This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah I had a similar path, wanted to go for a history PhD but all my professors told me it was hopeless as a white man. I also went into a tech startup, and we crushed it, then I got fired two weeks before my equity would've vested despite far surpassing all the goals in my initial contract.
I try to keep the light in my heart alive, stay focused on Christ, etc, but damn I am fucking angry. I have to say. I wish there was a more constructive movement to end this shit, very sad to see that so much of the dissident right is just pure vitriol.
Bruh, you basically got Saverin-adjacented. I think Jesus would understand if you considered pursuing legal action or going on a revenge arc.
I ended up fighting for a decent settlement that was close to a year's income. Probably the better option all things being equal given that the CEO is insanely paranoid and pushed out everyone that did real work in the company. The CTO had it worse than I did but can't talk about that publicly.
Either way, given your posting history on here you're not exactly someone I'd ever look to for moral advice, tyvm.
I didn’t say anything about “moral advice” or advice in general.
For in general, when it comes to advice, I prefer giving, receiving, or neutrally reading effective rather than “moral” advice, whatever “moral” advice may be. Come to think of it, people who immediately reach for phrases such as “moral advice” or “stay[ing] focused on Christ” tend to have a pretty good track record in recent times of losing gracefully. A follower of my posting history might be aware of examples such as forgiving one’s son’s murderer, washing the feet of those who hate you, conceding the supposed non-negotiability of marriage being between a man and a woman.
I’m glad you were able to at least partially subvert the track record and recoup some of your deferred compensation; ywvm.
Indeed, we have very different views of virtue. You're rather Neitzschean I suppose. It's a shame, you could be quite a force if you used your powers for good.... ;P
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I always find myself thinking about how people in our position handled this drastic narrowing of our scope of opportunities. I was very influenced by Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, as well as Aaron Renn's The Negative World, which, rather than addressing the racial and gender aspects of this, deal with the anti-Christian nature of the current cultural moment; all of these books, in different ways, basically advise you to focus hyper-locally, to keep your internal locus of control alive, and build what you can in the little domain that you are actually able to influence. So I've done that. I've just been elected to a two-year term on my church's leadership board; I managed to get published in a little local history anthology by a small press; I settled down, bought a house in the Midwest and am trying to start a family.
Still - it's painful that we'll never know what we could have done if we were born into a different reality. I had dreams of being a popular novelist. I probably don't have the ability, but because of the cultural headwinds, I also gave up on that before I tried to reach my maximum potential. You might have been a great professor, or maybe you would not have; but people like us, with even greater ability than us, also got pushed into paths where their potentialities are never realized. I am reminded of Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, a mid-century novel about a girl who dreams of becoming an actress, and ends up shattered by the experience of continual failure. (And of course by encounters with an infamous cad.) Her outcome: a quiet, happy suburban life, but one in which her initial dreams are forgotten. She makes her peace with that, and I've mostly made my peace with what I couldn't do, and of course I can console myself by saying, "Well, that was just my attempt to be special, and I probably wasn't special anyway in the end." There are failures and mediocrities in every generation, but I would've at least liked to try on a more level playing field. Part of this is just growing up, but obviously part of it is that we were frankly cheated out of a fair shot; and it's only so much compensation to say, "Well, I made a great network engineer."
I thought about this phrase a lot, and in the end, this is yet another poisonous secular idea seeped in the water you drink. In Christianity there is no such a thing like being born as some other person - as other gender, in other time or other place. You were created as a unique soul by God and it is what it is. It reminds me of the conversation penned by Tolkien where Frodo laments:
If you don't like Tolien, then look at the Book of Job. In a strange sense Christians are more grounded in here and now, and secularists are more entangled in strange mysticism. Be it Rawlsian idea of how everybody is an immortal soul flying around the Earth waiting to be materialized, presupposing the moral structure from this mystical tought experiment. Or transhumanists raving about uploading their soul and making themselves immortal, or of course transgender activists who literally claim that their souls were materialized in wrong body. All of that is nonsense.
More options
Context Copy link
Indeed, you get it my friend. I also just took on a leadership position at my local parish, and am volunteering in a broader capacity with my larger church body.
