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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Using those specific words, probably.

Phrasing it instead as “putting them in the positions they deserve, and clearing out all those unqualified affirmative action hires who got inappropriately appointed to those positions instead of a deserving, meritorious applicant like themselves”, and that will get an enthusiastic approval.

putting them in the positions they deserve, and clearing out all those unqualified affirmative action hires who got inappropriately appointed to those positions instead of a deserving, meritorious applicant like themselves

Yes, but it really matters if they’re correct in that analysis! The Jews and Asians were correct: once historic discrimination was removed, they did considerably better. I think by now we can safely say that African-Americans were not correct about this: they were unable to compete after discrimination against them was removed, or even once a heavy finger was put on the scale in their favour.

Personally I grew up being told again and again that there are ‘too many white guys in X’, with special interest groups, mentorship, considerable government/media pressure and often quiet biasing of entry criteria all working hard to reduce the percentage of white men. In a friend’s line of work, jobs are specifically advertised as ‘for a person of BAME background’. It would be kind of weird if white people didn’t do better when these barriers are removed.

Put another way, isn’t there a pretty big difference between a movement that is campaigning to level the playing field for everyone, and once for reparations and affirmative action for their preferred group? MAGA doesn’t campaign for white men; Trump never said, “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t white”.

You can call any political movement that broadly captures a specific group and advances their interest ‘identitarian’ but then I think you’re catching a lot of stuff in that net.

And I’m quite comfortable calling the MAGA movement that only supports so-called “Real Americans”, and wants the overwhelming majority of the people who actually live in America (whether the dirty, filthy immigrants, the city “vermin” and “filth”, the leftist “Unhumans” that need to be put up against the wall and machine-gunned, or just generally any of the “Satanic” folk who voted against Trump) to go fuck themselves and leave “““their””” country an identitarian movement.

And a particularly noxious one, at that.

Meanwhile, in the real world, MAGA won the popular vote (that is, the absolute majority of Americans) and some of its most fervent supporters are people who fled the third world and are appalled to see America sliding back into it.

MAGA did win the popular vote, but not an absolute majority of Americans (I don't think that that's ever happened; turnout and the existence of children make it really, really hard) or even an absolute majority of Americans who voted (he got 49.8%, significantly more than Harris but not quite an absolute majority).

Your alternative reality sounds nice.