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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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In the last Culture War Thread, in a very interesting exchange about why white people in America (and the so-called West more broadly) tolerate being constantly denigrated from every corner of the intellectual elite, the always-insightful @FiveHourMarathon had an interesting comment that resonated with me. He finds the grievance-oriented, victim-mindset side of the white identitarian sphere viscerally off-putting and pathetic. Why, he asks, should I be proud to be white, if in fact being white means being weak and crying out for forbearance and mercy from the ascendant coalition of white-hating POCs whose power and vengeful intent increases daily? Why would one choose to identify as a powerless victim, and what appeal would that self-identification have for those well-adjusted, successful, thriving individuals whose allegiance the white race ought to covet most assiduously, especially if it is indeed true that whites’ prospects are at a historic low point? While the downvote totals indicate that his perspective was poorly-received by many of our pro-white posters (for understandable reasons upon which I will touch shortly), I found his comments extremely instructive and worth reflecting on - a splash of bracingly cold water which ought to invigorate those on my side who wake up every day and wonder how white people let ourselves get to this point.

The conversation dovetailed wonderfully with Jared Taylor’s excellent essay, adapted from a speech he gave at a recent American Renaissance conference, in which he delves deep into the historical antecedents of white people’s current malaise. In this essay, Taylor points out that the ethno-masochism which pervades Western elite consciousness is consistent with a more general philosophical framework that has characterized the European psyche for centuries. He illustrates that the individuals who drove many of the most influential social/political reform movements of the last 300 years - from the Jacobins and the abolitionists to the temperance movement - have all demonstrated a fairly consistent psychological phenotype: a sort of Protagonist Syndrome, obsessed with virtue (and particularly with displaying that virtue to other white people) and with uplifting the underdog, and driven by an atavistic hatred of fellow white people who don’t share that same temperament.

In a sense, the leftist psyche - and, as a former committed leftie, I think I understand this temperament pretty well, and am still an example of it in many ways - is an extension of the “Faustian spirit” that many right-wingers love to attribute to European Man. In this telling of history, the most important defining characteristic of the European soul is its driving need to conquer, to transform, to bend nature to one’s own ends. This boundless desire for conquest drove the great achievements of Western man - from conquering the globe, to unlocking the secrets of wielding nature’s forces to our own benefit, to curing disease, to landing on the moon - but I think it also drives the leftist desire to transform humanity itself. To improve humanity from its basic, crude, unworked Hobbesian “state of nature” and to unlock its true potential. Hermetic alchemy applied to the human spirit - never accepting limits, never taking “that’s just the way things are” as an answer, always believing that we can keep pushing the limits of what is possible. Combine this with an almost pathological altruism, the anguish one feels when contemplating the plight of the downtrodden, and it’s very easy to see why Faustian man is so driven to “correct” the obviously-unjust vicissitudes of random chance that have produced the current distribution of human fortunes.

I know that I personally still feel deeply this instinctive sympathy for the underdog. It’s so ingrained in our national psyche that it’s incredibly difficult to overcome it. It has characterized my experience as a sports fan, and it was a major formative element of my self-conception as a college progressive. Wresting myself out of that mental framework as I’ve drifted rightward has been, and in some ways still continues to be, a psychologically disorienting experience. On the one hand, the recognition that unequal distribution of talent and fortune is an unalterable fact of reality, baked into the human spirit, is a bedrock element of the right-wing worldview. Hierarchy is right and proper, and the strong and capable shall always prosper while the weak and mediocre will always vainly envy them. On the other hand, this offends Faustian man’s innate sense of limitless ability to transform the world. Much as Europeans looked at grim realities such as the ubiquity of deadly disease, or man’s inability to traverse the skies, and said, “I have the power to change that,” we have the unshakeable sense that the injustice of fate which has rendered some less fortunate than others is yet another so-called reality just waiting for us to apply our ingenuity and boundless power to correct. A mere engineering problem which our best minds are rapidly working to solve. And hey, if I’m the process of fixing this problem we also gain the opportunity to ostentatiously display our own virtue and gain relative status accordingly, all the better!