I think that the best we can do is simply bide our time, spread awareness, and grow our social capital, our virtue, while supporting our side of the culture war here and there. Store up treasures in heaven, where moths can't destroy and thieves can't steal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If it helps, I do think that there's a lot of angry underemployed highly skilled men floating around right now, just waiting for a chance to do something. Trump is old and there's no clear successor, so there's a big power vacuum right now. X is a great organizational space. It feels like we've got the chance to do something now. I just don't know what.
Some form of DOGE would be a good thing to do. Given how fast it was crushed, there are a lot of money (tens of billions at least, maybe more) that basically are stolen from the budget, and it enables huge number of people to do damaging activism full time, without any resource constraints, while the opposing side has to balance having day job and family and mortgage and all the normal dependencies and vulnerabilities. That's like fighting a professional boxer while trying to cook a meal and care for an infant at the same time. No way you wouldn't lose badly. Disrupting this process would make a huge impact. Even just revealing the details of this - and consistently making it the focus of the discussion - would make an impact, most normies have absolutely no idea how much of the crap they are paying for from their own pockets. A lot of this information is out there, just buried in terabytes of forms and reports. Some of it is non-public, but can be revealed if there's sufficient energy dedicated to it. But except for a handful of people, not a lot of politicians, even from the conservative side, take any interest in that. Partially because they have their own, smaller, grifts, which could be disrupted by revealing and stopping all the massive grifts.
More options
Context Copy link
My personal push would be to form a unified group that pledges simply to withhold tax payments while this particular discrimination regime is allowed to continue.
Needs to be enough buy-in that "they can't prosecute all of us" is a legitimate factor. And ideally pool funds to pay for attorneys for those who do get tried.
Yes, there's like a dozen ways the state can crack down on this, but that would actually force them to cross those lines OR negotiate.
It's harder to disrupt or de-legitimize such a group compared to one that threatens violent martial resistance. Hence why this approach would probably beat forming an informal militia.
This is nuts! Law fare is the tried and true way of damaging US institutions to effect change.
Who is going to pay for the lawfare?
Peter Thiel of course! There is always some rich white guy with an axe to grind in practice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you'll find that it's quite easy for the IRS to take your tax money. They don't even need to win a trial, they can just take it directly from your bank with a tax lien and force you to contest it. Unless you're talking about money laundering, but then that's a lot more complicated and a serious felony.
Not more serious than armed insurrection, of course.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What does this look like? W2 income is already automatically taxed for e.g. FICA and to some extent income tax. And the government has plenty of well-exercised sticks to get compliance from both employers and employees.
The only way I can plausibly imagine this working is men going NEET en masse, and that may arguably already be happening. But it's unclear to me what change an army of NEETs can effect.
Yeah this is the "lying flat" movement in China, which is spiritually corrupt imo.
Personally I prefer a strategy of working a low-effort job, enduring relative material poverty, and putting more effort/energy into building social capital, virtue, and an awareness of the problems.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There needs to be more vitriol. You can't just ask nicely not to be ethnically cleansed. The people you are up against have recently and openly learned they can just murder you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.
Vitriol is a start to what you need to do.
I am also of the vitriolic right, but IMO it behooves us to keep in mind that yours is the exact same rhetoric used by the left to valorize rioting negroes and palestinian combatants and all manner of domestic terrorism and social engineering.
"Our enemies are maximally evil and we must therefore maximize our aggression against them.", right or wrong, cements the conflict as absolute. It paints a glowing red target on you in the eyes of all who previously were only leery of you. It is exactly why the woke left has passed its peak and people are now waking up to the facts that no, western civilization wasn't a sexist racist theocracy and needn't have destroyed itself through mass immigration from the 3rd world, even as it is too late.
I'm not saying there's no conflict. I am myself strongly in favor of punishing my political enemies no matter what breaks in the process. But for anyone who still believes in saving, protecting or building anything - infinite vitriol is poison, and will destroy your cause.
All that worked for them. It's still working for them. The woke left hasn't passed its peak; it's just currently in a tactical retreat. In 2028 the Democrats will have a trifecta and their woke vanguard will bring everything back on Day 1, because they have no scruples about the procedural and institutional barriers they use to stop their opponents. They'll "just do things" and there will be no Chicago judge to stop them, nor would they stop if they were told. And if there is resistance, the riot machine gets turned back on.
