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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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It does seem to be in dire straights doesn't it? Fortunately it has survived worse before and it will survive this. It survived the beginning of the 20th century for starters, when everyone knew the old political philosophies were dead and being replaced by glorious and vastly superior philosophies like communism and fascism. I think it can survive this ladies reboot (like it's worth watching without the trench warfare or pacific campaign). The thing you have to remember about liberalism is that it is a meta-political system designed to allow a bunch of people with competing political philosophies to unite, so even if it does go away for a bit, it will be back the instant some of the fascists realise they lack the numbers to crush the communists underfoot and vice versa.

I think the biggest problem with our current conception of liberalism is that most people aren't detached enough to be able to adhere to it. They saw liberalism as their team, and because it lacked anything like a defined aesthetic or culture beyond "whatever liberals nearby are doing right now" + "a sense of superiority and being the adult in the room" they decided whatever they did was liberalism as long as they trust the experts and cargo culted their way to (and were sabotaged into) the priestly monstrosity we have been suffering under. That's dying now, and good riddance. But liberalism as it existed outside of the last 20 years is going to be fine I think.

That said, liberalism is one of those institutional facts like democracy or Christmas that grow in strength through the public's acceptance of them, and the cargo cult version has done a lot of damage to the brand, so unless Trump and co aggressively retake it (which they might) it might disappear for a while. It's probably a good idea really, it gets it away from the stigma of the corrupted version.

This next paragraph I wrote first and then I rewrote it in a more motte friendly format, which helped it develop in a different direction, particularly something that I don't remember seeing anyone else in this thread express but when I was finished I reread this bit and realised I'd not hit the point I was originally aiming for, but I currently only have use of one arm and am full of drugs so consider it something like a Tldr that doesn't save any time or accurately represent the original - The shit currently on its way out was never liberalism, which is why people like me have had to call ourselves silly shit like true liberal or lockean liberal. For the past three decades we watched our ideology get turned into a fucking minstrel show complete with hambone and grease paint. Am I worried about liberalism now? No. Quiet or loud, I for one am happy to wait until the techno-reactionaries, gay space communists, block chain minarchists, influencer syndicalists and Keynesian necromancers of the future decide they can behave like adults and compromise a little to beat the other guys into submission.