This instinctive desire to uplift the underdog is, ironically, only rational if one believes that one’s own interests are not threatened by that underdog’s success. If I can help the underdog get his piece of the pie while my piece stays the same size, that means that in reality I must have been stronger than both the underdog and the supposed overdog against whom he was striving - I was so far above the conflict that I could observe it as a spectator. The underdog becomes, then, a sort of prop or vessel through which I can achieve emotional satiation of my altruistic instinct, at little to no cost to myself.

Where, then, does this leave racially-conscious whites, who assess the state of the world around us and see genuinely foreboding trends which appear to pose a serious threat to our people? Who observe the rising chorus of hatred and envy echoing from the halls of power, who dismay at the ever-worsening fertility differentials, and who see our own elected representatives seem to revel in our decline? What is the optimal rhetorical strategy to appeal to successful white individuals in order to get them to see the disturbing portents and to realize that things are not looking good for us? That this isn’t, in fact, an idle game, but in fact deadly serious? Well, one very appealing strategy is to appeal to that characteristically-European sympathy for the underdog. It’s to say, “Look, guys, we are the weak and vulnerable party in need of special concern and uplift! I know that you’ve been trained by the media to view white people as the permanent bully in need of humbling and people of color as the noble and scrappy up-and-comer just looking for a fair shot - and yeah, at certain points in history that was even true! - but at this point in time the tables truly have turned. We lay ourselves at the mercy of the victors, and ask only for their mercy and indulgence. Quit picking on us!”

This is also, I think, the motivation behind much of the “JQ” discourse on the right; Jews can be portrayed as an all-powerful enemy, against which we defenseless whites are fighting an impossible uphill battle which we can only win through a herculean effort. “Feel bad for us! We, too, know what it is like to suffer systemic discrimination against our rapacious racial overlords! It’s not faaiiiiir!” However, for a lot of white people, feeling like a victim just doesn’t come naturally to them at all. They look at the history of European man and think, “You know, seems like we’re pretty fucking awesome. Whatever minor setbacks we’re suffering right now, it seems like we’ll get through it just fine. I like our chances.” And, historically speaking, that is a pretty damn astute assessment! The all-time scoreboard sure seems to back that up. There haven’t been a whole lot of limits or setbacks that we’ve faced in the past that we haven’t been able to overcome with some ingenuity and some elbow grease; why should something like collapsing fertility rates be any different? The only way we lose is if we beat ourselves, and we can choose to start winning again at any time once we put our mind to it.

This is, I think, a far healthier mindset than the doom-and-gloom, woe-is-me, why-won’t-the-Jews-stop-picking-on-me mindset that so alienates @FiveHourMarathon. Our problems are real, but they’re ones that we ourselves created, and they’re ones that we ourselves -and only ourselves - can fix. We haven’t even begun to conquer the stars yet - how are we going to let ourselves get bogged down by such comparatively quotidian setbacks? We only lose if we keep tying both hands behind our backs - all we have to do is untie them!

I don’t know, I’ve been sick with the flu all week and I might just be deliriously rambling. I’ve been ingesting a lot of blackpills as of late, so this line of thinking is a useful whitepill to counteract their toxic effects.

...There's a lot here, but I'm kinda done with the alt-right/WN arguments after the last couple threads, so I'll leave it at noting that this entire thread is the rhetorical equivalent of a giant, killer-asteroid-sized billboard painted with the words " @HlynkaCG 's thesis about the alt-right is indisputably correct."

I mean, I’m not really interested in picking a fight with Hlynka or with taking unprovoked potshots at his worldview, but it can simultaneously be true that 1. he has accurately identified that both the far-right and far-left have converged on a recognition that identity politics are valuable and that classical liberalism is a failed project, and 2. his proposed solution - “and that’s why everybody should be a Reaganite conservative who Doesn’t See Color™️ and worships at the altar of Martin Luther King, ‘content of their character’ yada yada yada” - is a total non sequitur and doesn’t even begin to address the actual reality we’re facing.