We'll see. Maybe in America. I expect some changes have already commenced that will manifest over the coming decades, and the political divides of those will not map cleanly to those of the past decades. Demographics remains destiny, and destiny is already happening. There will be a successor ideology to "woke", but it won't be the same - the causes the "woke" were married to are largely discredited in Europe, even as the old guard sticks to them. The young ones have seen them fail. Lockdowns, maximized mass immigration, feminism, tolerance, democracy. The generations growing up right now will find different causes, any alliances with old "woke" will be of convenience rather than conviction. And the biggest bloc of all in Europe will be Muslims - we'll see how that changes the political landscapes. At least that's my prediction.
So, back to America. Maybe it'll be as you say. Maybe a hot culture war or the ethnic cleansing of red-blooded Americans is inevitable. We'll see.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The guy who killed Charlie Kirk is suffering the consequences. He will likely be executed. What more do you want? Random innocent people to be punished as vengeance? People getting shot by random crazies is a fact of life in a free society, and the only person responsible is the killer.
Yes, the left traded a pawn for a knight or a bishop. Maybe even a queen. They don't seem too upset about that trade, and in the meantime they are winning elections, and their base is crying out for more political murders.
"Oh" you might say "But after Charlie Kirk was killed, thousands of chapters of Turning Point USA were founded!"
First, we'll see how that pans out, and second, the left decided they can murder those too.
Meanwhile almost every single popular conservative is afraid to appear in public because the left will murder them. The right has almost zero ground game because the left will murder them if they do.
It's a winning strategy, and I think we need more of it. Making journalist, judges, legislators and administrators fear for their life in public is a proven strategy.
Can we please wait until there's at least a suspect in custody before using the Brown shooting to support your narrative?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes but this sort of hate-fueled rhetoric is just inaccurate which turns a ton of people off. Democrats lawmakers/elites are not openly murdering conservatives, poorly adjusted criminals and depressed schizos are. I understand that there's a strong argument to be made that the Democratic governance LEADS to these murders, but you have to actually make that argument!!
When you say things like
This loses you the moral high ground, and the fight when it comes to normies. You're being taken in by your rage and making strategic mistakes. It's not just that it's factually wrong it's that it's a losing strategy.
How so?
Have you read Howard Thurman? I think his brand of nonviolence and his take on the "hounds of Hell" might interest you.
More options
Context Copy link
Democrats have been almost pure delusional hate-fueled rhetoric for most of my adult life, intensifying into cancerous ferocity over the last decade, and it doesn't seem to have turned anyone off on general principles.
No, it seems like that's just media dominance and message control. If you refuse to ever tolerate or acknowledge validity of criticism of your own extremists, you apparently can just brazen out the moral high ground.
The rhetoric of pro-Israel politicians is a great example of this point. Randy Fine can talk about how beautiful it is to see dead babies and call for the extermination of Palestinian children all he wants and the DNC aren't even willing to mildly chastise him, let alone pass a condemnation of him like they did for Nick Fuentes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Look up Jay Jones again.
You are point of fact wrong on every point.
Let me put that another way. Ten years ago everyone knew white males were being discriminated against. Say it then and people like you would accuse me of "giving into hate and losing the normies". Now that it's fait accompli, all the institutions have been lost, white family formation is in the toilet, and our country is lost, people are coming out of the woodwork admitting "Yeah, we did that shit". Articles like the above are allowed to be published. But it's too late, there is no reversing it.
And I'm sure in 10 years time, there will be another slate of late admissions "Yeah, we did permit the ethnic cleansing of white people. Oh well!". And when the actions required to make the survivors whole are proposed, people like you will once again wring their hands going "Woah, woah, that's too scary, you'll lose the normies!"
The normies need to be radicalized. And attempts must be made 24/7 to see that they are brought on board with saving themselves. If you are afraid of losing them, you are failing in your moral duty to save them.
This is way too defeatist my friend. While we yet draw breath there is hope. We absolutely can and will reverse this evil and corruption. Far mightier empires have fallen throughout history. It may seem impossible now, but things change gradually then all at once.
I've been seeing the normies get more and more radicalized my entire life. I think we're on a good trajectory.
There is nothing actionable here.
The normies have indeed become more radicalized. For the left, as we saw in the Great Awokening of 2020. Every once in a while they get a good look at their destination (e.g. Sam Brinton transing their kids) and recoil, but then they go right back. And the "adults" on the right preach doing nothing, and when the more action-oriented on the right start acting, said "adults" are more horrified by them than by their leftist counterparts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just a reminder that whites have the stablest TFR in the US, it's actually slightly ahead of the black TFR, that US immigration is more white than black, and that whites of any age are the most likely to be married. Your blackpill on white people is not true, although white demographic decline is still likely.
