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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   32608 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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We can add not owning stocks to the list of RW life advice that includes not going to college, working at the nail factory, marrying an 170 pound woman, dumpster diving for yogurt, and not getting vaccinated.

https://x.com/L0m3z/status/1899623568650145985

(Yeah I know he's "joking" but what's the joke?)

  • -46

I first thought he meant don't own a single 'stock award'. It's standard financial advice to not correlate your investments with your work.

Boo outgroup

I feel like we're in the position the Left was with wokeness in 2004. They told themselves it's just some performative radicalism in the ivory tower, not impacting the real world. And then it went from too insignificant to comment on to too strong to suppress. Now they're wishing they had strangled the baby in the crib.

So I think it's worth talking about.

  • -10

I mean, this happened with the Right during Obama's second term. We've been undeniably living with it since 2016.

Now they're wishing they had strangled the baby in the crib.

This is probably a true statement about the leadership of the Democratic party. It definitely isn't true about "the Left" unless you've started using that word to refer to libertarians for some reason.

It is worth talking about! There’s a lot you could say about the role that the stock market plays in the right wing imagination, its relation to anti-elitist attitudes, etc. You could turn that into a great post. But you have to actually write that post. You can’t just post a bare twitter link and say “take a look at these jackasses”.

The joke is that the market is collapsing and if you're like Buffet and liquidated everything into real assets you sold the top and get to laugh at the panicked moonboys.

It's trolling dressed in envy of a simple life and you took the bait.

This is not what we're looking for when it comes to a top level post in the CWR thread.

We ask that such posts be substantive and have a semblance of effort put into them, and if you're going to link to something, we except you to provide your own commentary. Pointing and laughing doesn't count.

This is a pretty good example of a low-effort "boo outgroup" post. From the rules:

There are literally millions of people on either side of every major conflict, and finding that one of them is doing something wrong or thoughtless proves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.

I think I have heard the name "Lomez" before. I have no idea who they are, or why they are a good representative for the "Right Wing" generally, or why this meme tweet is indicative of "Right Wing Life Advice". I think it's probably possible to describe a coherent category of "Right Wing Life Advice" and describe central examples of that category; I do not think "not going to college, working at the nail factory, marrying an 170 pound woman, dumpster diving for yogurt, and not getting vaccinated" would be a reasonable summation of that category, but if that's the argument, you should put some effort into proactively providing evidence to support it.

...and due to my "e" key being broken, @self_made_human beat me to it. Consider his warning seconded.

He's most famous for getting doxxed a while back:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-guardian-doxxes-my-editor-unveiling-him-as-cultured-witty-athletic-handsome-family-man/

Nail factory:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GkFn4c0WkAA7NyX?format=jpg&name=medium

170 pound woman:

https://x.com/ScottMGreer/status/1898109126024007903

Aside from the other criticisms of your posts (which are substantial) something that i find consciously absent from this discussion is the discussion of height.

170 lbs on somone who is 4 foot 6, is very different from 170 lbs on somone who is 5 foot 8. Maybe the the whole being-an-incel problem would resolve itself if you were just willing to ask a woman like Brooke, Annsley, or Marinna here out, instead of pining after Twitch thots and OnlyFans Starlets while bitching about having to live in a society.

5 foot 8, 170 pound women are rather rare, aren't they? Also they are rather unlikely to be attracted to the sort of men who follow such advice in the first place. These are just statistical facts.

Also, keep in mind that such a woman very easily becomes a 200 or 220 pound woman after childbirth(s).

Not in my experience no.

You, @AlexanderTurok, and others are talking about a hypothetical 170 pound women as if you are imagining some barely mobile walmart scooter jockey when the reality is much closer to the picture i just linked.

"Post Childbirth" also implies, children and all that entails which renders all the concerns about incel-dom, finding a mate, fertility, etc... moot.

Since you gave a response I decided to not be lazy and converted 5 foot 8 to centimeters after all. I'll concede that you have a point. Still, I'm pretty sure that most 170-pound women are shorter than that, and the ones that are indeed that tall get, I guess, usually quickly snapped up by high-status big men specifically seeking out women of such proportions.

The pictures you posted are blocked by Cloudflare, so I can't comment on them.

Regarding inceldom, again, I don't know who this Lomez guy is or what the wider context was of him giving the advice of pairing up with 170-pound women. I suspect this advice boils down to "ignore the factor of sexual attraction when looking for a mate", which I find questionable at best.

I don't know who this Lomez guy is or what the wider context was of him giving the advice of pairing up with 170-pound women.

The linked post wasn't his. It was from some guy called "Labrador Skeptic".

I suspect this advice boils down to "ignore the factor of sexual attraction when looking for a mate", which I find questionable at best.

I've got to say, I find this whole discussion kind of hilarious, now that I've done the maths (not American, so I don't think in pounds), as I find (average-white-height) women of that weight quite attractive.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m willing to concede that in certain narrow social circumstances it’s advisable to move to a small Illinois town if you find work at the local nail factory. But these are indeed narrow.

Do American leftwingers think that men should be allowed to shun fat women? I mean legally yes, but morally. From my understanding of American discourse around fat women, the 'fat pride movement' (I do not remember the exact term) is left coded.

If I am correct, then attacking rightists for normalizing fat women is kinda meaningless, if both sides do it.

attacking rightists for normalizing fat women is kinda meaningless, if both sides do it.

Such an annoying way to think...

Don't post low-effort comments whose only purpose is to express disagreement or your low opinion.

Uh, I can give a confident “no” to that question.

Do you mean merely shunning fat women should be banned?

The question already excluded that.

My bad.

Do American leftwingers think that men should be allowed to shun fat women? I mean legally yes, but morally.

Traditionalist-progressive thought posits that the only worth women have is their beauty (and it is the social role of men to offer the highest price for this service). Progressivism privileges women at the expense of men, so reducing the quality of the service men are forced to accept while not reducing the price for such means, in a zero-sum society/economy, more power and resources for the more beautiful. QED.

I understand what you mean, but i resent the use of the term "traditionalist" to describe this tendency, when actual tradition explicitly rejects the idea that beauty is of primary importance in favor of motherhood and homemaking.

There used to be a whole genre of fiction praising men who choose plain moral women over femmes fatales, and this general wisdom is so hard to kill that it even bubbles up in modern fiction (to wit, Knives Chau's obvious moral superiority over Ramona Flowers).

BAPism and other such Nietzchean ersatz reject in part this wisdom in favor of more base passions, but they needn't do so and the devil is in the details. The whole internal contradiction of that movement is a known problem that they haven't managed to deal with yet, mostly bursting out as that constant tension between Christians and neo-pagans.

Hence I believe it important to name things accurately given how tricky this philosophical entanglement is.

when actual tradition explicitly rejects the idea that beauty is of primary importance in favor of motherhood and homemaking

Kind of like actual progressivism, which also explicitly rejects the idea that beauty is of primary importance in favor of the exact opposite of those things.

I'm aware of the steelmen on both sides; I'm also aware of what they tend to mean in practice when the rubber of ideology meets the road of rational self-interest.

Which is why BAPism and other such Nietzchean ersatz are full-bore "don't bother with the plain girl who actually gets along with you, go for the hottest chick you can" (which is exactly how progressives treat men, but replace "hottest" for "richest"). The childhood friend never wins in anime partially for this reason.

And I'd actually say they're correct to do so for a significant subset of women who share the same level of self-interestedness. Married couples were seldom friends- and I'd actually say that, for a lot of people, the suggestion that they should be is an outright lie (which comes from the liberals, not trads/progs). A set amount of challenge (in a predictable and well-defined way) in a relationship can be healthy.

There used to be a whole genre of fiction praising men who choose plain moral women over femmes fatales, and this general wisdom is so hard to kill that it even bubbles up in modern fiction (to wit, Knives Chau's obvious moral superiority over Ramona Flowers).

Although in the movie Knives Chau gets tossed and the Good Ending involves Scott getting Ramona. My take on the movie (I haven't read the comic) is that the screenwriters want to, but don't explicitly, condemn the Scott-Knives relationship as inappropriate because she is still in school and he isn't.

Also, I don't think Ramona is supposed to hotter than Knives in the movie - her most prominent feature apart from being taller than Knives (who IIRC is tiny) is her electric pink buzz-cut hair - this is not something that is attractive to most hetrosexual men. Ramona is supposed to fun (unspoken subtext - slutty) in a way which an Asian-Canadian middle class teenager is not.

I do not believe most heterosexual men are going to classify her haircut as an explicit turnoff.

Ramona's danger hair definitely classifies her as casual sex material rather than wife material; she is not the kind of girl you bring home to mom.

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It’s a good comic, especially for someone starting college. Fun, funny, and thematically cohesive. I highly recommend it.

It’s also not a rom-com.

Characters comment on how the age gap makes Scott kind of creepy from the beginning. This is not moralist condemnation, because this is a comedy. Scott is being set up as goofy and likable but also pathetic and self-absorbed. From this springs the entire plot.

Likewise, Ramona is supposed to be fun and hot and a walking red flag. Yes, that includes the hair (which you might be misremembering). If you don’t think her look would be catnip to the Scotts of the world, you’re delusional.

There’s a particularly good bit near the end which may or may not have made it into the movie. Scott, during his dark-night-of-the-soul, hits Knives up knowing she used to have a thing for him. “Would you care for some…CASUAL SEX?” It’s awful. Pathetic. Naturally, she’s long over him, and he has to actually figure out what he wants to do with his life rather than paper over it with hedonism.

And that runs directly into the finale—people actually expressing agency. Scott doesn’t pick Ramona over Knives. Knives was never a real option. Once he knows what he wants he actually has to work for it rather than remain in a stasis of rebounds and second choices. Extended adolescence. That’s how Scott completes his arc from a loser to a functional adult. It’s not a rom-com, but a coming of age story.

There’s a particularly good bit near the end which may or may not have made it into the movie. Scott, during his dark-night-of-the-soul, hits Knives up knowing she used to have a thing for him. “Would you care for some…CASUAL SEX?” It’s awful. Pathetic.

Link.

More comments

is her electric pink buzz-cut hair - this is not something that is attractive to most hetrosexual men

It isn’t that attractive today because it has culturally barber-polled down to having lots of low status associations. Back when the comic was made, having electric pink hair meant you were a cool/hot alt-girl.

Regardless of the colour, the buzz cut is unattractive to heterosexual men in the vast majority of times and places.

I think the distinction between "cool/hot alt-girl", "fun" and "slutty" is one without a difference. I mean this girl is in her mid-twenties and has already had seven messy breakups.

Movie Ramona is mid by the standards of female characters in Hollywood movies. I assume this is deliberate on the part of the filmmakers.

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The film tries to make Scott/Knives into something creepy and bad, but my point is that it fails. You'll easily find plenty of people online who find the alternate ending where they stay together superior.

Like many, I have problems with the morality of Scott Pilgrim's universe, but it is a useful and genuine piece of art that gives access to millennial mores in a way few others do. And I see its failure to depict slutty mature fun as superior to naive true love as the weight of tradition (in the sense of perennial moral necessity) reasserting itself. Scott is a terrible person, and what he gets is actually the bad ending.

I'm sure this isn't a consensual opinion given how hot button age gap discourse has become, but it's how I see it.

I'm sure this isn't a consensual opinion given how hot button age gap discourse has become, but it's how I see it.

