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The fundamental problem the Red Tribe/American conservatism faces is a culture of proud, resentful ignorance. They can't or won't produce knowledge and they distrust anyone who does. They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists. The best they can manage is the occasional court historian or renegade economist, chosen more for partisan loyalty than academic achievement and quite likely to be a defector. The effect is this bizarre arrangement where rather than produce conservative thought, they are demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them.
Occasionally rightists will plead weakness to rationalize their lack of intellectual productivity, but this is nonsense. They have had plenty of money, plenty of political power, and a broad base of support. Unless we accept the Trace-Hanania thesis that they literally just lack human capital, we're left with the conclusion that the right-wing withdrawal from intellectual spaces is a sort of distributed choice. Razing institutions because you can't be bothered to make your case is just barbarism.
I have spent my entire adult life, and even before that, with the knowledge that if I ever spoke my true political/social views I would instantly torpedo my entire career and social standing forever. I have been living under a censorious regime in a country that supposedly enshrines freedom of speech as one of its highest virtues for My. Entire. Life. The only place where I can even come close to honestly speaking about how I view the world is in anonymous and pseudoanonymous forums like this one, and even then I take pains not to get too real with y'all because it's really not that difficult to dox someone with a long post history and it just takes one obsessive.
Why are there no rightists in the academy? Could it be because they were systematically deplatformed and depersoned and dethroned on a generational, decades long project to completely seize control of elite production forever? No, it's because righties are dumdums, we're all dumdums.
And now you have the audacity to complain when the institutions you hollowed out are being kicked over, all the support columns contributed from the right having been forcibly removed? Boo hoo.
If you may allow me a moment of cathartic ranting emerging from decades of repression; razing these institutions is a moral imperative. I want them to do it more. I voted for it. I hope it gets worse for you. I hope your degrees not only become worthless, but millstones to drown you. I hope you have to hide your former affiliations on your social media and resumes, like I have had to do with my views for my entire life. I hope you know every ounce of the fear and anxiety your regime has smothered on me like an inescapable burial shroud, for, again, my entire fucking life. I hope they are so thorough with their dismantling of your institutions that in 50 years your cathedrals that are on the tips of every tongue now are only vaguely recalled in retrospect. A quaint historical artifact, like Standard Oil. Only then can something somewhat resembling what was lost be built from the ashes.
You stomped on us for 20+ fucking years, did you never think what would happen when we became the shoe? You deserve everything bad that is happening to you; you will deserve the much worse things that are still to come.
Sorry for the heat, but it's probably more honest than what you usually get. If you read between the lines, you should have seen this seething rage boiling over years ago. I am quite certain that many, many people feel the same - they just don't say it, yet; the habit of censoring one's own emotions, thoughts, and opinions for safety being deeply ingrained. The tighter you seal it, the more dangerous the pressure cooker becomes.
A rant about how much you hate your enemies and can't wait to see them get the rope is always going to be hard keep within the rules of discourse here, but all your "you" statements put this well over the line. The first part of your post was okay, but when you tell another poster that you want to see them, personally, suffer, that is too much heat.
My apologies, the you is rhetorical and broad. "You (the left)." I'm not wishing personal, specific harm on Skibboleth.
One of the divergences of right and left, however, is their belief in retribution, punishment, and suffering as morally justified and necessary in and of themselves. It has been my general observation that the left has completely abandoned the idea that retribution and punishment can be just and morally necessary for their own sake, not merely as incentives or correctives.
If there was a magic pill that would ensure a criminal never again committed crime - indeed, became an upstanding moral citizen - but induced no particular suffering, I get the feeling that many on the left would feel this was a sufficient "punishment" to, say, child murderers, and that any further retribution upon them would be barbaric and primitive. I do not believe this, nor do most on the right.
Suffering punishment when you do wrong is correct, morally. You SHOULD feel guilt when you do bad things. The push towards a shameless society is very, very bad. Shame is good, actually. Being punished when you do wrong is good for you and just good, full stop. A father disciplining his child does so out of love, and for their own good. So understand that even when if I say things like, "I think X should be punished" - this too is not necessarily a statement born out of hate. I can and do think that being punished can be good for someone. I think this is frequently the case, in fact.
