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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Not to blackpill too much, but the country is basically doomed. When judges can override issues of national sovereignty - literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel - the illegal immigration issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. The millions who came in will never leave.

Every time I read something hysterical on this forum I always flip what is being talked about in my head:

Not to blackpill too much, but this country is basically doomed. When cabinet appointees can override issues of human rights violations - literally there is NOTHING more important than a government being forced to respect the rights of its citizens and residents - the social justice issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. There will always be a subjugated class of people in the US.

Less tongue-in-cheek, it seems like the firebrands on the topic of immigration on the US are pretty much cheering for the suspension of habeus corpus: deport by any means necessary, due process be damned. It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point. But I also dread the unintended consequences / friendly-fire. I guess at least if you're on the conservative side of the political spectrum you don't have any fears of political persecution under this administration.

We're well on the well-trod path of democracies experiencing escalating norm violations that spiral into physical violence and the breakdown of traditional understanding of power divisions within the government. No country can operate solely according to a written constitution. Functional government always requires tacit understanding of proper rules and order of subordination. When a figure within the government tries to exercise merely textual or positional authority in violation of these tacit agreements, then (even if he's in the right by the rest of the law) the result is strife, unpredictability, and retaliation. Norms break down. The Overton window widens. Eventually, it widens to include physical violence, which starts with street thuggery and ends with proscriptions.

We are on Mr. Gracchus 's wild ride and there is no way off. The only thing that matters now is which faction wins. The norms are broken and can't be fixed. Sulla couldn't restore the norms and we can't either. There's no point getting nostalgic about them. The only goal now is to win.

proscriptions

What exactly did you mean by that? Banning political parties?

we can’t either

Why not? Obviously the norms keep arising in the first place.

I think he means proscription in the sense of “here is a list of people that all TRVE ROMANS have a civic duty to kill on sight”