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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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One of the interesting things that the right wing in the USA is doing is working to destroy many of the institutions that can be deployed to be The Man (the Department of Education being perhaps the prime example).

I don't think this eliminates the chance that the right-wing counterculture suffers from victory (as seems to typically be the case!) but I do think, if successful, it makes it more difficult for the right to seize and hold the low ground of "mandatory and cringe" that typically alienates people. Banking on "diversity of thought" to skew right-wing is a bold choice that may not pay off, but if it does it is actually likely to help keep the right more diverse (and more tolerant) by ensuring that the right's "client base" (for lack of a better term) is diversified.

One of the interesting things that the right wing in the USA is doing is working to destroy many of the institutions that can be deployed to be The Man (the Department of Education being perhaps the prime example).

The right lacks the Elite Human Capital(TM) necessary to take over these institutions, and it knows it. Scorched earth tactics - destroying positions you cannot hold to deny them to the enemy - is the second best solution.

I'm not sure I actually believe this – the right runs a lot of parallel institutions that are better/More Elite than the state-run institutions. I think the actual problem for the right is a bit more subtle.

Some of it is that is because of how school systems work in the USA, local ideology often matters more than state or federal ideology – and since population centers are often leftie, figuring out ways to redistribute resources away from local school systems to the institutions (elite and otherwise) that are more right-sympathetic is a victory for the right. Uncharitably, you could argue this is school choice does (although the counter-argument it only works because, frankly, the generic-and-often-left-wing choices are often quite bad and many people would take their kids to right-wing parallel institutions if they could afford it).