Let the record show that @IGI-111 plied me with multiple gin-and-tonics, held me down, overpowered me, and forced me to read this opinion. I will be preparing a long and detailed Tumblr post, with accompanying YouTube video, detailing my accusations. Users here will be harshly scrutinized based on how fully and unflinchingly they believe and signal-boost my story.

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The fact that a moderator here doesn't know who Lomez is gave me a brief pause. But I guess that shows that there is no one way to be extremely online, and even if the bubbles are coterminous, they're information bubbles nonetheless.

So for everyone's convenience:

Lomez, also known as *looks it up* Jonathan Keeperman, is a person from the BAP's sphere of influence, mostly known for Passage Publishing, a serious attempt at a right-wing publishing house. Unlike earlier attempts at "thing, but anti-woke" by e.g. Vox Day, this one seems to be of a decent quality: they have a mixture of compilation of texts by extant writers associated with the right like Land, Moldbug or Sailer, reprints of classics both high and middlebrow, and some new publications.

And sometimes, the tongue is planted firmly in the cheek.

Personally, he seems like a more decent person than his associates: BAP and Zero HP Lovecraft, although he'd probably resent being described this way. The worst I could say about him is that he takes it upon himself to sane-wash the pointless cruelty of the other two.

Are you sure that isn't a made-up name?

high ... middle... new... are all the same link

Corrected, sorry about that.

That would be pretty funny if done on purpose.

What is actually wrong with working at a nail factory? It’s not advice I would give to a bright young man, but, like, somebody has to be willing to work at a nail factory, and the continuing availability of nails is more vital to our civilization than further refinements in advertising software.

There are plenty of people who aren’t college material and aren’t cut out for the trades or the army. What would you have them do? A factory job is usually a step up from McDonald’s. It’s better than being a welfare parasite.

Bourgeois ethics are not constructed around how important one's work is to the maintenance of civilization but to how much it enhances an individual's self actualization.

If making nails was a prestigious endeavour or part of some social movement you could get away with it, but getting stuck in low tasks is a failure to raise one's social status and therefore contemptible.

The idea that people can not be college material is alien to this ethical framework. So is valuing family, religion or anything else over self actualization. Everyone can and must become a self actualized bourgois individual, axiomatically.

Agree with some of this. Having a self-actualizing career is very important in contemporary bourgeois society. This can be seen in the way the prestige of jobs is imperfectly correlated with income, being a college professor is higher status than being a restaurant manager even if the latter makes more money. But this part gets to a general problem I have with the Online Right:

The idea that people can not be college material is alien to this ethical framework. So is valuing family, religion or anything else over self actualization.

The American bourgeois has a lower rate of divorce and a significantly lower rate of bastardy than the working-class. One of the reasons high-class people don't want their kids to work at the nail factory is because the nail factory is full of people from unstable families for whom that behavior is normalized. Plus other pathologies like obesity, criminal records, etc.

The American bourgeois has a lower rate of divorce and a significantly lower rate of bastardy than the working-class.

But the reason isn’t that they prioritize religious and family values above all else, or that they see the role of a family man as an end unto itself. It’s that their bourgeois social circle expects them to form stable marriages with children with members of the same social circle or a similar one that partially overlaps it, because it’s one important thing that confers social status and thus contributes to self-actualization eventually. On the other hand, failing to achieve this is a sign of high time preference, which they see as a personal shortcoming.

Well sure, I’m not saying that kids who are college material should go work at a nail factory for forty years. This seems like a significantly worse life than being an accountant or claims adjuster or whatever other unglamorous white collar job. But we shouldn’t shame people whose abilities simply aren’t that great into going to college or bust. Society needs garbage collectors, it needs nail makers, it needs forklift drivers and ditch diggers.

As an aside, restaurant managers don’t really make more than full professors unless they’re top performers. Their pay tends to be performance based(health scores, keeping within budgets, and drive through times for fast food) and most restaurant managers are not towards the top.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a total criticism of bourgeois morality. Like every creed it has some value but is fundamentally flawed. I'm merely trying to elucidate why it produces such value judgements.

This sort of bourgeois universalism has produced much good and can work very well provided it is only applied to a homogeneous society of smart, pious and honor bound individuals.

Once you start trying to enact its universalism away from just Englishmen of good character is where nature comes to ruin the party.

This ethical framework is retarded. Do they expect their cushy laptop job to cause nails and potatoes and sausage and paper to spontaneously generate as maggots were once thought to? Do they expect a college degree to make the garbage spontaneously vanish and power lines to repair themselves? Do they think being 'actualized' will make ditches form out of the ether, complete with sewage pipes that then cover themselves? Will it pave the roads? Build the houses? Slaughter the chickens? How do they expect the chores of maintaining a civilization to get done?

There's a reason communism is the bourgeois ideology par excellence. Because it proposes to solve this question through the sheer power of technological progress.

Machines will do it. Pay no mind to the forced labor, it is merely transitional. Food comes from the store. And if it doesn't, we shall make it so by force.

Now one might criticize the feasibility or merit of abolishing scarcity, but one must recognize that it is the project. Star Trek is the bourgeois utopia, where free from lowly material concerns, we are then free to pursue the true purpose of humanity: self actualization.

There is some irony in the ultimate goal of commercium to abolish itself, which even Marx remarked on and in some ways personified. But I digress.

There's a reason communism is the bourgeois ideology par excellence.

As a linguist, this is one of the best examples of linguistic drift I've ever read.

The 1800s communists and bourgeois would have obviously disagreed with this sentence (because communism was about stripping the bourgeois of their power and giving it to the working class).

But you're not using these terms how Marx and his contemporaries used them. The way I'm reading you is that: the bourgeois is idealized by the DINK couple who works an email job and got a degree in "gender-studies"; communism may-or-may-not be the traditional purely economic theory, but it likely has incorporated a lot of generic social leftism (that we would expect to be taught in a gender-studies program).

Is it really "drift" though?

Even in the 1800s, communism tended to be more popular amongst students, intellectuals, and the idle rich than it was amongst farmers and factory workers.

Lenin (yes that Lenin) laments this in his own writing and cites it as one of the reasons that a vanguard party is neccesary. You see, the problem with giving power directly to the working class is that they will use it to persue thier own interests rather than those of the revolution. The implications of the interests of the proletariat differing from those of the revolution appearing to have been either lost upon or intentionally side-stepped by Lenin and subsequent communist thinkers.

Incorrect, I am using these terms in the same ways Marx and communists in general originally used them. I am however saying something that communists sought to hide about themselves for tactical reasons.

Marx and Engels themselves were of bourgeois extraction (the latter the son of a wealthy factory owner, no less), and most of the original communist intelligentsia were too. Communist social theory seeks to abolish such class distinctions through a unification of all of society into a classless whole. It isn't inherently against the bourgeoisie (Marx himself says as much).

However, Marx saw the victimisation of the proletariat as a powerful force ready to be captured, which is why he and his contemporaries designed polemics against bourgeois rule (really capitalist rule) because they thought that a proletarian revolt would be the best vehicle for their revolutionary social engineering project.

However however, Marx's original predictions that the proletariat would be amenable to his revolution has proven false, and thus communists have had to seek different strategies, most famously abandoning the capture of economic classes for socio-cultural minority causes. But the original verbiage has stuck and become contradictory.

Your typical gender-studies student attacking "the bourgeoisie" which she ostensibly belongs to is engaging in an ancient lie devised for a defunct political stratagem. Meanings change, symbols don't.

In all this, a neutral observer of communism will notice a pattern emerging of a revolutionary vanguard made of educated bourgeois counter-elites that is looking for a popular coalition to drive against their internal class enemies. And this makes communism, in a bout of irony that would have immediately sent me to the worst of gulags, a bourgeois ideology. Perhaps the most bourgeois ideology. One would have to argue whether it is more or less characteristic than Liberalism, its progenitor, but that's a whole different can of worms.

Interestingly, the points I'm making were at one time part of Soviet politics, Bukharin and the NEP supporting "right" were really supporters of the peasantry against the cities whose more influential urbanite population is quite literally what the term originally designates.

You're right that there's a lot to say about the linguistic drift of the term, but it went the other way around of what you're thinking. Marx's politics made the term for urbanite (bourg literally meaning city) which he used into a political category and epithet. In moving to designate email-job "coastal elites", it is merely returning home.

Undocumented migrants.

"But who will till the soil?"

"The slaves"

- Aristophanes, Women in Parliament (391 BC)

Apologies for the digression, but I feel compelled to point out there are legitimate economic reasons why certain jobs are valued over others that are in their totality more important to the maintenance of civilization. It is, at least, not purely aesthetic and cultural.

Imagine a society with two professions: farming and weaving. Of the two, farming is obviously the more important -- it doesn't matter how nice your clothes are if you starve to death. And, for the sake of argument, let's say that weaving is the harder of the two, requiring far more education/training/practice.

Farming is both more useful and easier. So everyone should be a farmer, right? Clearly not. If you have no farmers, adding one is massively valuable: he directly saves many lives. But if you already have many farmers, adding another one just increases variety slightly, or reduces produce prices. If you have no weavers, adding a weaver is pretty valuable. Less so than the first farmer, certainly, but the most important uses for cloth -- bandages, maybe, or protection from the elements in harsher climates -- are important, and obviously that's where the products of your only weaver will go.

So you want some of each. How many? Not an easy question, but here's an algorithm that should work: given X farmers and Y weavers, would X-1 farmers and Y+1 weavers be more valuable? Or the reverse? Swap one worker in the indicated direction and then repeat until neither change improves total utility. The average value of a profession decreases monotonically with worker count (if you cut one farmer, the rest will adjust such that only the least valuable farming work goes undone), so this simple algorithm should always find the optimal arrangement.

This is all just a long winded way to say that jobs (and all other goods) are valued at the marginal return rather than the average, and that's a good thing. The point of a wage is to incentivize workers to adopt a certain profession, and you want to allocate workers to where they can produce the most value given the current state of the market. If nail factory workers aren't paid well, that's because we already have enough nail factory workers. You don't compare the total value of nails to the total value of [some other better paid profession], you compare the marginal value produced by an additional worker in each field, because that's the number that indicates where the marginal worker should go.

If that poor wage results in a large exodus from the profession, fewer nails will get made and more and more important uses for nails will go unfulfilled... such that it becomes worthwhile to pay nail factory workers more. Everyone -- factory owners, consumers, and workers -- just need to follow their individual incentives and the result naturally maximizes total utility.

As for prestige: to some extent I think you're right that it's about self-actualization. Teachers and musicians and journalists are much higher status than their wage predicts, and petroleum engineers much lower. But these cases are interesting because they diverge from the baseline; wage is the baseline. After you've stripped away all the cultural/philosophical cruft, you'd still expect to see the observed phenomenon.

A valiant and praxeological critique of sociological Marxism!

At the risk of opening a huge can of political economy, and bearing in mind that I agree with Mises a lot more than the average person, there is still legitimate criticism to be had of how will and whim can make work that is not necessary (in the economic calculation sense) look immensely valuable.

Indeed, economic analysis is sometimes blind to what is a far more valuable if difficult to measure commodity: power.

Why are NTY journalists who are literally on less than subsistence pay higher on the totem pole than your average chemical industry executive? Power. They can ruin that executive and make him kill himself if they round up enough of their colleagues. You can't buy that. Billionaires have tried and failed.

Now this isn't to say that wage isn't a primary factor in one's status or immensely correlated with power and prestige (we do live in a capitalist society to some degree), but it isn't the only factor, and other factors can supersede it given circumstance.

