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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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You appear to think of politics entirely on the basis of whether policies create material problems for you in your life (and, granted, in your daughter's). Don't you have a concept of politics as rooted in moral values unrelated to your own personal fate?

1990's colorblind liberalism is dead and it wasn't the right wingers who killed it. Since we now live in some kind of post-liberal racial spoils hellscape, I'll be voting for my own team, thanks.

I ask again: how do you justify this morally? Some might say that unpleasant circumstances when doing the right thing will give you a material disadvantage is when it is most important (and indeed admirable) to behave ethically.

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How does a soldier morally justify shooting the enemy instead of his squadmates? Traditionally, it was by begging forgiveness from God, though I have no idea what the modern recommendation is. The point is, it's in almost every case a secondary concern to victory.

Yes, but the more apt analogy to the problem I had in mind is the temptation to commit war crimes that would increase your odds of victory. "Well the enemy have started torturing toddlers for information, so we might as well do the same thing" = "Well the Left aren't doing anything to rein in their evil loonies, so why should I lift a finger about evil loonies in my own tribe?". In both cases, ethics dictate that if you actually hold a moral belief that [torturing children in wrong]/[a given Tribe has a responsibility to rein in its crazies], you should hold fast to that principle even if your enemy violates it first and indeed, even if it places you at a material disadvantage in a given set of circumstances. Fair-weather principles are not principles at all. They're just norms.

Is this true though? Is not the real reason why war crimes are forbidden and disavowed by us that we do not wish them to be inflicted on us? You could call this an application of the golden rule of ethics, but it looks more to me like an iterated prisoner's dilemma. If a "war crime" is committed and nobody knows about it, is anyone actually going to care? Who writes the history books, after all?

Was ethics the reason why we have (so far) avoided nuclear annihilation, or was it actually a more bloody-minded calculus that the only winning move was not to play?

how do you justify this morally?

Clearly

I'll be voting for my own team

is a moral position.

It may not be one you agree with, but it's no less a (n a) moral position than the "post-liberal racial spoils hellscape."

You seem to be begging the question that there is an objectively correct morality and deviating from the progressive racism violates that, without actually filling in the gaps of why that is objectively correct and the losers should enjoy being in the hands of an angry god sacrificing their children for the wellbeing of the ungrateful.

You seem to be begging the question that there is an objectively correct morality and deviating from the progressive racism violates that

None of what I've been saying has been about racism, or indeed any object-level Right vs Left issue. My objection is to the principle of basing one's politics exclusively on what will lead to one's personal comfort. That seems to be a textbook example of amoral behavior no matter what moral principles you subscribe to, assuming you have any at all. Sure, "support my own team" could be a moral position! But what @Skeletor posted was:

Since we now live in some kind of post-liberal racial spoils hellscape, I'll be voting for my own team, thanks.

And what bothers me about that is the "Since" clause, not the "I'll be voting for my own team" in a vacuum. It makes it sound rather as if he is voting in whichever direction will maximize his personal comfort at a given time, not in a principled way based on moral positions for which he would be prepared to make sacrifices to his own personal welfare. "I'll always vote for my team no matter what" would be a moral position. "It seems the outgroup has defected and it's a free-for-all, so I'm looking out for Number One" is not.

Okay, well, tough shit.

I suppose it's wryly amusing that a conversation with a guy called Skeletor ended up at "well, okay, you got me, I'm evil. What are you going to do about it?".

Why should I need to justify it morally at all? Whose team should I be on if not my own? I didn't create this system, I just refuse to play along with progressives who seem to think I'm obligated to accept the bottom rung in it.

Whose team should I be on if not my own?

You shouldn't be on a "team", not to the extent that it directs all your actions. You should be trying to do the right thing, whatever this appears to be to your conscience.

I'd care about this more if it made any difference. Staff at a perfectly ordinary suburban high school tried to talk a vulnerable young member of my family down a path that very well could have led to her permanent sterilization and disfigurement. As far as I'm concerned it's moral to eradicate gender ideology even at significant cost to the rest of society.

