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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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The 2022 Wypipo Awards

Yes, that's an actual headline at Yahoo News, published just a week ago. It's basically a long anti-white rant by a bigoted ethnic activist. I am fascinated that white Americans are so sissified in the face of this open bigotry. In many ways, their patience is Christ-like. I for one don't hope for a tit-for-tat development, because this world needs less tribalism and conflict. But as long as anti-white racism isn't called out, I can't take people who claim to be anti-racists seriously. And the editors at Yahoo news allowing this vile rant to be published shows that its ingrained in US culture.

I am fascinated that white Americans are so sissified in the face of this open bigotry. In many ways, their patience is Christ-like.

If White Americans are Christ-Like in the face of the slings and arrows of outrageous (checks notes) Yahoo News articles...it's more Craig Christ than his brother Jesus. I'm sure everyone has seen most of this online dating data before, along with the income data, prison odds, marriage patterns, as long as you aren't poor or stupid or both {in which case there's a good chance I don't really care anyway} being white is awesome in America.

I get irrationally annoyed at white male grievance studies types who have fully internalized the minority narrative of oppression and try to apply it themselves. There is a substantive difference between my wife slapping me and me slapping my wife. The relative strength and power of the two actors changes the meaning. To pretend it doesn't is a sign that one simply doesn't understand the burdens of patriarchy, that one is substantively unprepared to be a paterfamilias. One who is so sissified that he must constantly bark his head off at every perceived slight isn't an alpha, he's a chihuahua who needs to prove how threatening he is.

To be young and smart and white and male in America is perhaps not to be born on second base and think you hit a double, but it is certainly coming into your at-bat with a 2-0 count and a runner in scoring position. If you can't convert, it's on you.

  • -11

This sort of macho attitude is just going to lead to a death by a thousand cuts through unilateral disarmament.

Your response could equally be pointed at white women. After all, they have it pretty good, hardly much to complain about. And Jews too, they’re ultimately doing fine so can’t the ADL just chill out? Neither of these groups have disarmed their constant advocacy despite lack of any substantive complaints.

This kind of flex is frustrating to read, because there’s really no response that doesn’t sound uncool by comparison to your “git gud bro.” Of course it seems cool to never be bothered by anything, but that sort of response could basically shut down any and all discussions we have here. Abortion? Who cares dude, women still have it so good here compared to Iran. Affirmative action? Bro just study harder. SBF? Brah just don’t make stupid investments, not that hard.

I appreciate that you recognized the rhetorical trap; rather than disappointingly falling right into it by replying with a series of whines about how white men really are discriminated against or with weird Turner Diaries masturbatory fantasies about Black men murdering my family.

While clearly we disagree on some ideological points here, I also don't see why you feel that grievance is the only rhetorical mode for White nationalism. While grievance has been the traditional mode of nationalism since roughly when the Germans got ahold of it, grievance and narrative of oppression are not necessary components. I have a longer effortpost in my notes app about this with regards to the John Wayne movie McClintock (of all things!), but while a grievance based White Supremacy doesn't appeal to people like me an excellency based ideology of the Supreme White does have some emotional pull. An honest Kipling; John Wayne arming his own enemies so they can get a fair shake from the government. When White supremacists are people who either don't themselves seem all that proud of being white, or are people I wouldn't be proud to be white with, it's not going to appeal to me.

If victimization politics are so bad when every other group does it, let's leave it to them, n'est pas?

If victimization politics are so bad when every other group does it, let's leave it to them, n'est pas?

"If." An interesting choice of word. I have to wonder: are they so bad, or am I being told that the right thing to do is always to be the bigger man, to take the high road, and choose "cooperate" no matter what, by parties who intend to defect against me? After all, superweapons are indeed terrible things, but they are also effective ones, so unilateral disarmament often leaves one staring down the business end of "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" eventually, even if one is confidently strong right now.

I mean, I'd really like to keep believing that victimization politics are so bad; that mutual cooperation really is an end that's still possible and still worth striving for; that the values I hold actually weren't instilled in me just to breed a mark, a chump, a sucker. But seeing them defended in ways like this risk cracking my faith.

Edit: to summarize what I would stand for: if something is bad, it's bad, and let us not excuse badness on account of its perpetrators or the act's magnitude being too weak or harmless or unimportant, primarily because that is injustice and corruption in itself, but also because this renders the appearance of weakness or harmlessness or unimportance the currency of power, which is itself corruption.

While clearly we disagree on some ideological points here, I also don't see why you feel that grievance is the only rhetorical mode for White nationalism.

I find people's confusion on this kind of strange. It's not a complicated phenomenon. Much like people who really care about 2A for the ward against tyranny reason still end up getting into arguments on the utilitarian grounds of whether the increased ability to defend yourself actually makes us safer than the reduced access to guns of near do wells there is actual real value in defeating your ideological opponent using their own values. If you can successfully argue that guns actually make us safer then there is no where left for the anti-gun people to retreat, it is a total victory. If you fall back to your ward against tyranny position then it's a conflict of incomparable values and they are still able to justify their policy preferences.

The value in engaging progressives on grievance is because their entire edifice crumbles to the ground if they lose on that point and conservatives sense this intuitively. If white grievance is proven then the progressives just lose, permanently and forever. You may find this step unnecessary and unsightly, I also find debates on defensive gun use very boring and unimportant, but surely you can recognize the value?

Yes, it is actually worth dismantling bad and dangerous ideas about how the world works when they are sufficiently influential.

While clearly we disagree on some ideological points here, I also don't see why you feel that grievance is the only rhetorical mode for White nationalism.

I know I catch a lot of complaints here, and accusations of "no true scotsman-ing" here for pointing out that the woke-left and alt-right are effectively identical (in some cases literally the same people) but I really do think it is that simple.

Having drunk the woke kool-aid they either can't or wont recognize a rhetorical mode that isn't based in grievance. Or less charitably, despite all the talk of being "red pilled" they're still in the progressive Matrix and still think it's air they're breathing.

It's the old "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," alt-righters can't defeat progressives using their own tools.

But this progressive matrix exists within yet another matrix, the Enlightenment matrix, where in a similar way, late 20th century conservatives engage in a Sisyphean struggle to dismantle the works of theliberal left using the tools of liberalism. The only way conservatives can win is to reject the liberal frame entirely. Cthulhu swimming left isn't mysterious, it's simply carrying Enlightenment ideas towards their logical conclusions. These conclusions are too monstrous to reach in a single generation, but over many generations under the Enlightenment framework we will inevitably reach them, no matter how hard people stand athwart history shouting "Stop!"

Being above it all works fine when you actually ARE strong. The Great Dane can ignore the chihuahua's challenge. Doesn't work so well when you're not; if the barking results in the Great Dane's master whipping him for "making the chihuahua bark" and refusing to feed him until the chihuahua is satisfied (which he never will be), the Great Dane needs to do something more than quietly endure.

was this supposed to be a reply to @FiveHourMarathon?