And again, not merely for its utility to modify behavior. I think this a view that many postmodern leftists simply can't square - "I want you to be hurt because it will be good for you on a spiritual and moral level to be punished for your sins. I want you to suffer because I love you and suffering can, in fact, be good." The purely utilitarian view where all suffering is bad simply can't deal with this. Their instinct is to try and invert it somehow, "Oh, the suffering actually is good because it brings positive utility later-" NO. The suffering is good because it is suffering. If it is just it is just completely independent of the future. If the universe were to blip out of existence the next nanoinstant, it would still be just.
I want to also comment briefly on hate. Hate, in almost all modern popular media, is simply bad in and of itself. Epitomized by Star Wars philosophy schlock about the dark side. "Hate is the worst. Humans would be better off without hate. If only we could learn not to hate?" - These things sum up a LOT of the left's worldview. I think it's dead wrong. Hate is the most human and divine of emotions. God is merciful, yes, but he is also wrathful - when it is justified. A rat can feel fear, or even joy - can it feel hate?
And what of the utility of hate? The left seems to have completely forgotten why hate exists. Whether you think it a quirk of evopsych or a divine part of the grand design, hate has a strong, real, and practical purpose. It motivates you to completely destroy long-term threats permanently, even at considerable short term cost. A herd of gazelles might stomp out a lion that eats their young if they can catch it in the act. A tribe of humans tracks the lioness 30 miles to their den, kills her, kills her mate, kills all her cubs - and repeats the process every time they even see a lion in their territory from now until eternity until their distant descendants can't even imagine what it is like to fear being prey, to fear their child being snatched up in the red jaws. That is the value of hatred.
The events in Rotherham could never have happened to a society that hadn't had its ability to hate stripped from it. Hate is an essential part of society's immune system, and while it must be controlled, it should never be discarded.
This is untrue. There was plenty of hate for Pakistani muslims in the 80s and 90s when this started. So that cannot be the whole story. The first reason it wasn't stopped and why white prostitution gangs still operate in the same way is that no-one really cares about the victims. Underclass girls who drink and do drugs and are from broken homes or in care are seen as a problem, as scum. I've heard the cops say it, in towns just down the road from Rotherham. Their own families barely care for them let alone anyone else.
That is the true and ongoing failure here. Condemned by conservatives for loose morals and sin and condemned by liberals for being chavvy and ill educated and low class.
They will continue to be victimised by one group or another for these reasons. Its Russian gangs in London, Sectarian ones in Northern Ireland, but the victims remain the same.
A lack of hate is not the issue by far. There is more than enough of that. It's not enough compassion. Not enough love.
Child prostitution is popular because there are always men who will pay for it. Always. Lock up the offenders of course, but just like with drug dealers, a new one will be along in a minute. You have to want to protect the victims not just punish the guilty. You have to want to see them not as a problem but as broken girls from broken homes who need help and treatment. But they aren't easy to work with or help so even the most compassionate of social workers or police officers becomes a jaded burned out cynic soon enough. I've seen it happen in my days working in social care. So then the cops treat the girls as prostitutes and drug addicts not as vulnerable children. No humans involved as the saying goes.
That is the almost insumountable problem. Anyone who wants to help is set against an almost unending torrent of misery and exposed to the sordid underbelly of human desire. Not many come out of it with their compassion intact. But that is what is needed, not more hate.
You also have to keep in mind that the actions of the public were stymied by their own government. There was no mechanism for driving out the Pakistani rape gangs because the cops were running cover for them — to the point that today, cops waste time and resources tracking down people posting mean things about the rotherham gangs and Pakistanis in general, while still not doing much about said rape gangs.
I think vigilante justice would probably be a perfectly reasonable way to keep grooming gangs from acting openly. They’d know that if they hang around primary schools they’re going to face consequences from the community, and they … don’t do it. They know that if they touch a girl they face being hung from a telephone pole, they’re not going to be doing that. Keeping Pakistani men from being able to gain access to children, and being willing to actually punish wrongdoing is protective. And as far as im concerned, noting who is likely to do harmful things to your community and acting to keep them out is a social good.