This is a non sequitur. No one's saying you can't oppose gender ideology. I am saying that you can oppose multiple evil things in multiple direction; that opposing gender ideology needn't entail that you never criticize other, unrelated evils, some of which might be to your right rather than to your left.

No you can't. I get that you are really enamored with this high minded centrist/independent shtick. But electorally it fails 100% of the time, and most people have woken up that. People have a list of priorities, and if their top priority is "Make sure school doesn't start teaching my 6 year old they can choose their gender", and a combination ticket of Hitler/Genghis Khan is anti "Have schools teach kids to sterilize themselves" and they are running against Jesus and Santa Claus who for baffling reasons are pro "Elementary Teachers keep a castration kit in their desk drawer"... well I hate to tell you this but Hitler/Genghis Khan get my vote. And I'll stand by that vote in the concentration camps because they got my 23&me results and saw I had 0.7% Jewish ancestry.

I don't get to pick policies ala cart. Sadly I have to prioritize and pick the candidate that I think has the best chance of achieving success in my top priorities. And these days they are "Keep Democrats from making my life worse like they have the last 30 years".

No you can't. I get that you are really enamored with this high minded centrist/independent shtick. But electorally it fails 100% of the time, and most people have woken up that. (…) And I'll stand by that vote in the concentration camps because they got my 23&me results and saw I had 0.7% Jewish ancestry.

I feel like I'm not getting through here. I am not talking about what wins elections. I am talking about what is ethical. What is right. We do not live in a perfectly convenient world where doing the right thing will always leave you better off. A Christian will tell you that this is because you must wait until after death for your Reward, an atheist will tell you that this is because the world wasn't actually designed by a benevolent intelligence, but the point remains the same. I never asked you to imagine that President Hitler an VP Khan send you to a concentration camp: that is, again, smuggling your own personal welfare back into it. What 'm saying is: if you have moral principles at all, then surely, surely you recognize that there is some amount or degree of harm inflicted to random strangers that would outweigh the welfare of your child? That, no matter how much you want your child not to be transed, it would be evil of you to put material pursuit of that goal over the lives of ten million people you've never met and never will?

But I'm not even talking about elections, here. I'm talking about criticizing and denouncing evil in your Tribe. Under sufficiently gerrymandered assumptions you might still end up voting for the very people at issue as the lesser evil - but I would like to see some acknowledgement that there is evil here, and that this is a relevant consideration, separate from your personal welfare or even that of your kids.

What 'm saying is: if you have moral principles at all, then surely, surely you recognize that there is some amount or degree of harm inflicted to random strangers that would outweigh the welfare of your child? That, no matter how much you want your child not to be transed, it would be evil of you to put material pursuit of that goal over the lives of ten million people you've never met and never will?

Why do you seemingly struggle to accept that is a moral principle, just one you disagree with?

Not everyone is a universalist. Not everyone is a utilitarian. I would find it evil to put any number of people above your own children- maybe, if it were truly existential, I would crack (and indeed I've heard Southern Baptist preachers use that example to describe the Father sacrificing the Son, as the singular unique time such a thing was justifiable).

You're doing a fine job highlighting innate familial conservatism and Scott's "don't want to play the philosophical game" rebuttal to WWOTF, though.

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What 'm saying is: if you have moral principles at all, then surely, surely you recognize that there is some amount or degree of harm inflicted to random strangers that would outweigh the welfare of your child?

No.

With that cleared up, if millions could be saved if I let demons devour my child, maybe they should craft an electoral platform to accomplish that same good... without requiring me sacrifice my child! You know, The Lottery was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a manual.

I don't negotiate with hostage takers.

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The side to my left burned shit down, took over parts of a major American city with rifles, and fucked with my family. I'll humor all kinds of shit in order to help see them brought down. If you don't like that, too bad.

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