The thesis I was referencing is that WNs and alt-righters are, in fact, Blues applying a fundamentally Blue worldview. You are jointly your own closest brothers and worst enemies.

If I can say to you, "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing", and mean it, live by it, raise my children and build my community by it, what does any of the above or below have to entice me? The standard response is that Christianity has failed... delivered, generally, by people who willingly chose to abandon the faith of their fathers to embrace an alien and alienating worldview, and refuse to let it go.

Your post honestly deserves a more detailed response than that, but this, to me, is the core of the issue: You're looking for a banner to rally behind, but you've rejected the most proven banner known to man because it's incompatible with fundamental elements of the Blue worldview, which you still hold. Meanwhile, the Reds that comprise most of the people you're trying to rally have no interest in the alternative banners you offer, because they recognize their fundamentally Blue nature.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past that the country was effectively 100% Christian and weekly church attendance was the norm. Where did that lead us? Obviously God is not such a bulwark after all and doesn’t automatically eternally guarantee based tradwives until the end of time.

You have to then answer the question: Why will it turn out differently this time?

There was a time in the not-so-distant past that the country was effectively 100% Christian and weekly church attendance was the norm. Where did that lead us?

To many good things. Where did the abandonment of such practices lead us? Who started that abandonment rolling: the most committed Christians or the least?

Obviously God is not such a bulwark after all and doesn’t automatically eternally guarantee based tradwives until the end of time.

"My wife kicked me out, that bitch."

"Found out you were fuckin' strippers, huh?"

"Yeah, but I bought her a nice diamond bracelet to make up for it. Crazy skank threw it at me, and slammed the door in my face. Crazy, huh?"

...Which is to say, only the very foolish treat meaningful, intimate relationships as transactional. To dumb it down to the level of chanspeak, Trad wives are best pursued via Trad lives. God is a bulwark in many ways, but the fact that I am committed to him in a durable way, and so are those I surround myself with, is certainly not the least of them. You are looking at the people who chose to abandon Christianity, and then suffered serious consequences, as evidence that Christianity does not help. You might as well argue that, having been shot after leaving your body armor at home, the armor is what failed you.

Or to put it even more simply, mankind cannot build things that other men can't tear down, if they choose. Understanding this, we still have a responsibility to build good things and tear down bad ones. The pleasantness of our lives greatly depends on the degree to which we take this responsibility seriously and execute it well.

Why will it turn out differently this time?

Because the Enlightenment is dying, and the historical and social conditions it relied on to sustain and grow its power no longer obtain. I think that if you understand how and why the Enlightenment operates, you'll likewise understand why it's breaking down, and why there is little hope that breakdown can be reversed.

In short, it's a movement that claims very smart people can solve all our problems, when in fact they cannot actually do that. People bought in when science and tech were hitting a growth spurt, which the Enlightenment itself did not actually generate, but which it very effectively took credit for. That credit was then spent advocating an endless series of insane policies that wreaked havoc on societies world-wide. The Enlightenment is not, centrally, Newton and Einstein, but Rousseau, Marx, Freud, Dewey and so on.

Now, science and tech are stagnating or collapsing, with few hopes for a breakthrough on the scale of the industrial revolution*, and the Enlightenment's modern standard-bearers find themselves suffering policy starvation. The runaway blaze of the Culture War post-2014 is a symptom of that policy starvation and it will continue to get worse until the existing system breaks down. Whatever comes out of that, long-term, won't be the Enlightenment or Progressivism in its currently-popular forms.

*The best counter-argument being, obviously, AI. It's one of the reasons it's such an interesting time to be alive, though I doubt most Blues would have expected Christianity to be one of the last ideologies standing at the cusp of the hypothesized Singularity.

What the heck does "policy starvation" mean? I've seen it a few times here and I can only sort-of guess at what it means.

Also, from my point of view, I suspect that any breakdown of Enlightenment power will only lead to a return to massive, bloody war, and less so any re-discovery of God. The conditions under which the Enlightenment was born were, if I'm not mistaken, near-constant sectarian conflict.

What the heck does "policy starvation" mean?