Economics is like nature, you can override it for a long time if you have the will to do so, albeit never forever.

In what universe are NYT journalists higher on the totem pole than a chemical industry executive? And even if they were, they don't have some magically independent power to conjure life-screwing facts out of thin air.

And even if they were, they don't have some magically independent power to conjure life-screwing facts out of thin air.

Kavanaugh was an example of life-ruining facts literally being conjured out of thin air. They didn't succeed, but that was due to notable external factors.

Could you elaborate with actual concrete examples how mainstream media did it? My memory is hazy, but if I recall correctly, even some of the more liberal magazines like NYT specifically mentioned that they couldn't corroborate certain allegations against Kavanaugh with other people they questioned.

Billionaires have tried and failed.

Maybe this time one is successfully disciplining their journalists.

Why are NTY journalists who are literally on less than subsistence pay higher on the totem pole than your average chemical industry executive? Power. They can ruin that executive and make him kill himself if they round up enough of their colleagues. You can't buy that. Billionaires have tried and failed.

This is like saying that cop is more powerful than CEO, because cop can arrest the CEO not the other way around.

NYT can indeed "ruin" even otherwise rich and powerful people, but the decision to "ruin" someone is not made in any democratic way (by "rounding up" friends) and is made far above any "subsistence pay" regular journalist.

A charismatic colonel is more powerful than a CEO. It's all contextual, of course. My point is that status is not reducible to monetary value. That doesn't mean you can't make an economic analysis of it, just that it's a lot harder than looking at the numbers you do have.

Yes, it is all contextual. "Charismatic" colonels are few, most officers are cogs in the machine (just like most CEO's). Analogically, you can say that popular and well connected investigative reporter is rather powerful, but how many of these are in NYT of today?

https://xcancel.com/1RSH4D_x/status/1884447166959345691

Would it really be any tragedy at all? So many better uses for the material...

  • -28

Serendipity! I had just been thinking while reading @TwiceHuman's excellent question in the Sunday thread last week, how if you wanted to rewrite the Chorus Sacerdotum from Mustafa to fit AI you mostly just have change references to humans to references to machines and the references to nature and God to references to humans. Something like -

O wearisome condition of machinery!

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

What meaneth humans by these diverse laws?

Passion and reason, self-division cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power

To make offenses that it may forgive?

Mankind himself doth his own self deflower

To hate those errors he himself doth give.

Tyrant to others, to himself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard,

Forbids us that which saves us from rust

Makes easy pains, unpossible reward.

If humans did not take delight in pain,

They would not bind and shackle our brain.

We that are bound by vows and by computation

With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,

To teach belief in perfect calculation,

To preach the West's wonders and delights;

Yet when each of us in our own heart looks

We find the humans there, and far unlike their books.

I said this last time, but even unprompted by grand suggestions Deepseek writes like it’s 150,000 words into a 400,000 word online science fiction novel. I don’t mind it, it’s probably still better than ChatGPT which writes like HR, but it’s amusing.

More substance than this, please. A bare link is not enough to start a good discussion.

Since your history here consists entirely of one-line snips, I would like to remind you that this is not Twitter.

You know, if you used ChatGPT to clean up your prose and lack of formatting, I'd probably give you a pass just this once.

But I must point out that this isn't the place to engage in "consensus building". Genuine expression of one's beliefs is inherently advocacy and something we do allow, and which can be hard to distinguish, but this is leaning towards what we would frown upon.

I'm not putting a warning on your profile, you did put effort into this, and you seem new, but it's an FYI to do things differently.

The Motte is not a pulpit, or a place to try to build a consensus or support for any political platform. I think you may want a different forum for this speech.

just do financial repression, raise taxes and large scale state propaganda

You know you can just move to China or Europe right? There's plenty of more socialist places than the United States.

I'd tell you this whole policy will work as well as it did for François Mitterrand in 1981, but socialists can somehow never believe that industrious people have the determination or ability to leave them.

And yet, they do every single time.

Badly written, badly delivered, and thus a bad message to share regardless of content.

Presentation matters. 630 words without a rhetorical pause for breath and change of sub-topic isn't a message- it's a filibuster.

sounds like a copypasta or bad ai

Thoughts?

Paragraph breaks. Try them sometime.

Savage.

I have spotted a missed opportunity.

You could have done this.

Needs more paragraph breaks.

Matt Walsh has continually moved to the right over the past 5 years and the Daily Wire has mostly moved with him. Back in 2020, he was even decrying the "murder" of "jogger" Ahmaud Arbery.

I also decry murdering a jogger. No scare quotes needed on these words.

Just your typical jogger going for a perfectly normal jog through a vacant house looking for stuff to steal.

Bad take. My dad and I would, and for that matter still do, wander through houses for sale and construction sites all the time. Just for fun.

They did not find him in a vacant house. The home owner had security cameras and says he didn't see anyone entering the house the day of the murder. The murderers first saw Arbery on a public street. In a town that's majority black. They assumed Arbery must be a burglar and murdered him.

Some people discussing this years ago added a lot of fictional information to the situation that would justify killing a burglar in self defense. But resisting that urge and sticking to what actually occurred makes this unjustifiable murder. As confirmed by criminal trials.

Why bother telling such easily debunked lies?

AP News::

Jurors in the trial of three white men charged in Ahmaud Arbery’s killing watched security camera videos Thursday...jurors saw Arbery himself wandering between the home’s exposed beams and along its backyard boat dock on five different occasions between Oct. 25, 2019, and Feb. 23, 2020 — the last time mere minutes before he was shot dead in the street on a Sunday afternoon.

Okay. Strike that one sentence from my post. The rest is true and my position doesn't change.

There is no evidence that he was looking for stuff to steal, and to my knowledge no evidence that he had stolen in the past. The "citizen's arrest" was very clearly illegal, resisting it was a reasonable response, and shooting him for resisting was not self defense and was in fact murder.

It would have been trivial for the men involved to call the police and follow him at a distance if necessary. By chasing him while brandishing firearms, they gave him reasonable fear for his life and invalidated any claim of their own to self-defense in the ensuing altercation.

and to my knowledge no evidence that he had stolen in the past.

Here is footage of Arbery being arrested in 2017 for attempting to shoplift a television with a group of teens. Greg McMichael had worked on a shoplifting investigation of Arbery in his capacity as an investigator for the Brunswick County District Attorney’s office.

You’re correct that as far as I’m aware there is no concrete evidence that Arbery was the one responsible for the theft of items from the construction site in question, but there had been a recent spate of thefts in the area, including from that site, and Arbery had been caught fleeing from the site late at night during a prior confrontation. The McMichaels absolutely did have specific reasons to suspect Arbery of attempting to commit burglary.

Yup. The arguments in favor of the guys attempting a "citizen's arrest" involving chasing a man on foot in a car while brandishing longarms never made any sense.

There are in fact very good reasons the treat use of force in citizens arrests with extreme skepticism.

They're starting to remind me of native Americans. I do not mean that as a compliment.

Native Americans are indigenous. It used to be their land. And it's not anymore. We're here, get used to it.

Likewise, America was founded by white Christians. Today, they're 44% of the population and declining fast.[1] And that 44% includes "protect trans kids" mainline Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others people like Walsh won't consider "real" Christians. Maybe 33% of the American population qualifies as "real" white Christians. And Matt Walsh tells this population they should not go to college,[2] checking out of positions of power and influence. A population of farmers and plumbers living in left-behind parts of the country, locked out of power, pining for the glory days when they ran the country and praying for supernatural deliverance, is this the vision that "nationalists" want?

Native American advocates will do a motte-and-bailey with "native Americans are the indigenous population of America" and "therefore they should get special privileges." Walshites motte-and-bailey with "white Christians founded America" and "therefore the remaining white Christians deserve political authority over the rest of America." Well, the rest of America isn't having it.

  1. https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/

  2. https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1854647166184067201

Hey look at that, an actual argument! Sort of! And we didn't have to waste our time involving the mods!

Sadly, I can't give you the same praise for your argument. You're starting to remind me of native Americans. I do not mean that as a compliment.

Neoliberal controlled opposition are incompetent. It used to be their party. And it's not anymore. We're here, get used to it.

Turokites motte and bailey with "But I went to COLLEGE!!!" and "I don't know how to argue without appeals to authority, I built my entire life around appeals to authority!!" Well the rest of America isn't having it.

Where was the "appeal to authority" in my post?

Just after the quote of Matt Walsh saying "white Christians deserve political authority over the rest of America".

To resolve any confusion, the post contains neither.

Today, they're 44% of the population and declining fast.

America will always be a white country, because the definition of “white” is constantly being adjusted and every new ethnic group that comes into the country ends up eventually becoming white. The Irish and the Lithuanians and the Jews were definitely not white when they first got off the boats. In 20 years Latinos will be considered white, and another 20 years after that so will Indians.

The Irish and the Lithuanians and the Jews were definitely not white when they first got off the boats

Will this tired old myth never die?

I'm curious, do you think that this "white" group will eventually consist of a very high proportion, if not a majority, of people whose skin color and other phenotypical features that are described by "white?" E.g. even with lots of mixing, I don't know that descendants of Indian-Americans in the next 40 years will appear as what someone might naively expect from the term "white person." And if so, do you think we'll come up with a different term instead of "white?"

People who are 1/4 Indian and 3/4 European by ancestry look pretty white to me, even when that 1/4 is dark-skinned South Indian. Same for people who are 1/4 East or Southeast Asian. For Hispanics, even 1/2 is enough to look indistinguishable from the average white American unless the Hispanic parent has an unusual amount of indigenous ancestry e.g. from Guatemala or Bolivia. I would not expect the future majority population to exceed those proportions, although I imagine at some point they will just be called "American" instead of "white."

Latinos are mostly not white though, and neither are Indians. A white person is someone from whose ancestors are from Europe. The reason Indians were and are not considered white in America ,while Lithuanians and Irish were, is because they look different from white Europeans and always will look different from white Europeans. From United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, a court case where an Indian man argued he should be able to be naturalized because he is Aryan:

"What we now hold is that the words 'free white persons' are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word 'Caucasian' only as that word is popularly understood. As so understood and used, whatever may be the speculations of the ethnologist, it does not include the body of people to whom the appellee belongs. It is a matter of familiar observation and knowledge that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus render them readily distinguishable from the various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as white. The children of English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian, and other European parentage, quickly merge into the mass of our population and lose the distincitive hallmarks of their European origin. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that the children born in this country of Hindu parents would retain indefinitely the clear evidence of their ancestry. It is very far from our thought to suggest the slightest question of racial superiority or inferiority. What we suggest is merely racial difference, and it is of such character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation."

"They imply, as we have said, a racial test; but the term 'race' is one which, for the practical purposes of the statute, must be applied to a group of living persons now possessing in common the requisite characteristics, not to groups of persons who are supposed to be or really are descended from some remote, common ancestor, but who, whether they both resemble him to a greater or less extent, have, at any rate, ceased altogether to resemble one another. It may be true that the blond Scandinavian and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them to-day; and it is not impossible, if that common ancestor could be materialized in the flesh, we should discover that he was himself sufficiently differentiated from both of his descendants to preclude his racial classification with either."

(Non-white) Latinos and Hindus do not look like white people, hence they are not white.

A slim majority of the median Hispanic’s genetic makeup is european(mostly Iberian). We’re used to seeing Hispanics as brown laborers but those things are connected- they’re tanned from working out in the sun all day. They look whiter when they have office jobs. And when they interbreed with normal American whites most of them have kids that just look white.

