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Today, Jesse Singal wrote an opinion for the New York Times where he argued that Trump defunding youth gender research was a bad thing, despite the terrible research coming out of that part of science. He thinks that reform is in order, not slash-and-burn practices. In my opinion, there is definitely enough research out there by now that you can confidently release something like a Cass Report without anything new. Certainly, funding bad actors makes no sense, but to me, reform is little gain, and even a good new study must follow around minors that have gone through the unethical transgender science grinder.
It reminds me of an (unpopular) opinion Trace shared the other day on Twitter regarding the axing of funds for museums and libraries. Even if anthropology is 99% leftist, well, the institutions belong to those who show up, so right wingers just need to get in there and fix it themselves. While I appreciated that stance as it related to conservative law organizations, and as it related to Twitter when left-wingers were leaving the site en masse, I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
Deus Ex took a look at this perspective. Spoilers for Deus Ex:General Carter, after the UNATCO plot is exposed, decides to stay within the organization, because institutions are only as good as the people that comprise them. Later in the game, you see him in the Vandenburg compound. He has given up on his idea of reform and joined the resistance.
I'm going to guess most of this forum disagrees with Trace and Jesse on this matter in pretty much the same way that I do. Can you name any areas in government or other organizations where you do agree with them?
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.
The red tribe produces plenty of petroleum geologists, clergy are generally quite intelligent, has successfully engineered affirmative action for themselves in the legal profession despite the legal profession trying to do the exact opposite.
What you’ll notice is access to status from non-academic sources(money, religion, conservative activism). This is a consistent pattern- the red tribe does not care about status within the school system for its own sake(which is the main reward for anthropologists).
All of this just seems to me to be implicitly conceding the point. My contention, contra Hanania, is not that Red Tribers are literally stupid. It is that Red Tribers are somewhere between uninterested in and actively hostile to intellectual/cultural production (by which I mean things like scholarship or art). But they are still very much interested in those products, hence my remark that they want liberals to think conservative thoughts for them. They want (liberal) artists to create conservative-inflected art, (liberal) historians to write conservative historical narratives, etc...
I think it's correct to say that conservatives don't care about academic status and prioritize income/general social status - that's my point. Nothing wrong with that on an individual scale (I'm certainly not one to talk), but a side effect of this taken across a whole society is an extraordinarily vulgar* culture that produces little thought, little art, and can't handle critical perspectives.
*for lack of a better term. I do not mean that it is rude/inappropriate.
That depends on what you mean by "Red Tribe" (everyone seems to have a slightly different definition).
It's not particularly hard to list right-wing intellectuals and artists. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Pound, Eliot. There was an intimate link between Italian futurism and Mussolini's fascism.
I think Yarvin's concept of the dark elves is useful here: internal traitors to the Blue Tribe who align with Red Tribe on certain key issues and provide intellectual and cultural support to the reds. If your definition of a Red Triber is a person who prioritizes "income/general social status" over intellectual development, then sure, ex hypothesi such a person will take little interest in cultural production. But you're ignoring all the dark elves who very much are in the business of thinking "conservative" thoughts, and as others in this thread have pointed out their perspective has been systematically censored in elite institutions.
The Red and Blue Tribes may have rough analogs in other countries, but IMO they are strictly American (and primarily White American, though there peripheral non-white members) phenomena. As I've said before, the artistic and intellectual bankruptcy of the Red Tribe is not some universal attribute of conservatives. It's not even some atemporal quality of the Red Tribe. It seems to be something that's emerged in the past few decades.
So what is your basic definition of the Red Tribe, exactly?
White Southerners (including the white Southerners who settled the Mountain West after the Civil War), Appalachian hillbillies, anyone who goes to or pretends to go to a church where those groups dominate, and any non-white or white ethnic who makes a good-faith attempt to assimilate into the traditional culture of the white South or Mountain West. Serious Catholics and Mormons are generally allies of the Red Tribe, but they are not part of it.
My equivalent definition of the Blue Tribe would be New England Yankees, Quakers, pre-Ellis Island era German/Scandinavian immigrants*, descendants of the above who lost religion, and any non-white or white ethnic who makes a good-faith attempt to assimilate into the traditional culture of the Northeast - notably including Conservative/Reform/secular Jews. Unassimilated non-whites are (or were) allies of the Blue Tribe, but not part of it.
* i.e. all Mainline Protestants
Albion's Seed is the definitive book on the origins of the culture war.
Yes we are(can't speak for Mormons obviously but it probably applies). We have a lower view of evangelicals than they typically do of us, but your median Knights of Columbus family has recent experience of representation in the military, serious Catholics drink a lot but don't pot smoke(tell tale tribal marker- blue tribe loves its party drugs, red tribe has a big double standard), Catholics make a big outreach to supporting police and fire and often distrust the public school system, etc, etc.
There's a class difference between the majority of serious Catholics and your stereotypical red triber, but there's plenty of higher-class red tribers.
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