More options
Context Copy link
You're not wrong, but what use is it to have a bunch of radicalized red tribers if there is no plan for them to fight back? As far as I can tell, the "The Republican Party is Doomed" article still holds true today. Without control of any important institutions, there's not a lot you can do.
"The Republican Party is Doomed" is still written by a man that conflates certification with education with job security with meaningful skills, and who today has yet to confront or recognize a very simple flaw downstream of what that means:
I don't think you can avoid plans happening, as people get radicalized, as someone who has even an inkling of what that could looks like, and very many good reasons to wish it wouldn't happen.
More seriously, there's a lot of options radicals have, many of which do not require vast planning or coordination, only common knowledge.
Some of those options aren't bad. If, as a completely random example, the left will be murdering political enemies with impunity or the police and prosecutors will just look the other way when someone on the right gets his or her face punched in... well, I was on team Pink Pistols when gay guys getting bashed was a non-zero risk. I'm not abandoning that because some people insist it'd be better if I were beaten than their brownshits shot, and if they've never said the name "Paul Kessler", I'm not going to even care. There's a functional moral and legal principle, here.
But the majority of options are bad, and they're still going to happen. There's some subtle stuff, like what happens when we it becomes common knowledge the Civil Rights Act doesn't and hasn't realled since its inception, and every jury the least competent lawyer in a red or purple state can manage will nullo your prosecutions, and any lawyer slightly above that Platkins out any attempt to Uno Reverso by getting jurisdiction in a blue state first.
And then there's an actual horror stories.
Remember Malheur? Two years ago, if it happened again, common knowledge had already become that people committing actual terrorist arson against federal police didn't get a 'mandatory' terrorism enhancement. Today, there is basically nothing the nuBundies could say that would cost them political support, and until and unless they literally shot -- not shot at -- federal officers, they'd still have behaved better than anti-ICE groups. That includes literally dropping heavy rocks onto the front windshields of fast-moving cars and people, or running for a national office with a nazi tattoo.
But don't worry, without a college diploma, Red Tribers won't drop rocks. That's a fancy-boy edujumacated physics problem. Electricians, machinists, plumbers, gun nuts, maintenance employees, firefights, construction workers, no possible relevant domain expertise. or at least none I'm willing to discuss publicly
Remember when FEMA decided that they weren't going to provide support to houses with Trump political signs? Ah, without the proper cred-en-tialis there's no way some Red Triber would end up walking door to door or considering neighborhoods dangerous based on matters tangentially related to politics. They'll just be a ton of people doing work requiring hands-on expertise, to serve people they hate and know hate them, with ready and long awareness of normal and subtle failure modes. No way they might be in evacuated neighborhoods before most residents return, with easy arguments to defend any place they could be at all.
Remember some of the California trans sanctuary laws? What do you think happens when the mainstream news reports a father just now kidnapping his son, the federal marshals heroically rip a long-pregnant early teenager from their parent's arms the next week, and no one can talk about what the kid's current gender presentation or who assaulted him to start with? Do you think there's anyone who can argue Loudon County a success case for gradual stepwise moderation? Do you think people need a medical doctorate to notice the difference between a week and twenty-one weeks? A historian's degree find every single person with their name on public record for those orders?
These don't require a plan. Many of them don't even require explicit coordination beyond listening to the news, sometimes even only listening to news reporters biased against them. They're not even indicia I think are particularly likely -- since I don't want this to happen, I'm not going to meme my way into disaster.
But think for five minutes, hard, about what thirty unrelated bad actors might individually want to do, just repeating the greatest hits of the last five years.
Then consider how much post-Civil Rights Act civility may have depended on how difficult it was to ensure an attack would hit the 'guilty' and not hit the 'innocent' -- as the charcoal briquettes rant highlighted, the Oklahoma City Bomber very specifically choose to burn children to death among others -- and what signal hearing "Kirk deserved it" jokes and 'jokes' from their neighbors have sent.
I would like it to not be this way. I don't see many people actually arguing it isn't. Only that it shouldn't be.
More options
Context Copy link
There was no plan, and Charlie Kirk is still dead, the power he wielded in life shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds.
You can make a pretty big impact without a "plan".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link