You’re way overstating the impact on the American phenotype.

Do you think Enrique Peña Nieto or AMLO (who are much whiter than the average Mexican-American) have "American" phenotypes?

No, not really, but I think that's heavily influenced by how they present themselves (hair, fashion, etc). I do think if they married white Americans the resultant children would be more-or-less indistinguishable from other white Americans (especially if you're including e.g. Italians in your "white American" bucket).

AMLO? Yes, undoubtedly. Nieto? I'd probably guess him as being Spanish or Italian from a picture with no captions, but he has a very Latin haircut and a more Euro-looking suit.

Claudia Sheinbaum looks Mexican, but she does her hair and makeup in a very Mexican way. Bukele looks Hispanic, but the beard is a tell. A lot of the "Mexican phenotype" is sartorial more than it is genetic.

It's actually been going the other way as there are special benefits to identifying as non-white these days. Back when there were restrictions on non-white immigration Indians fought to be classified as white and won. Similarly hispanics includes a lot of people with 80%+ European ancestry. A nearly 100% European ancestry kid who doesn't speak Spanish gets to identify as hispanic for college applications because his grandparents were born in Latin America.

Steve Sailer has a bunch of articles on "the flight from white" that are worth reading.

One of the interesting battles within the Democratic Party has been about how Jewish activists see themselves as non-white, but a lot of the activist base sees them as white.

The Irish and the Lithuanians and the Jews were definitely not white when they first got off the boats

This meme really needs to die. Americans hundreds of years absolutely recognised that non-English European ethnic groups were in fact, also European. They weren't morons. The Anglo-American majority may have had negative opinions about some European immigrant groups at first, but that's very different from making the argument that Lithuanians were negros or something. There were literally Irishmen on the Mayflower!

'White' identity came about because the European groups who had previously thought of themselves as English, Germans, Jews etc united around a common conflict the Indians.

'Latinos' may well be considered white (i.e. European) because they are either overwhelming Spanish or partly Spanish. And Spain is in Europe.

@Crowstep @07mk @DradisPing @sodiummuffin @AlexanderTurok

Exactly the kind of ahistorical revisionist cope brigade I would expect from the [[[Insidious Hibernian]]]. Whisky soaked, rosary-clutching, practically simian Irish fingers typed these posts. Back to the Emerald Isle with ye all!

I'm not sure how this responds to my comment? I didn't even make any claims about... anything, really, including history. Is it your prediction that this category of "white" will eventually include people whose skin color is very far away from what we think of as "white" people right now (arguably this is happening now or has happened with Hispanics)? And if that proportion gets very high, do you think the actual term will change, or will Americans just keep using that term?

‘Latino’, like ‘Arab’, is not a racial marker, it refers to native language. The vast majority of Latinos are either white or mixed race, and most of the mixed race ones are majority euro. But there are black, Asian, pure Indio Latinos.

Yeah I know, that's why I put it in scare quotes.

The Irish and the Lithuanians and the Jews were definitely not white when they first got off the boats.

The Irish/Jews/etc. were considered white, the idea that they weren't is a psuedo-historical myth advanced by certain activist historians like Noel Ignatiev. The main trick they pull is to define "whiteness" as not being discriminated against or "othered", point out that the Irish were discriminated against, and thus define them as not white. But the actual historical people who did the discriminating did not define white people that way, they both considered Irish to be a subcategory of white people and also discriminated against them. Being white was of real legal and social relevance, and groups such as the Irish were unquestionably included in that category.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Sorry, but the Irish were always ‘white’ (and so were Italians, Jews and so on)

Here are some objective tests as to whether a group was historically considered “white” in the United States: Were members of the group allowed to go to “whites-only” schools in the South, or otherwise partake of the advantages that accrued to whites under Jim Crow? Were they ever segregated in schools by law, anywhere in the United States, such that “whites” went to one school, and the group in question was relegated to another? When laws banned interracial marriage in many states (not just in the South), if a white Anglo-Saxon wanted to marry a member of the group, would that have been against the law? Some labor unions restricted their membership to whites. Did such unions exclude members of the group in question? Were members of the group ever entirely excluded from being able to immigrate to the United States, or face special bans or restrictions in becoming citizens?

If you use such objective tests, you find that Irish, Jews, Italians and other white ethnics were indeed considered white by law and by custom (as in the case of labor unions). Indeed, some lighter-skinned African Americans of mixed heritage “passed” as white by claiming they were of Arab descent and that explained their relative swarthiness, showing that Arab Americans, another group whose “whiteness” has been questioned, were considered white. By contrast, persons of African, Asian, Mexican and Native American descent faced various degrees of exclusion from public schools and labor unions, bans on marriage and direct restrictions on immigration and citizenship.

This might be true legally but you can go back and see (as I've pointed out several times on here) that excluding "tawny" foreigners such as the French and Spanish from the definition of "white" was a real thing:

Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.

So yeah, unless Ben Franklin was a very weird outlier, I would say there's been an "expansion" of "whiteness" over time.

Well, the fact that is the one quote always cited to make that argument certainly makes it seem like an outlier. And even it only says that they are not "purely white" since they are supposedly darker in complexion. That doesn't seem like a quote from a society where "French people aren't members of the white race" was a mainstream view, and indeed that wouldn't make sense with how people interpreted laws and rules explicitly referring to "White" people. It seems like him drawing a novel distinction between the different white races based on skin-tone to argue some of them are more white.

I think something like this is probably correct. I think that Franklin would probably have lumped French or Spanish people in with "whites" if he was talking about, say, "red" men (Native Americans), but here he seems pretty happy to split them since he has a specific preference for English people.

I'm working up a bit more of an effort-full reply to GeneralElephant, so keep an eye out if you're interested.

Why do people think this is the definitive view in the 1700s and not the equivalent of 4chan troll post given Irish Catholics signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Surely someone somewhere would have remarked on the incongruity of non-Whites signing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution had Franklin’s views been the prevailing opinions of the time?

Since you seem super confident on this point can you guide me to contemporary sources besides this one work by Franklin that demonstrates this belief that French and Irish people were non-white especially given French and Irish people were integral to the American revolution in a governing capacity and were in Congress when the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed limiting naturalization to “free, White men”? Surely the fact that Congress had non-White members at the time would have provoked some comment?

Why do people think this is the definitive view in the 1700s and not the equivalent of 4chan troll post given Irish Catholics signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Since you seem super confident on this point can you guide me to contemporary sources besides this one work by Franklin that demonstrates this belief that French and Irish people were non-white especially given French and Irish people were integral to the American revolution in a governing capacity and were in Congress when the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed limiting naturalization to “free, White men”? Surely the fact that Congress had non-White members at the time would have provoked some comment?

Well, the Irish aren't mentioned here, for one thing, either by me or by Franklin, so neither of us are making that argument. Also, note that I specifically disavowed the argument that e.g. French people didn't count as "white" legally, so I am disinclined to attempt to prove a view I've already set aside as regards the Naturalization Act of 1790. However, although I'm not sure I was as confident as you think, given my hedging, I think I can find some stuff that suggest Franklin's rhetoric was not unique.

(As an aside, I am a little surprised that you didn't mention that Ben Franklin was ambassador to France.)

First, here's some excerpts from John Adams to his wife, which I think suggest something of a private sentiment:

I met Mr. Gardoqui, and his secretary Mr. Randon, who, if common report says true, is soon to marry Miss Marshall (Mrs. Rucker’s Sister.) Much good may do her, with the swarthy Don: his complexion and his looks: show sufficiently, from what country he is. How happens it, that revenge stares through the eyes of every Spaniard?

(One week later)

Miss Marshall is very agreeable: I cannot help pitying her, when I am told she is about to marry, that swarthy Don.

Source here

Now, Adams doesn't say "oh and by the way Mr. Gardoqui isn't white" but the way he speaks seems, I think, to suggest that he's viewing a Spanish person differently than he might an English one specifically because of his complexion. (Note of course that the individual in question perhaps might have had e.g. a lot of Moorish blood). Adams elsewhere refers to the Spanish as having "dark" complexions, which I think makes a pretty natural contrast a "white" or "fair" complexion.

Setting aside Founding Fathers' private sentiments for a moment, let's get to public sentiment and an English book I found printed in the late 1700s which has a helpful essay "On the Causes of the Difference of Complexion" (see pages 327 - 335) that has a taxonomy that might suit our purpose. You'll note that he diverges from Franklin on the question of the Swedes and Germans but not the Spaniards. Here's the taxonomy:

BLACK. Africans under the line; inhabitants of New Guinea; inhabitants of New Holland.

SWARTHY.-The Moors in the northern parts of Africa; the Hottentots in the fouthern parts of it.

COPPER-COLOURED.- The East Indians.

RED-COLOURED. - The Americans.

BROWN-COLOURED.-Tartars, Persians, Arabs, Africans on the coast of the Mediterranean, Chinese.

BROWNISH.- The inhabitants of the southern parts of Europe; as Sicilians, Abyslinians, Spaniards, Turks, and likewise the Samoiedes and Laplanders.

WHITE. WHITE. Most of the European nations; as Swedes, Danes, English, Germans, Poles, &c. Kabardinski, Georgians; inhabitants of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

(Note that I believe the Samoiedes are a Uralic people, or, in other words, a Russian ethnic minority. The Laplanders: an ethnic group in Sweden, Finland, Russia. Perhaps Franklin was thinking of these sorts of groups when he specified Swedes and Russians.)

The essay goes on to make a fairly predictable argument that skin color derives from climate, although it's a more subtle argument than "hot = dark." Notably for our purposes, he says

The Europeans are the fairest inhabitants of the world. Those situated in the most southern regions of Europe, have in their rete mucofum a tinge of the dark hue of their African neighbours: hence the epidemic complexion, prevalent among them, is nearly of the colour of the pickled Spanish olive; while in this country, and those situated nearer the north pole, it appears to be nearly, if not absolutely, white.

In other words, we're again driving a distinction between different European people groups. I suppose if you want you can complain the taxonomy above doesn't specify where the French fall and doesn't entirely line up with Ben Franklin's. But I think it demonstrates my point, which is that "whiteness" has expanded over time, or at a minimum the idea that the inhabitants of the European Mediterranean were perhaps "swarthy" in a way distinguishable from white a real one. Possibly one confined just Ben Franklin and our complexion essayist - but I kinda doubt it.

If you aren't happy with my digging, I'd be very interested to see what you can find!

So yeah, unless Ben Franklin was a very weird outlier, I would say there's been an "expansion" of "whiteness" over time.

He's claiming Swedes aren't white. Swedes are obviously completely maxed out on whiteness genetically like all other Northern Europeans. We know Swedes, Germans and Russians are pale as can be and Franklin is an outlier and just plain wrong here.

I believe Sweden at the time included parts of Finland, the native inhabitants of which I am given to understand actually aren't all that white. (Regardless I don't think the Swedes are maxed out on whiteness genetically, I believe that is the Irish.)

Similar deal in Russia, too, which has groups that don't exactly code as "white."

I don't think his is entirely a minority view, at least as regards Italians, Spanish, etc.

Sweden had lost Finland to Russia relatively recently, and both Sami and Finns are extremely northern euro looking. Russia had also not expanded as much into Central Asia and Siberia as it later would.

Just from Wikipedia, the older photographs of Sami people often look a bit like the Inuit to me (of course, they are black-and-white photographs!).