An explanation can be found here.

Also, from my point of view, I suspect that any breakdown of Enlightenment power will only lead to a return to massive, bloody war, and less so any re-discovery of God.

The Enlightenment seems to have led to some pretty big wars of its own, likewise based on fairly close analogues of sectarian conflict, until nukes and the Pax Americana put the lid on. ...And by "put the lid on", let's be clear that we're talking about Enlightenment Ideology only motivating mass slaughter in half the world rather than the whole of it. It does seem pretty likely that significant political unravelling will result in a lot of dead people. Look around you: do you honestly believe such unravelling can be postponed indefinitely?

The point is that, for all the bodycounts post-Martin Luther, things could get so, so much worse.

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In short, it's a movement that claims very smart people can solve all our problems, when in fact they cannot actually do that.

But it can tell us it had, or would have if not for those Red Tribe wreckers, and the vast majority will believe it. (COVID being the textbook example)

And thus what comes out long-term is not a religious revival, nor a rollback to 18th century Enlightenment, nor a return to feudal or Roman systems. Instead, it's either Orwell's boot stomping on a human face forever, or a true collapse of civilization with the megadeaths that entails.

And thus what comes out long-term is not a religious revival, nor a rollback to 18th century Enlightenment, nor a return to feudal or Roman systems. Instead, it's either Orwell's boot stomping on a human face forever, or a true collapse of civilization with the megadeaths that entails.

I disagree. I see little evidence that attempted dystopias are any more stable long-term than attempted utopias. Social science doesn't actually work that well, and so sooner or later, human nature regresses to the mean. Collapse of civilization is certainly a thing that can and has happened, and then new structures rise from the ashes. This is certainly inconvenient for us individually, but life is about significantly more than individual convenience, or even individual or group survival. I'm comfortable betting on my faith long-term, regardless of the circumstances.

My wife and I actually had a conversation about this a year or two after we got married. Looking at the increasing craziness of the world, the question arose of whether it was worth having children, given what a mess the world was in. My answer was that it was obviously worth it; the world is always a mess, and children are good regardless. Everyone experiences hardship and suffering in this life, and they also experience delight, joy, love, and many other good things besides. The idea that comfort or pleasure determines the value of life is a pernicious falsehood.

If the boot stomping on a human face isn't stable, we get gored by the other horn of the dilemma -- collapse of civilization and megadeaths. Yes, new structures arise from the ashes, and they probably will even if we get a collapse accompanied by a major nuclear exchange. That perhaps humanity will eventually rebuild a non-dystopic system is not much of a consolation. And while it is likely the structures arising from the collapse of civilization will include religion, it is quite possible Christianity will not survive in any recognizable form.

The new society will indeed be "red tribe" for a time; the unconstrained vision cannot survive easily visible and always-struggled-against constraints. Again, not much consolation.

You are looking at the people who chose to abandon Christianity, and then suffered serious consequences, as evidence that Christianity does not help. You might as well argue that, having been shot after leaving your body armor at home, the armor is what failed you.

It would be fair to conclude the armor is no good if it has some flaw that causes us to repeatedly leave it at home. Perhaps it is too bulky or too uncomfortable to wear.

Also you are just responding to Christianity’s failure by saying that we just didn’t Christianity hard enough. Which is not very persuasive to say the least

Also you are just responding to Christianity’s failure by saying that we just didn’t Christianity hard enough.

That isn't what he's saying. He's saying that if you don't do Christianity at all, your problems can't be reasonably laid at the feet of Christianity.

But that's still not answering the question of why, in the past, more people did Christianity than today and why Christianity could not prevent this.

To draw the obvious parallel: we know that CICO sufficiently explains the weight gain in the general population since the 50s on a mechanistic level: the amount of extra calories that people have started to consume since then lines up perfectly with the extra amount of weight the standard model predicts they would and that they actually have put on. If you don't want to be fat, eat less calories. But none of this answers the much more interesting question of why, as a society, we consume so much more and why large swaths of it are unable to self-regulate, despite obvious consequences in terms of aesthetics and health.