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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Elon Musk has suspended a slew of liberal journalists and pundits from Twitter. It is, as Benjamin Braddoc puts it, a red wedding for the liberal establishment. I initially believed that he was just the "controlled" opposition of the deep state, obviously he's stepped on way too many toes for that. This imo underscores an important truth to the ultra principled who believe in free speech absolutism and neutral institutions, the overton window won't shift the other way just to punish the "heretics" who've assailed this sacred virtue. Social media, our Frankenstein, has made it insanely easier for mob rule to influence culture (not that it wasn't already).

I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.

EDIT: It looks like he's lifting the suspension.

I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.

It's not, though, and the people crowing about it don't understand how the game is played. And I'm not saying that because I'm butthurt that some journo I've never heard of that's supposedly 'on my side' is the unlucky ox du jour.

When the left deplatforms someone, they genuinely believe (rightly or wrongly) that they're righteously fighting racism/inequality/injustice. They're saving lives from COVID. They're supporting the downtrodden in society and giving them a chance to improve their lives. Contrary to the conflict theorists, it's neither arbitrary nor intended to make 'disfavored groups' suffer.

When Elon (or some figure on the right) deplatforms someone, 1) best case, he's having to grapple with the realities that many people said he would (thus the smugness) or 2) worst case, he's being driven by petty personal or 'own the libs' revanchism. The small fraction of principled libertarians are slinking off, having lost again, while the conservatives pretending to be principled libertarians are cheering the fact that the libs are getting owned.

They miss the fact that really winning, and not just eking out a transitory term in the white house, requires articulating a vision for the future that wins the hearts and minds of the people. And it needs to be more inspiring than 'we're going to keep things the way they are/turn back the clock to the 1970s/1950s/1776!' People need to believe that tomorrow can be better than today. It needs to be more than 'I'm really angry after the last 5 years and after forfeiting all my morals I just want to hurt my outgroup,' which, I don't mean to pick on that commenter personally, but that's the vibe I get from most of the conservatives here.

And you know what? There's plenty of room to articulate a vision for the future that is better than what democrats have to offer. I wish someone would try, and we could see two visions of utopia competing for popular support rather than the depressing political morass we've been languishing in for the last decade. Something has to change; I'd welcome any thoughts people might have on what that might be.

They miss the fact that really winning, and not just eking out a transitory term in the white house, requires articulating a vision for the future that wins the hearts and minds of the people.

I've read this thread yesterday. It asserts that Musk stands for a compelling and coherent vision:

As Tara Isabella Burton explains in her excellent book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, traditional organized religion is in freefall [...]

Taking religion's place as a source of meaning, purpose, community, and ritual are various ideologies:

Mindfulness/yoga, tarot/astrology, social progressivism, LGBTQ+, wellness/self-care, online communities like Reddit & the Rationalist community, new age spirituality [...]

Burton identifies two as the leading contenders for the title of official civic religion:

Social Justice Culture and Silicon Valley Utopianism

Social Justice Culture (SJC): The belief that racism, sexism, & other forms of bigotry & injustice must be struck down at all costs in order to achieve a better, fairer world on which all our fates depend. The think tank More in Common estimates 8% of Americans agree

Silicon Valley Utopianism (SVU): Holds a deep faith in our ability to optimize human performance, ultimately leading to a utopian future in which humanity transcends its limitations using technology. Includes subgroups like Rationalists, Transhumanists, & Effective Altruists

While they might seem to be at odds, they are really two versions of the same underlying belief: That the orthodoxy of the past must be abolished in order to usher in a bright new future for humanity, one that treats personal experience as the ultimate source of meaning

[...] With all this in mind, Elon's purchase of Twitter isn't just a business transaction. It represents a hostile takeover by the SVU of one of SJC's most sacred sites – as if the Palestinians occupied the Temple Mount and began using it as a base of operations

Not defending the Temple Mount frame or California-centric analysis, I have to admit that the Civic Religion angle is apt. As @2rafa observed, my support of most tenets of Muskianism is essentially irrational and quasi-religious, following from my basic Cosmism (that Musk, as a deathist, unfortunately disagrees with) and qualified belief in technological solutions to problems that, while social in nature, partially follow from scarcity and technological limits.

Compared to SVU or SJC, what do libertarians offer in the marketplace of ideas? If they know what's good for them, I think they should position themselves as a minor sect allied with the former church.

Likewise for many others. The vision of SJC is totalizing and unforgiving to competitors, being rooted in absolute zero-sum philosophy.

I think the point is essentially that Musk stands for a very slightly different form of progressivism. This is fundamentally still not only Hegelian grand narrative, humanity’s destiny, march of history type stuff, it’s the specific variant of that stuff that emerged in mid-20th century America. America has been liberal from the start, but this is a sub-variant of a sub-variant of liberalism that seeks to bring about the same thing as sought by the social justice advocates, just slightly differently.

What? Progressivism? Is this just nonstandard terminology, like when libertarians call themselves Classical Liberals, as though libertarianism bears any resemblance to liberalism in the modern taxonomy? Or do you see Musk as actually caring about anything that Nancy Pelosi fights for? In the modern world, "progressive" means "the liberal wing of the liberal party." It's the Squad, John Oliver, pronoun-ism and anti-racism.

Best I can see he is purebred John Galt: low taxes, OSHA can get off his property, openly ridicules pronoun people, doesn't give a shit about worker protections, busts unions as hard as he can, acts like every pointless midwit diversicrat who draws a salary from his companies is effectively stealing from him, and has the absolute audacity to think that people who achieve things deserve more credit and power than people who don't.

No it's not nonstandard terminology, it's standard terminology. What is "progressivism" if not a belief in capital-P Progress? That there is a "right" side and a "wrong" side to history and that being on the "right side" is the same thing as being on the "winning side".

Any fight between Elon Musk and Nancy Pelosi is an intra-tribal squabble between two wealthy secular bay-area liberals.

What is "progressivism" if not a belief in capital-P Progress?

I already defined it in the post you're responding to. It's somewhere between tedious and dishonest to insist that words should be used to mean the opposite of what people actually use them to mean because of their etymology.

Here's the dictionary:

pro·gres·sive

/prəˈɡresiv/

noun

1.

a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.

"people tend to present themselves either as progressives or traditionalists on this issue"

2.

GRAMMAR

a progressive tense or aspect.

"the present progressive"

Can you describe the mainstream definition of "social reform" or "new, liberal ideas" without invoking "progress"? I'm not sure you can.

That is a completely different kind of "progress" than the progress that Elon Musk believes in. What are we even disagreeing about at this point? You think Elon Musk is a progressive in the mainstream sense of the word?