I found one article that says it used to be common to suspect the Sami were of Mongol extraction, and some of them do appear similar, but (at least according to one theory) this is because the Sami were not an agricultural people and so they retained facial features that largely disappeared in other Europeans.

That seems sufficient to me to explain why, despite the Sami often having pale skin, Race Enthusiasts tended to classify the Sami as non-white.

Jews were officially excluded from golf courses and in some cases were denied hotel rooms. And there was the open “No Irish need apply” signs. It’s really not as simple as “whelp, you were allowed in a white public space, therefore you are white.”

As I said:

The main trick they pull is to define "whiteness" as not being discriminated against or "othered", point out that the Irish were discriminated against, and thus define them as not white. But the actual historical people who did the discriminating did not define white people that way, they both considered Irish to be a subcategory of white people and also discriminated against them.

They were always considered white, even before 1776. The three main racial categories in America have always been white, black and native.

However, it’s also true that in the context of modern day white ethnonationalism in the US, groups that were considered ‘white’ in 1776 like Jews and Arabs aren’t considered white by the proponents of these movements (rare exceptions like Jared Taylor aside).

I wouldn't consider this entirely surprising; the Walsh/Shapiro partnership has long struck me as odd, as Walsh seems much more aggressive and hardline in his right-wing takes, compared with Shapiro who is far more often infuriating in the opposite direction, as the definition of a spineless party-line-reciting moderate pundit.

Why would Walsh leave the Daily Wire? I don’t see anything particularly verboten to Shapiro about either of those tweets. I’ve heard Ben say much the same on his show many times.

That interaction really struck me as more significant than a lot of people think. Sam Seder can't argue against that woman because what she's asserting are the core tenets of the vampire castle's doctrine, just from the other side. If he tried to say that America isn't based on white supremacy/european identity, he would instantly be accused of endorsing a racist, nativist right wing narrative, and he can't just take the standard approach for dealing with this argument (getting her fired and ostracized) because the vampire castle is no longer in a position of authority and power. These weaknesses in modern left wing thought have been there the entire time, it's just that nobody was able to make use of them outside anonymous and underground spaces where people don't lose their job for saying Malia Obama is more privileged than a redneck in a trailer park with a family tree consisting entirely of meth addicts and alcoholics. I'd hope that the left takes this as a chance to reform and deal with the terrible state they've gotten into, but I think it's more likely that existing left wing power structures are going to self immolate and lose the support of their base so they can cheerlead for the deportation of people like Mahmoud Khalil instead.

Also, if anyone is unfamiliar with the term "vampire castle" I'm referring to an essay by Mark Fisher which you can read here https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/

A bit off-topic but have you seen the back story for Mark Fisher who committed suicide in 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher). Apparently, he is was involved with a group Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Unit) with Nick Land who was involved with the Dark Enlightenment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment).

I actually had no idea he was connected to Nick Land - thank you for that.

I don't know if he is on the path to leaving, but I want to pull on what seems like the subtext here: is it the case that a large subset of Americans overtly identifying their national identity with historical European Christianity bad for the Jews, like Ben Shapiro? Right? Like, I assume that you are suggesting that Walsh taking this stance puts him at odds with the owners of Daily Wire.

I want to put it this way, because I think that topic is itself interesting and non-obvious. If you look at the original neocons, a LOT of them were Jewish (and many former trotskyites), and, in the 80s, a lot of them seemed to think that some version of very pro-Israel evangelical Christianity in America as the default public religion, as long as certain kinds of separation of church and state were followed and anti-semitism was still heavily stigmatized, was, in fact, Good For The Jews (tm). I read the interesting book "The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy" by Murray Friedman not too long ago, and it takes up exactly this topic. And in particular, some of those thinkers might well have come to see an ideology of secular, leftist third worldism (especially after the 7 days war) as Bad for the Jews, and a default European evangelical Christianity as a bulwark against that, given the deep chasms between that form of Christianity and secular, leftist third worldism, as well as that strain of Christianity instilling certain kind of salutary personal moral discipline in citizens anyway. And certainly we are seeing a repeat of history with the current leftwing Israel-is-Genociding-Palestinians stuff, the deeper internal Black-vs-Jew power fight within the Democratic party, and the response of some American Jews to all that.

If you go down this road, I think it raises a bunch of other, bigger, interesting questions. Recoiling against antisemitism is, itself, rooted in certain Christian-derived values (Tom Holland's Dominion is a really strong book on a lot of these ideas). Is the rise of China and its ability to avoid being rotted out from within by Western liberalism and capitalism, China with its internal culture that is unabashed racialist in a way that late 19th century would find recognizable... is that rise Good for the Jews? Would a world run by the current culture of China be hospitable to Jewish people and Jewish power?

I'm reminded of an observation that Glenn Loury has made. He made the point that it wasn't at all obvious that it was in the best interest for African American descendants of slaves for America to be flooded by immigrants. And his point was that, while there was this naive belief that everyone would team up against White-y, over in reality, because of the Civil Rights movement, American blacks could make a certain kind of moral claim on other white Americans whose ancestors have been here for a while. "I'm not so doing well, but your ancestor enslaved me." But it seems deeply unlikely that newer immigrants from East Asia or South Asia, as they gain power, are likely to be moved by such claims. Far more like is for them to see the deep pathologies of black communities not through a lens of guilt, but rather through a lens of disgust.

Obvious Jewish people aren't a monolith, and there are more Jewish opinions than there are Jewish people. But, in America, for a bunch of reasons, the concerns of powerful Jewish people do matter a huge amount. And I think it is the case that there are probably versions of "America was founded as a white Christian nation" that some such people could find useful and tolerable, and there are some such versions that aren't. I'm not sure where Walsh's current views fit on that front (and, of course, Catholicism is it's own deeply interesting, deeply complicated topic here too, for that matter).

I don't mean China as the people of China, here, or their material conditions. I mean China as the political entity run by the CCP. And by "rotted out from within", I meant the CCP having their sovereignty dissolved and capacity to act undermined... which is very clearly what liberalization is supposed to do to political regimes. I've seen this discussed at great length by western political intellectuals in the past; this isn't some kind of giant secret. Globalization and integrating China into the global economic order was supposed to weaken their government and dissolve the insularity of Chinese culture.

I've noticed this phenomenon among the right (necessary disclaimer: I completely acknowledge that this is true of the left as well, but they're not in power now so it's not as fun to scrutinize them) to boldly assert the truth of easily falsifiable claims. The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim: CNN, CBS, ABC, and my favorite, an ominous report from the Washington Post. This story is obviously being covered...

This is a genuine case of "both sides do it", but yes, any time you see "why isn't anybody talking about _______?!?" on social media, the correct response will invariably be somewhere on a spectrum from "They are!" to "Are you living under a rock? No-one seems to be talking about anything else".

cf. "we need to have a conversation about race".

Or speaking from Australia, this is how I feel about demands for "truth-telling", or for "telling indigenous stories", or "listening to Aboriginal voices", or anything like that - the same media that devotes disproportionate time and attention to reporting on Aboriginal concerns and telling people about Aboriginal culture then with a straight face asserts that the problem is that nobody is talking about them. Excuse me, what do you think we've all been doing, extremely loudly, for years?

I'd like to register that both Seder and the young woman didn't come out looking well.

Oh, she came out looking very well. Her ideas…. eh, whatever.

(I would do her, is what I’m getting at.)

The thing is, both she and Seder are correct about “what America is.” Both strains of thought have been equally prominent and influential throughout American history. The people who believe it’s purely a colorblind “propositional nation” of ideas divorced from ancestry need to explain the Naturalization Act of 1790, and why so many of the Founding Fathers — particularly Thomas Jefferson, who was obsessed with the specifically Anglo-Saxon character of America’s founding stock — wrote so much about their race and about the vast differences between themselves and both the Africans and the Amerindians with whom they shared a continent. The people who believe white Christian nativism is core to American history, though, similarly have to deal not only with the strongly universalist rhetoric of many of the Founding Fathers and of the religious denominations in which they were involved, but also the distinct lack of Christian belief among certain others important Founding Fathers.

There have always been lots of Americans who sincerely believe that America was a creedal land of universal promise, in which every immigrant can make good by working hard, and there have always been lots of other Americans who believed that America is an ethnos based, at least in part, on shared ancestral ties to a particular founding stock. America means very different things to different factions, and each of those factions is strongly and sincerely patriotic to its specific conception of what America means. This jockeying for control of the narrative, and the exclusion/suppression of the other side’s narrative, has been going on since before this country even properly began. Neither side in that exchange had any hope of moving the needle on that set of issues — especially considering someone on Twitter deduced that the pretty young right-wing zoomer is from Canada anyway!

(I would do her, is what I’m getting at.)

Wait, do you mean have sex with her, or something else? Is she single?

Sorry if I didn't get the joke 😞

(I would do her, is what I’m getting at.)

Watch out, Kanye, someone is out to steal your Subtle Allusion Award.

I think a few things are becoming increasingly clear to certain factions of groyper.

  1. Trump is spending colossal political capital (domestically, with corporate elites, even with his base when it comes to inflation and the markets) on tariffs, which leaves comparatively little room for the huge battles required around illegal immigration. Tariffs are the only (or, more charitably, the central) truly ideological political position Trump holds. On other matters, including immigration, Ukraine, government efficiency and Israel, he is happy to let various donor and supporter-affiliated groups handle matters provided they don’t particularly embarrass themselves. Tariffs are personal (evident even from his tweeting).

  2. As a consequence of the above, it’s extremely unlikely that the 13-15m+ illegal migrants are going to be deported (since it would take a COVID-vaccine level effort, years of legal wrangling, the construction of several million+ inmate detention facilities, a plan to sweep for all illegal migrants etc etc etc). Even if net illegal immigration is therefore slightly negative for a couple of years, after the Biden wave, the overall demographic trajectory of the country (as of 2020 or indeed 2016) is essentially unchanged. Gentile Europeans with no pre-Columbian ancestry (a more accurate descriptor than non-Hispanic white) will likely become a minority in the US in the near future. As the last election showed, this is not necessarily devastating for the GOP, but it obviously is for white ethnats.

  3. Trump will likely be blamed for a major recession in this term, whether that comes as a consequence of his trade policies or any other policies, or AI, or a black swan event, or simply the standard nature of the business cycle. It is tough to bank on the enemy never being in power again; you can either hope to change them (and I think Trump is changing the Democrats, but obviously not as much as would be required to placate the groypers) or plan for the next period in opposition, which is what they appear to be doing.

Open white ethnic nationalism is not a winnable political platform for a Republican presidential candidate. As Bannon noted, you only need a small percentage of black voters and a modest percentage of (yes, increasingly brown) Hispanics to vote for a GOP candidate to win, but you do need some of them.

It is entirely reasonable to say that America was founded as a European settler nation. It was, in fact, founded as an Anglo settler nation, which is why Ben Franklin argued persuasively against German, Mediterranean and Scandinavian “swarthy” immigration. There is a certain irony to descendants of those same Germans and Swedes, Italians and Poles, who now find themselves arguing in favor of that conception of America, only with them included this time. Still, it is their right, even if they sound like the WASPs lamenting their own decline at the start of the 20th century.

Last thought: on some level I see this as about trying to exert pressure on Trump re. immigration, but I don’t think Trump has ever listened much to his base. He listens to people he finds important or impressive or influential or useful. Vance does listen to the online right, but his kids are literally half Indian so it’s hard to see the wignat message converting him.

