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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Like the last amren article I read, its the woke right cobbling together a smattering of aborted syllogisms, half-truths, and outright falsities to advance even more identity politics. Its not completely devoid of truth and, especially towards the end, political insight. But on balance it comes off as whining. Whites are, in fact, increasing their real wages. Middle earning whites are dwindling, but only because they're becoming the upper earning whites. I have about as much sympathy for them as I do for laggard blacks: the government should probably help, but get your shit together.

My most pressing current thought is this guy needs to read more history. About 400 years ago, when the requisite technology was fresh, Dutch Jews whose ancestors had recently fled Portugal moved to proto-Brazil, then Surinam, then NYC, chasing state alliances and riches. Most people don't give two fucks about race, even if they think HBD is true.

Modern white advocacy holds that race is the most salient identity today.

Massive claim, and almost certainly a waste of thought.

For non-whites, though, race trumps class solidarity.

Perhaps, but they are also wasting their time and thoughts. The smart ones overcome this concern and do well on average.

Progressives admire patriotism in non-white countries, even as they scorn it in whites.

While its true that Progressive definitely scorn it in (jingoistic coded) whites, even reddit regularly vocalizes the inherent racism of modern Japan, let alone Israel.

More broadly, a person’s fate is generally linked to that of his political and ethnic community.

Such a pessimistic an narrow view of what is possible. However, I think convincing readers that this is true is the point of this rhetoric.

White Americans are essentially a stateless people.

Hysterical whining.

Whites have no real stake in [Americas] success as a political entity

Pure bullshit.

because there is no respectable “alternate” political expression, whites are left with Old Glory and the Constitution.

I think this is the nexus of confusion. The author seems to have no idea how prescient, capacious, and wise the founders vision for a future America was, especially for the time.

Perhaps Steve Sailer put it best: “White Americans are behaving more and more like how Americans Indians have long behaved, as a defeated and despairing race.” It is a political and spiritual defeat, but its consequences are like those inflicted on Germany after the Second World War.

This is the most deformed aborted fetuses of a syllogism. For one, I blame American Indians for their own regressive attitudes. Yeah, they're a conquered people. So am I, if we push the clock back far enough. Open a casino already. Second, Germany roared back to success post WWII. Its 1% of world population, yet one of the best places to be born. Wow. Such consequences.

I think it depends on the type of identity awareness. There’s definitely a time to be an individual and a time to circle the wagons. The individual can do great things, certainly. But when you’re in electoral politics, ten individuals lose to a group of five if the five acts as a bloc. This is exactly the issue. Whites have been taught that they are evil if they form a voting bloc over their race and racial interests. Other minorities are allowed to do so. And thus when things like DEI are decided, blacks, Hispanics, women and others are there demanding to be included in the program. Whites aren’t there and thus cannot push back even though the entire process is based on removing whites from coveted positions in the workplace and schools to give them to others. Is that working? Are the political needs of whites being considered in these programs?

But if you entertain one groups racial grievances you have to entertain all groups racial grievances. That door gets shoved wide open. Yes, in more recent times some whites have been vilified and discriminated against in some awful cases. Welcome to the club. Now lets slam that door in Ibram Kendis face, dismantle such programs (as Trump recent initiated), and move towards a legally colorblind, merit based society. Organizing around race mistakes the map for the territory in most cases. The political needs of whites aren't inherent to them being white. Not all whites are equally susceptible to opioid addiction or welfare dependency. Whiteness certainly doesn't explain who those people are. And whoever they are, they have agency and thus responsibility. Government help is not out of the question, but skin color is a bad heuristic. And keep in mind that all this grievance is in the face of increasingly median prosperity, while bring the most decisive voting block, over-represented in positions of power.

Because we aren’t there and are rapidly running in the opposite direction. In 1990 we could have more or less said something like that without a problem. But as it sits today, the racial, sexual, and gender groups are much larger and stronger with more group cohesion than ever before. To ignore this simply means choosing not to have your political interests matter. Nobody cared about the problems of poor whites until said poor whites began to organize themselves into the alt-right movement and other similar groups. Nobody cared what white men wanted until they began to see themselves as a group that has needs and has every right to get those needs met. Nobody worried about what Christians wanted until they started uniting around the ideas of Christian nationalism.

Once it became clear that whites were going to demand that DEI stop, sure people started paying attention to it. Before that point, it was taken as a given that since blacks were watching and voted as a group, that it was politically wise to make sure to not anger the Black vote because they vote as a block.

Unilateral disarmament is quite simply deciding to lose on principle.

Because we aren’t there and are rapidly running in the opposite direction.

And what you are saying is that we should run faster?

That instead of pushing back against the identitarian left we should instead embrace thier values as our own?

Sounds to me like it's you who is pushing for "unilateral disarmament", not @justmotteingaround.

I disagree simply because we are and have been running in the direction of more identity politics rather than less. Trump might well represent a step away from that, but for how long? If we start back up again, will not being at the table be good? When blacks are allowed to get boosts from the government as minority owned businesses, in a downturn, why does it make sense that white owned businesses can’t say anything about the government choosing those businesses when everyone needs work?

we are and have been running in the direction of more identity politics rather than less.

And you believe that this is a good thing?