People I thought were wrong but serious passing around clear bullshit about gay escorts, pretending the dude wasn't Q radicalized, and laughing it off. It's one thing for the lunatic fringe to do that shit, it's another entirely when the largest single conservative news network and most popular intellectuals are doing it.

Then I come here for a dose of sanity, and I have to dig DEEP into the replies before I find anyone positing the plainly obvious: that if you say your political opponents are child rapist election stealing perverts, some section of the population will actually believe the literal words you are saying and "take action".

Maybe I'm just having a little moment and will regress to mean in a couple weeks, but this particular incident has shifted me from "no" to "They would if they could" regarding conservatives in this country, at least temporarily.

I was already armed because I think guns are fun and cool and are never gonna be banned regardless of how many schools get shot up so I might as well have fun, now I'm shopping around for my local John Brown chapter.

(also, if you are apolitical or don't mind some leftism from time to time and are looking for a gun club, the John Brown Gun Club and SRA are actually really chill and safe, so far. Much better than the local non-denominational clubs. I haven't been flagged once by a dude shoulder carrying his AR with closed bolt and magazine loaded yet, which is a damn sight better than the public ranges in SC.)

One last thing while I'm thinking about it: Dude once showed up to the range with the sickest Springfield armory 1911 I've ever seen, all nickel and smooth as glass and beautiful as fuck, one of their 2000$ fancy jobs. Predictably everyone gathered around and asked to see it like a bunch of 7 year olds for a foil pokemon card, then dude turns around and fucking holds me up with it practically. Scary as fuck. He let me shoot it afterwards though, so that was something.

The red and blue cultures are qualitatively asymmetrical. Blue youths protest, sometimes en masse and sometimes in semi-orderly fashion. Red youths might attend a rally or organized protest, but the red protests pretty much started with Charlottesville and stopped with Jan 6. What you’re seeing is the lizardman’s constant on the right, the equivalent of the parade SUV massacre guy or the congressional softball shooter.

As for Mr. Pelosi’s friend David, I have yet to hear a coherent story from the left media which does fit that phone call, and the metadata on his blog is imposter levels of sus.

I don't see it that way. Charlottesville was a predominantly blue tribe protest, dissident blue tribe vs mainstream blue tribe where as the reason Jan 6th looms so large in the national psyche is that it was a red tribe protest that demonstrated a capability that the blue tribe didn't think the reds had.

The conventional wisdom is that protests need organization, corporate sponsorship, buy-in from the local attorney general, police forces etc... The idea of Trump supporters being able to not only organize a protest without such support but to do so in contested territory, to walk into the Democratic Party's holy of holies, and walk out with the high priestess' altar scared the fuck out them. Hence the outsize response by the FBI and all the talk from @ymeskhout and various others about how Jan 6th is the greatest threat to democracy since 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.

all the talk from @ymeskhout and various others about how Jan 6th is the greatest threat to democracy since 9/11 or Pearl Harbor

You have a nasty habit of making shit up about me

There’s been a handful of major red tribe protests since then, notably the trucker protests.

Yes and before then, but those aren't the ones being discussed.

The claim @DuplexFields claim that red tribe protests started with Charlottesville and ended with Jan 6th is patently false unless one is using an extremely unconventional definition of both "red tribe" and "protest".

Charlottesville was a predominantly blue tribe protest, dissident blue tribe vs mainstream blue tribe

I'm aware of your thesis about the "dissident/far/alt right" actually being leftists in rebellion, but come on, isn't this a reach? I understand that actual Blue Tribers don't have to agree, but this is too contrarian.

[Warning: highly online jargon]

Back when Reddit’s The_Donald was highly active, around the time of Hillary being appointed by the party over Bernie, we got a flood of salty Berniebros who were actively anti-Hillary and becoming walkaway/blackpilled re the Democratic Party establishment.

These were blue tribers who didn’t follow their party into the embrace of corporations and the intelligence-military-industrial complex, and who saw corporate media as the propaganda wing of the neocon❤️neolib New World Order. You can still see them bringing their memetic energy to patriots.win, The_Donald’s home in exile.

I don't think it's a reach at all, If anything Richard Spencer and the rest of the Taki's Mag Tiki-torch crew are central examples of what I'm talking about. IE a bunch of University of Chicago and UC Berkley Black Bloc types who arbitrarily decided one that that "oh we going to be right wingers now" without making any substantial changes to their beliefs or rhetoric. They thought they could "Unite The Right" by showing up at protest over a Confederate monument and being all like "Greetings fellow kids white nationalists" but they badly misread the crowd (both the opposition and their ostensible allies) because they were a bunch of University of Chicago and UC Berkley Black Bloc types who where completely out of their element.

"Blue tribe and red tribe" are different from "leftist and non-leftist". I would not be surprised if a supermajority of the 200ish people there were acculturated Blue Tribe types who had gotten themselves black-pilled over some forbidden knowledge.