To be clear the anti-racist stuff was certainly the reason those particular gangs were able to last longer than they should.
Though I'll note cops in the 80s and 90s were not running cover and it still happened thats why it isn't the whole picture.
The problem is no-one actually wants to hang around the schools these girls go to and protect them from Pakistanis or anyone else. Are you going to hang out in schools and care homes in Stoke on Trent? In run down city centres with drug addicts shooting up around the corner and breaking into your car? And the local alkies shambling around? You're going to be there all day everyday? You won't and nor will anyone else, is the point. Regardless of Pakistani grooming gangs, no-one cares enough to start vigilante gangs. The odd attempt to burn down a mosque is the best you're going to get.
I want to be really clear, I worked in city government in the Midlands and large numbers of Pakistani immigrants are a huge problem for multiple reasons, over-representation in child prostiution gangs being one among many. But class attitudes towards lower and underclass girls are a huge part of why they are victims all across the country and people don't care.
You ask why the average Brit won't riot to protect these girls? Because to most of them they are just as much the outgroup as Pakistanis. Worse even because they should know better. Even with the cops blessing there aren't going to be lynch mobs over this. Not until most of the victims are nice middle class girls.
That's bullshit covering for them, because the government actively went after a) anyone who tried to do anything, like the girls' dads, and b) anyone who tried to bring it to public attention.
"Ohh we're just so lazy" would be a better excuse if the coverup wasn't so active. And yes, I was there in the 80s and 90s, and local governments were absolutely running cover just as much back then. I remember the "minorities can do no wrong, so the police had better find no wrong" attitudes of the time, and I'm very much not surprised you were mixed up in it.
Beat bobbies in the 80's were calling Pakistanis Paki scum and much worse things. They were not running cover for them. That didn't start until it got up to the political levels (as you point out). "Paki-bashing" was still common through the 1980s. The "anti-racism" of not wanting to incriminate Pakistani communities was a direct reaction to that behavior. I was in the Midlands in the 80s working with the police (albeit in adult social care not children's). My first wife is from that working class background. I saw exactly the treatment those girls got from their own families and communities, let alone anyone else.
There is simply no widespread movement (even now!) to help these girls. Whether it is to protect them from prostitution gangs, to protect them from county line gangs or often their own families.
I'm not covering for anyone. I am telling you WHY even after all the revelations the reaction from Brits is still pretty muted. If they wanted to protest over it in numbers they could. If they wanted to make it a huge deal they could, just like Brexit. For Brexit, Labour strongholds who hated the Tories with the burning passion of a million flaming Maggie Thatcher's torching mining unions with a flamethrower were willing to flip. But for these girls? Barely a peep.
The average middle class liberal will talk about how its just awful, but will they actually be willing to pay more taxes to help these girls? No. Will they adopt troubled young "chav" girls in care homes? No. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the Great British public shows us exactly where these girls come in the hierarchy of care.
Believe me I have my own issues with Pakistani communities particularly in the Midlands, and I have no love for them. But we cannot ignore our own failings to protect these vulnerable girls and how that is even more widespread, simply due to demographics. If we do, we are failing these girls even harder than we already did and are.
By all means lock up every Pakistani grooming gang member and throw away the key. I won't shed a tear. Want to zero immigration from Pakistan? I'm all on board. In fact, I recommended that in the 1990s, when I joined central government. Condemn anti-racists for running cover? Go off King! (or whatever the kids of today say).
But if we do not pair that with staring into the face of own monsters, with our own biases and apathy, well the men grooming and drugging and raping these girls might then be white, but I don't think that is much comfort personally.
The demand for underage kids is ubiquitous whether we are talking Rotherham, Glasgow, Belfast, Epstein Island or Diddy parties. There will always be predators. Protecting the prey better, protects them against all predators whether wolves, foxes or coyotes. Otherwise you'll come back from hunting the wolves to discover the foxes ate your chickens.
I am not saying not to hunt the wolves. I am saying putting up a chicken coop is part of the solution. And observing people don't care about doing that, gives us information about what those people actually care about.
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