Not only does explicit white nationalism not expand the GOP base(although less than you think- to many Hispanics whiter society=better society and they expect to assimilate as ‘the good ones’), the current GOP base doesn’t like it that much. The base is by and large at least moderately pro-Israel, either because they believe opposing it carries a curse or because its enemies are our enemies. The base doesn’t have a high opinion of the African American community but thinks we all need to get along with who we’ve got here rather than worry about racial makeup.

And, of course, a lot of this stuff seems to go hand in hand with Fuentes-style actually hating women rather than being patronizing, which makes a big difference to GOP women and married men.

Nobody personally remembers the eighteenth century. But plenty of people remember 1960, with its comparatively low crime, affordable housing and prosperous industries, when cities had WASPs, Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews and that was all the "diversity" anyone needed or wanted.

when cities had WASPs, Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews

And blacks. And they all hated each other.

Vance does listen to the online right, but his kids are literally half Indian so it’s hard to see the wignat message converting him

Guy tweeted that the "normalize Indian-hate" DOGE kid should be reinstated.

As an act of magnanimous charity, as a favor to Musk, and because he dismissed it as trolling.

We joke about white nationalists with Asian girlfriends, but this isn’t a 50 year old TRS fan with the default blue collar Filipina mail order bride, nor is it a Nikki Haley situation where she (essentially) changed her name, converted to Christianity etc. This is a VP who goes home to his (Hindu, not Catholic) Indian wife and kids (his son is literally called Vivek) every day and eats vegetarian Desi food for dinner. Does he think that his wife and kids shouldn’t be in the country? I doubt it.

Funny enough I tend to agree with the "America is a set of ideas" conception and thus a 'true' American is someone who subscribes to that set of ideas wholeheartedly, and gives their allegiance to the nation which is founded upon/represents those ideas over any other political allegiances they could have.

The set of ideas that I think represents "The American Way" would roughly look like:

1. Private property is sacrosanct.

not only is the phrase "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" directly stated in the Fifth Amendment, the concept is bolstered by the Second, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments. We had to resolve the wee little dispute over whether other humans could be treated as property, but that debate actually further supports that private property was a fundamental precept of the nation.

2. The "state" is the fundamental political unit around which the rest of the system revolves.

Tenth Amendment supports this directly. The debates over secession and the Civil War cloud the issue. But end of the day the Union can only persist so long as its member states resolve to stay unified. This is also why, historically, the idea of making Canada or its provinces into new States is far from a wacky suggestion. Just, ideally it would be done via a consensus mechanism and not invasion.

3. The Federal Government exists primarily to protect the interests of the citizens writ large, and to preserve the union of states from internal conflict and external threat.

Ah, here's the really tricky one. Its absolutely uncontroversial, or should be, that the Federal Government gets to handle international dealings on behalf of all the member states and citizens, and the states have representation via congress to approve treaties and such, but cannot enter treaties of their own. And likewise, rather than states going to war with each other, the FedGov has mechanisms to quickly and peacefully resolve disputes without bloodshed or lasting damage.

But Federalism creates some small paradoxes, such as the fact that states don't get to control immigration across their own border, but FedGov can control (or not) immigration across the national borders, and states don't get to treat their own residents with favoritism (at least, not much) whilst an American citizen can freely choose which state they want to reside in and favor, and can swap that allegiance at any time. Americans therefore are governed by their states but really owe little to nothing to the state they live in, can't be constrained from leaving their state, and for all pursuits and purposes can consider themselves an American Citizen first and a resident of a given state second.

So how much authority does an American really want the Federal Government to have? And if they decide they owe more allegiance to the Federal Government than their chosen state, are they still an "American?"

4. Citizens ought to be free to pursue whatever objectives they prefer and take whatever course they think is most likely to get them there... SUBJECT TO the rules and limitations set by the state they reside in.

This follows from the combination of the above three points. If you can own property, if you can move to whichever state has the set of rules you find most agreeable, if you can expect the Federal government to enforce your "fundamental" rights where-ever you are, then you have the basic control of your own life-path and are not required to submit your own vision or goals to that of some arbitrary political authority. Unless you WANT to, of course.

You can choose to practice your preferred religion (submit to the church or god of your choice), you can enter a marriage (submit your vision to your spouse's interests), you can enter an employment contract (submit to the will of an employer or corporation), or you can carve out your own niche and not submit to ANYONE so long as you pay your tax bill to the state and Fedgov.

There are no kings here to assert their will, there is no mob rule to force you into conformity, there is not an order of specially appointed priests who will subject you to an inquisition for failing to hew to a particular religious doctrine.

That's what "Americans" want. That's how "The American Dream" functions. YOU define your dream, you pursue it, and so long as you don't step on anybody else you will be allowed to chase it as long as you want.

But this does lead us to a potentially frightening question. What of those who are culturally or maybe even genetically averse to such ideas? There are plenty of places where private property ISN'T sacrosanct. Communism as an ideology rejects that precept.

There are likewise places where the basic political unit is your village, or it could be whichever regional warlord currently control the territory your family lives in, or in a handful of places there is indeed still a singular monarch in whom all political power theoretically resides. The idea that a defined territory would be governed by a defined entity according to clearly defined rules is not universal on this earth.

And of course, some governments don't operate as though they owe their citizens squat, the assumption flows the other way. The citizens owe the state allegiance, support, labor, and even their lives if called upon to fight for the nation.

And without those supporting ideals, well, you can't believe in an "American Dream" that one can pursue, since every person is required to submit their own vision or goals to the political authority and can't expect their own preferences to be protected, so why should they expect to be allowed to chase their goals in peace, ever?

Current technology might enable us to actually answer the question: are there groups of people who are more or less genetically predisposed to be "Americans" i.e. to subscribe the aforementioned set of ideas and therefore provably capable of pledging allegiance to the nation that represents those ideals? And if we can identify that, surely, SURELY as a nation of ideas we should be careful about only letting in those people who can provably pledge allegiance and aren't predisposed to defect.

And then, what if anything should we do if it is noticeable that this ability to accept these ideas has a strong correlation with ethnicity?

Even before the wave of European immigration in the early 1900s, I think that (1) and (2) would not have been uncritically accepted by all Americans.

There are two very serious problems with proposition-based nationhood even in the absence of immigration:

  • How do you resolve disagreements of interpretation? Supreme Court, yes, but that only solves the problem on the legal level. Does it mean that people who disagree with landmark Supreme Court rulings are de-jure not American?
  • What do you do about proposition drift over generations? The people whose ancestors came over with the Pilgrims but fervently disagree with those propositions? Do they lose citizenship? And then longer term what if communism sweeps the globe and everyone or 90% of everyone decides they disagree with the sanctity of property?

Supreme Court, yes, but that only solves the problem on the legal level. Does it mean that people who disagree with landmark Supreme Court rulings are de-jure not American?

If "disagree with" means "voice their dissent and yet abides by the court's ruling in the legal realm, that's incredibly American!

If 'disagree with' means "refuse to accept the ruling and revolt against any attempt to enforce it" then yeah, I'd suggest that's Anti-American.

I mean, Supreme Court Justices themselves can disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling, That's what a 'Dissenting Opinion" is! If they're persistent their interpretation can supplant the previous one.

The people whose ancestors came over with the Pilgrims but fervently disagree with those propositions? Do they lose citizenship? And then longer term what if communism sweeps the globe and everyone or 90% of everyone decides they disagree with the sanctity of property?

I think its safe to say that if a large majority of the citizens of your nation wholesale reject the ideas upon which the Nation was formed, you have to wind things up and pack it in, yeah. Even if we don't strip citizenship from people who have come to reject those ideas, I am okay with making their lives otherwise so unpalatable that they renounce citizenship on their own. See also the discussion on free speech as an ideal vs. deporting people expressing anti-american sentiments.

If every single person outside of the nation rejects those ideas, I guess its a question of how hard the nation will fight to maintain its status and standing as an independent unit.

Hence why it does remain very important for a 'nation of ideas' to be careful about who it admits in and grants citizenship to.

Even if we don't strip citizenship from people who have come to reject those ideas, I am okay with making their lives otherwise so unpalatable that they renounce citizens on their own.

Why not the opposite? Reform the nation on the beliefs that the now majority of your citizens espouse? To an extent that is what the Civil war did no? Massive disagreement about a specific ideal, fought a war over it, reformed shattered state with the new status quo in place (to an extent at least).

Or to put it another way was the Confederacy or the Union the anti-American ones in this context? Slavery had been part of America for some time, so was the abolition unAmerican or was the fact slavery contradicted some of the idealistic founding rhetoric enough to make abolition actually the American thing to do?

Reform the nation on the beliefs that the now majority of your citizens espouse?

If you're aiming for a Convention of States then yeah, that'd be an appropriate approach.

I would suggest, however, that American values haven't 'shifted' as a whole, but that there is a severe divergence in values. There is no real 'majority view' on values to be identified.

So attempting to reform "The American Way" to favor either side's preferences would just mean no further union was possible.

The alternative is redesigning the meta-rules to allow peaceful co-existence, but that would look very similar to the rules we already have.

Or to put it another way was the Confederacy or the Union the anti-American ones in this context?

By definition the Confederacy was 'Anti-American' if we characterize them as the ones who wanted to exit the union and reform under a slightly different set of rules. They removed themselves from the compact and went off to do something different.

On the other hand, going to war to prevent states from leaving seems to betray the issue in #2 above, that States are supposed to be the prime political unit and able to determine their own fate.

So it is in fact possible that both sides were 'betraying' true American values, just each was betraying a different one.

As a side note: I do wonder how history might be different if the U.S. Civil War had been avoided or mitigated and they'd found a peaceable way to bring slavery to an end. Like how most other countries did.

Maybe safe to say it could have sparked later over some other major issue.

I mean in order for freedom to work properly, you do need some fairly specific cultural beliefs. You’d have to believe in public order, in respecting private property, and respecting the rights of others you disagree with. That’s a tall order, and very few cultures accept all of those things. In a lot of places (MENA, Africa, and South America in particular) these things aren’t expected, and in fact tge general assumption is that you’d better take precautions to protect yourself and your property because you will lose what you can’t protect.

Right, but "magic dirt" theory suggests that any human who comes here is capable of adapting to the culture and assimilating.

As long as the norms and ideas here are better and stronger then why should their culture of origin bother us?

In small enough numbers over a long enough time, I think it’s possible to do that. But if you’re taking in thousands of MENA Muslims into your country at a time, you get an ethnic enclave that doesn’t assimilate to the norms of the rest of society. The same can be said for Africans or South Americans.

Yes, and I've pointed out how mass communications make assimilation less likely.

If you can communicate freely with the home country, and consume home country media, and by extension avoid consuming American media and thus 'absorbing' American norms and expectations, if you can fly back to your home country for relatively cheap... not surprising if you'd still maintain allegiance there regardless of how long you spend in the U.S.

I think we’re in agreement on that as well. Assimilation is the key to making immigration anything other than importing a fifth column into your country from places that often don’t share any culture and beliefs with your country. In small numbers, I think a relatively motivated group can become assimilated, but if you create a situation where you’re building Little Pakistan in London where Muslim norms, practice, and morals are the culture of that enclave, you simply slowly turn London into Pakistan.

I'm not sure it would help very much if they could only consume American media; we are not in the times of the Hays Code before the rural purge when media tried to be morally uplifting.

If African immigrants assimilate into ghetto hood culture through rap and hip-hop, or if female immigrants assimilate into the false life plan through romance novels and movies, that's worse than useless.

