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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?

Cooperate-bot is a good way to lose forever.

Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War?

There needs to be a sufficiently-influential and popular figure that can actually, credibly lead the first move. Unfortunately, no one like that exists on either side, and neither side believes they need to be the one to produce that figure. There's no longer a messianic organizer, an MLK or Billy Graham, that can credibly speak to and for enough people.

I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.”

I started reading Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity yesterday, and was immediately struck by how self-serving and blinkered liberal usage of the disgust concept is. Indeed, it is always possible, and this circles back to the lack of the messianic figure.

I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough

Is public versus private similar enough for these purposes? Or is this, as an anti-parallel to recognize one can always conjure self-serving reasons as to why it's different, a desire to conjure a self-serving reason why it's not? Jay Jones is much more similar than the Kirk commentary, and I think lumping them together weakens your broader point for that reason.

We don't have to go fully braindead and think that Lawrence v Texas means public indecency laws are moot.