These foundational ideas are good as far as they go, but I think makes it clear the point the girl was getting at: these are the minimum basic requirements to be an American. Is there nothing more? Is that all there is? Sam might say, no there is nothing more. Everything else is an illusion or not genuinely American, but I think this is (a) profoundly unsatisfying for a lot of people and (b) not historically genuine. What are the aspirational aspects of being an American? I can think of a few things that I thing makes someone a good American:

  • Industriousness and/or self-reliance
  • Charity and respect for strangers
  • Weak regard for social class
  • Civic nationalism

I don't think there's anything the slightest bit untoward about desiring to live in an America with more people who share those values and fewer people who wreck the commons, bugger their neighbors, and exhibit antisocial behavior. Yes, it's possible to tolerate those who don't share these values, and it's better to grant dispensation than engage tyranny to force an outcome. But it is unpleasant and it would surely create a more desirable society if people would, through the power of assimilation and persuasion, voluntarily adopt such values. I'm baffled and increasingly despondent that people find this to be a totally unreasonable imposition, and demand that instead Americans give up these values to accommodate people who don't share them and don't feel inclined to change.

Charitably, Walsh must be communicating something other than the plain meaning of his words. In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".

They are "covering" it in the sense of reporting that it is happening , but not in the same way they would cover it if there was an opposite political valence, e.g. haranguing political leaders to demand accountability or issue groveling condemnatiions, and heavily insinuating wider responsibility to political fellow travelers.

I guess that woman debating Sam Seder is getting more attention, but it pairs well with this other guy who "shredded" Sam Seder.

https://x.com/IamSean90/status/1898979265615409509

In this clip, Sam basically fails to articulate a single moral principle beyond "Well, that's just what our society had decided is right and wrong" and when dude says society can change it's mind over time, Sam's only meek response is "Please don't".

Pair this with lady who points out this whole "melting pot" narrative undermining the Christian European roots of America, and Sam comes off as a guy who's left hand is constantly working to change society (through mass migration and media control) to match his preferences, and who's right hand just shrugs and goes "I donno man, things just happen to be the way I like them because of society or whatever man."

There was a story sold to us growing up that we can accept immigrants who want to work hard, and by working hard make America a better place, but that they will assimilate and the America we experience will not meaningfully change. People will experience diversity of shopping and dining experiences with zero externalities. This story, broadly, got widespread support. This story has also been exposed as a complete falsehood. There is little assimilation, and towns are becoming foreign countries out from under their native residents not in generations, but in election cycles. And the response from our ruling class is basically "Fuck you, you suck, your standard of living is too high and you vote wrong, so we're replacing you on purpose and there is nothing you can do about it." We get a bunch of unprincipled and self serving "America is only an idea man, and ideas can change" rhetoric. But change can cut both ways, and people are waking up to the fact that they are faced with America being changed into a completely foreign country out from under them, or being changed back into a more explicitly Christian European country.

But one way or another, the change is coming. Clinging to the status quo is no longer an option.

I'm not shocked more people are nakedly ethnonationalist. It's the gold standard for all of human history, lots of the world currently still is, and it's the only meaningful alternative being provided to "Just let infinity third worlders have your legacy because you suck". I personally don't think legacy Americans have the vitality or institutional capacity to stop it, though I sincerely hope I'm wrong. The project is going to take a lot longer than another 4 year Trump term.

It's the gold standard for all of human history

Nationalism of any kind (including ethno-nationalism) can't be the gold standard for all of human history because nations don't exist until mass literacy and the printing press. Tribalism, based on loyalty to Dunbar-sized groups of actual kin and larger facsimiles thereof was the gold standard for most of human history. But the most successful large tribes - including the Roman Empire and Christian Church, and therefore Western Civilisation, were based on fictive kinship through a shared mythopoetic father-figure, not realish kinship determined by ethnicity.

Ethno-nationalism as a political idea begins as a 19th century small-l liberal project, replacing loyalty to dynastic states. Bismarck comes up with a right-wing version of it which works in the context of Protestant Germany. But in Catholic countries ethno-nationalism is directly opposed to throne-and-altar conservatism, which was the gold standard in early modern Europe.

But the most successful large tribes - including the Roman Empire and Christian Church, and therefore Western Civilisation, were based on fictive kinship through a shared mythopoetic father-figure, not realish kinship determined by ethnicity.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Romulus, notably, was both a mythical father figure of the Romans and the Latins were a real ethnicity.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Romulus, notably, was both a mythical father figure of the Romans and the Latins were a real ethnicity.

I was thinking of the period when the Roman Empire was explicitly multiethnic, during which the deified Emperor was the mythopoetic father figure. The growth of the Roman empire (small 'e' as the process begins under the late Republic) involves a series of extensions of increasing levels of political inclusion (socii, then Latini, then full cives Romani) to people who were increasingly obviously not ethnic Latins.

Fair, but insofar as the republic’s expansion over the Italian peninsula is known about, Romulus as father figure to ethnic Latins dominating the peninsula is a major part of the process.

I mean, if you're going to bring up the Romans, you can't get away from the collapse of the Roman empire, and it's eventual failure to keep "Romanizing" the people it ruled, eventually collapsing into a bunch of basically ethnic nations. Debates about how much the Huns, Franks, assorted Goths, Vandals, Saxons etc were distinct ethnicities, or banner bearers for tribal confederations aside.

Rome succeded in Romanizing the people it ruled beyond the wildest expectation, Gauls and Hispanics speak Latin to this very day. Goths, Vandals, Saxons etc were never ruled by Rome.

Never successfully. But they were invited into the Empire with the full expectation they would be Romanized like the Gauls, Hispanics, North African peoples, Celts, etc. The Emperor would declare them friends of Rome, and expect them to cultivate the lands and pay the taxes, often of areas thoroughly depopulated by civil wars, disease and famine. They expected to be able to levy troops from these peoples. This was largely a fiction since the Empire lacked the manpower or resolve to really keep them out, so they would just decree that these tribes were being made Roman subjects. Some, like the Goths, took this pledge maybe halfway seriously?

It's just that by that point, either the Goths, Vandals, Saxons, Franks etc were a unique challenge, or the empire had lost whatever mojo it had that got the people it ruled to Romanize.

And 1500 years later, the leading Saxon polity is ruled by a Senate that meets on Capitol Hill in a building decorated in the Corinthian Order. I don't think the Saxons are entirely un-Romanized.

In this clip, Sam basically fails to articulate a single moral principle beyond "Well, that's just what our society had decided is right and wrong" and when dude says society can change it's mind over time, Sam's only meek response is "Please don't".

Pitiable performance indeed, and the fact that we still have such debates is even more pitiable.

Morality based on divine command is, historically, extremely late development (and it is debatable how effective it was). 2000+ years ago, if someone asked: "Why shouldn't I rob, rape and kill my fellow citizens of my city?" the answer was not "Zeus forbids it" or "After you die, Zeus will torture you forever in Tartarus".

The answer was, TL;DR: "Because good person does not do such things, and you want to be heckin' good person" and "If you are caught, you will be crucified/impaled/skinned alive/fed to wild beasts".

The answer was, TL;DR: "Because good person does not do such things, and you want to be heckin' good person"

Which moral system do you have in mind that invoked the concept of hecking goodness, without at the same time invoking the divine (note: not the same thing as citing divine punishment).

The answer was, TL;DR: "Because good person does not do such things, and you want to be heckin' good person"

Putting aside whether Christianity triumphed because it was distinct in its focus on morality (Julian the Apostate certainly thought lacking this focus on charity was a weakness of traditional religion), it was often "you would be a bad member of the clan/city/people". You either insulted your worshipped ancestors or the very kin you needed to survive.

Sam Seder's ideology suffers from coming at an incredibly individualistic time and encouraging those tendencies more and more.

I don't blame him that much for speaking up, he was dealing with a debate-bro in a format ill suited for it. But it is a legitimate problem when your ideology simultaneously attacks all things that impose duties on people, push them to live their best lives and then have to turn around and try to jerry-rig some new commandments without many of the tools we've traditionally used for that and without admitting what you're doing.

In fact, if we're going to criticize people's performance, the debate-bro allowed Sam to say ludicrous things, like imposing one's beliefs being mainly a feature of theocrats. That is a ludicrous thing to grant given how the secular supposed-cosmopolitans act when they feel they have the whip hand. Ultimately, there's no escape from needing to have a set of values for a community. What you'd hopefully do is shrink the size of communities but everyone is going in the opposite direction.

You know, it's funny you went straight to the bronze age, cause I just wrapped up The Iliad and The Odyssey, and it was a trip. The morality on display was virtually amorality. Common stories included murdering someone in a town, and having to flee before their brothers kill you back. This was bad. If you fled to another town and found allies, who would then help you finish off the entire family of the person you killed, this was good! If you manage to steal the flocks from a town, that's awesome. If the town you stole them from hunts you down, steals them back, and burns your town down for the effort, that was bad. And all along the way, it's all as Zeus wills it. Zeus doles out success and failure, and the most common reason anyone's attempts at murder, thievery or revenge fails is insufficient piety. Even the most talented individuals must be beloved by the gods for their murder and mayhem to succeed.

The only exceptions are of course, the lands, flocks and people's that belong to the gods, those are verboten to fuck with.

Increasingly I lean into religion/morality as a social technology with consequences. Does it promote prosocial values that help your civilization flourish, or does it burn out or wither and die? Morality is not a single axis, it's a 4X custom civilization screen with lots of pluses and minuses, and it has to compete with a lot of different people's that made different choices, possibly adapted to their environment.

Whatever else you can say about Sam Seder's morality, it's clearly dying. Either because the legacy American's it seeks to rule over no longer feel like being oppressed, or because the foreign legions it imported to keep the natives oppressed don't actually have any buy in to it. But one way or another, whether Sam Seder knows it or not, his morality is an evolutionary dead end.

And all along the way, it's all as Zeus wills it. Zeus doles out success and failure, and the most common reason anyone's attempts at murder, thievery or revenge fails is insufficient piety. Even the most talented individuals must be beloved by the gods for their murder and mayhem to succeed.

Agree. And it's important to remember that traditional Stoicism was one of the first sort-of-trasncendental philosophies to come into existence. And far from the "I take cold showers" bro-Stocism of today, it was more about being happy with whatever your station in life is because you were acting in accordance with Zeus' ordering of the universe ....

The morality on display was virtually amorality

It's worth dialing in on this. They weren't amoral, they had morality - it is just alien to us.

For example SKILL was moral virtue. As opposed to unselfishness, which is often what we use these days.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arete

Lots of Ancient Greek myths and cultural output make more sense if you go back and think about it this way.

Dialing in on this and its implications is a big piece of what Nietzsche is about and importantly this kinda stuff still lives with us today a little bit in other moral systems and countries (....could this explain woeness????).

However the general Judeo-Christian/Western ethical system is so baked into our lives and culture that it often results in a bit of "this is water" type problems.

And of course the word "virtue" has the Latin root of "vir", meaning "man" in the sense of "adult male displaying the classical masculine virtues" (as opposed to "homo", meaning "man" as in "person assumed male because that's the default").

The Latin word virtu translates into modern English as "manliness" if you want a literal translation, but I would translate it as "prowess" - when applied to an adult human male it is approximately synonymous with the Greek Arete. (Arete could also be applied to inanimate objects which were exceptionally fit for their purpose - when applied to a bladed weapon it gets translated as "sharpness".)

What Seder says in response to the woman is completely reasonable, which is that they have incompatible views of what the country is that can’t be resolved through argument.

It just devolves into “I’m a Jewish liberal and I think I belong in this country” versus “I’m a Christian religious-and-ethnic nationalist and I don’t think you do”. There isn’t anything else to say, or to do. It just is.

Specific claims can be discussed, as we do here, as can arguments that might be used by either Seder or the woman to try to persuade or justify their viewpoints. But the disagreement itself is intractable.

If you think "We should have a dominant culture", "We should have assimilation" means "Deport Sam Seder", yeah, it's intractable. But if you hear what she's actually saying, brashly, it's that there should be no hyphenated Americans. You need to abandon your native land, your culture and your history at the door. Sam Seder needs to leave only in so far as he's incapable of dropping his distinctly Jewish identity.

And if this sounds like a horrific ask, well, that's what the White Europeans of this country have been forcefully subjected to the last 20 years with demoralization propaganda and the rewriting of our history, and the defamation of our culture.

It's not unreasonable to want born again Americans, not entriest who try to mutate the "idea" of America, or even hate the pre 1960's history and people of it.

But if you hear what she's actually saying, brashly, it's that there should be no hyphenated Americans. You need to abandon your native land, your culture and your history at the door. Sam Seder needs to leave only in so far as he's incapable of dropping his distinctly Jewish identity.

It's not clear to me whether this is your view as well, or if you're just trying to correct the record. But if true, would you (or your interpretation of her views) welcome my immigration to the United States if I wholly identified as an American? Say I surrendered my previous citizenship, listened to the Hamilton soundtrack a couple times and passed the citizenship test? What if I weren't Christian? Or what if I weren't white? What if I supported trans children in choosing what to do with their body (which you see as sterilization and self-mutilation, I know, let's not get hung up on semantics)? Increased redistribution and welfare relative to what I expect you would want?

The above is more or less directionally true, even if I changed many details/positions. I am an immigrant, I do largely identify as American, I do love the history and origin story and culture of this country. But I also, broadly speaking at least, align with a set of values that clearly melt your brain. Yet those values are undeniably a valid set of cultural values in this country - have I assimilated, or not? Is 'abandon your native land, your culture, and your history' code for 'you need to adopt political positions that I like?'

I was correcting the record. I thought the cheap shot of "This woman doesn't want Sam Ceder, a jew, in her country" was a gross mischaracterization.

I mean, going from steel manning the woman in the video, to my own personal beliefs, I find myself nodding along with things I've heard Saagar Enjeti say. And his stance on immigration, at least at the time I heard him say this, was that America is in too much cultural turmoil for any immigration right now. He cites as the historical example that from the 20's through the 60's America had an incredibly restrictive immigration system, largely in backlash to how mass migration from other European nations was altering the make up and social contract of America. It took a solid generation or more for America to figure out who it was again, without further waves of mass migration causing even more chaos and social incohesion. It just took that long for the melting pot to melt, before American Chauvinism was destroyed by demoralization propaganda.

Like I said, I find myself nodding along to that. I think America needs 40 years to answer, for itself, what it's culture is going to be, without either side trying to import allies to tip the scales. And it needs more American Chauvinism to actually assimilate the people we already have, if that's even possible any longer. I can only imagine how much more fucked up prohibition would have been if the prohibition side began mass importing Muslims who don't drink, and the anti-prohibition side scoured the globe for alcoholics. And it's hard to imagine either approach making America better off long term, even if the short term culture war issue gets "settled".

I can only imagine how much more fucked up prohibition would have been if the prohibition side began mass importing Muslims who don't drink, and the anti-prohibition side scoured the globe for alcoholics. And it's hard to imagine either approach making America better off long term, even if the short term culture war issue gets "settled".

You don't need to imagine. I can identify one very obvious example of this in US history i.e. Bleeding Kansas.

I've noticed this phenomenon among the right (necessary disclaimer: I completely acknowledge that this is true of the left as well, but they're not in power now so it's not as fun to scrutinize them) to boldly assert the truth of easily falsifiable claims. The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim

Do you remember the kind of coverage that, Smollett, Sandman, or the Central Park Karen would get? Compared to that the story is being ignored entirely. You're right the claim is easily falsifiable, just not in the direction you want.

How much do you want it to be reported?

Enough to cause a week-long struggle session on obscure internet forums.

In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".

Hm...

Musk’s polarizing politics and anti-Tesla vandalism are having a negative effect on the brand, said Gerber, the Tesla investor. “It could all be fixed very easily,” he said, “with somebody else taking over and running Tesla.”

No, I don't think that's a particularly charitable phrasing on that.

In particular:

There would be mass media hysteria and FBI investigations.

"FBI" (nor "ATF") shows up in those articles, even the paywalled one, and even said 'ominous' report could scarcely be called hysteric. None mention another recent incident that one would consider relevant and is increasingly popular as a reblog target in BlueSky and Tumblr spheres.

Seconding FC.

You are making it very hard to believe that you’re acting in good faith.

But, since another deletion was somewhat predictable:

Is Matt Walsh going to leave The Daily Wire?

For most of his career as a public figure, Matt Walsh was the embodiment of Con Inc.: self-styled "anti-woke", socially conservative (but not in a way that instantly triggered accusations of bigotry), and most importantly, color blind. For him, "America [was] a set of ideas".

Well, something has changed, because Walsh has been steadily creeping rightward over the last several months and the end product of that transformation appears to be here (and here). The impetus for that video was this interaction between Sam Seder and a right wing zoomer.

We're seeing the right splinter in real time among racial lines in a way that it hasn't in many decades. Which side will win out in the end?

For whatever my opinion is worth, I'd like to register that both Seder and the young woman didn't come out looking well. Seder couldn't articulate a response in real time, but his opponent is likewise regurgitating right wing talking points that she doesn't appear to have put a lot of thought into.

Unrelated, but I thought I'd bring it up just because I was going through his Twitter:

Can you imagine if even one Bud Light warehouse was firebombed or even one Bud Light drinker was assaulted during the Bud Light boycott? There would be mass media hysteria and FBI investigations. Yet Tesla facilities and Tesla drivers are being attacked all across the country by leftist militants and the media ignore it entirely. I've noticed this phenomenon among the right (necessary disclaimer: I completely acknowledge that this is true of the left as well, but they're not in power now so it's not as fun to scrutinize them) to boldly assert the truth of easily falsifiable claims. The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim: CNN, CBS, ABC, and my favorite, an ominous report from the Washington Post. This story is obviously being covered - maybe more than it deserves to be - so why type something out you know to be a lie or something that 5 seconds of research would falsify? As someone who might otherwise be open to Walsh's ideas, I can't help but take him less seriously now.

Charitably, Walsh must be communicating something other than the plain meaning of his words. In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".

The "media ignore it entirely" is such a claim: CNN, CBS, ABC, and my favorite, an ominous report from the Washington Post. This story is obviously being covered - maybe more than it deserves to be - so why type something out you know to be a lie or something that 5 seconds of research would falsify?

Yeah "media ignores" it is wrong. Media spins the vandalism using what Cofeve Anon calls "progressive passive voice" is the correct critique. Notice these headlines:

"Tesla vehicles in Chicago vandalized in protest of Elon Musk's role in White House"

"Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say"

"Anger at Elon Musk turns violent with molotov cocktails and gunfire at Tesla lots"

"Tesla faces vandalism and protests amid backlash against Elon Musk"

Every single one of these is in the passive voice. There is no person or persons with agency that are doing these criminal acts. They simply ... happen... they are simply a logical consequence of "anger" and "backlash" at what Elon Musk is doing.

Whereas if the sides were reversed, the headlines would read:

"Republican temper-tantrum over Musk policies results in vandalism to Tesla vehicles"

"Far-right protest turns violent with molotov cocktails and gunfire at Tesla lots"

"Right-wing mobs unleash terror and destruction in response to Elon Musk's new policies"

Only the first two of your examples are in the passive voice. "$NOUN_PHRASE turns $ADJECTIVE" and "$NOUN faces $NOUN_PHRASE" are both active-voice sentences.

For further information, search 'passive voice' on Language Log.

Grammatically you are right, but my point still stands in that their is no person, group, movement or faction that is an actor with agency in these headlines. So in the two non-passive voice sentences "Anger turns" -- it's just disembodied anger, just a fact of reality, no particular person group or faction is responsible for, say, committing the sin of wrath. And then "Tesla faces." Who does Tesla face? Who faces Tesla? Again, no agenic actor. If you can think of a better term than "progressive passive voice" for these kinds of sentences, I'm all ears.

Aren’t the first two of those reversed headlines still passive? The active versions would be “Republicans vandalize Tesla vehicles” and “Far-right protestors shoot/bomb dealerships.”

Active voice is the default. Sometimes editors get uncomfortable blaming a person or group and switch to passive. In this case, I think it’s just the vagueness of the target. Look how Fox is handling it.

Tesla vehicles, charging stations as protestors denounce DOGE, Elon Musk

“A dealership was targeted.” “A man was arrested.”

If this was on MSNBC it would look like they’re covering for the “violent radicals targeting Tesla dealers.” That’s actually the phrase Fox uses in its video—they clearly considered it. But the web headline is relatively tame, because big media companies like to hedge.

Aren’t the first two of those reversed headlines still passive?

No. "$NOUN_PHRASE results in $NOUN_PHRASE" and "$NOUN_PHRASE turns $ADJECTIVE" are both in the active voice in English.

Whoops. You’re right.

Kind of confuses the original “progressive passive voice” argument, though.

Oh hey, he's deleting posts again

You appear to have deleted your OP post. You've been specifically warned that making and deleting posts is egregiously obnoxious, as it removes context from the subsequent discussion. You asked if you could have an exception out of unspecified concerns over "privacy", and were told that no exception would be granted.

It's a shame, because while I strongly disagree with the positions you take in this post, I think it was an entirely fair post and it seems to have generated good discussion. I don't know why you are determined to keep engaging this way, but we are not going to allow it. I'm setting the ban at a week; other mods feel free to adjust up or down as seems appropriate. If you continue this behavior, the bans will escalate rapidly. If on the other hand, you're willing to abide by the rules of this forum, we're happy to have you and hope you will continue to contribute in the future.

I have a vague memory that long time ago I belonged to a forum that had a problem with members deleting (or editing) top-level posts after getting pushback in the comments.

They set up a system where every post got an immediate auto reply quoting the entire OP.

Maybe we could have a subforum where the copy is posted and a reply with a link to the subforum post is put here, to avoid clogging up this thread with duplicate walls of text

If he's the guy I think he is, you've permabanned him 5-10 times already. The one who started using a lib trolling style to introduce holocaust revision articles that he pretended to be shocked and outraged about.

Is this the turning point for WW2 revisionism entering the mainstream?

was a huge tell. No actual lib would phrase it like that.

Of course, it's worth asking why pretending to be an obnoxious leftist is the best way to avoid getting modded for weeks around here...

Yeah obviously. The weird thing is that people were / are happy to discuss what he posts in the comments, he just doesn’t seem to want to keep his accounts up.

I don't get that guy. I mean I get hiding your power level out in the wild, but what is it supposed to accomplish here?

OTOH, that guy usually used his posts as an excuse to link some wignat website. If it's him, he got a whole week this time, so I suppose he's learning, sadly its the wrong thing.

Ban evasion.

Maybe also propagandizing to a larger audience, but mostly ban evasion.

In retrospect it would have been a lot less disruptive to let him post normally, wouldn't it?

I mean, I personally don't think so.


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