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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   11404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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Compact published a quite thorough analysis of the discrimination millennial white men have faced since the mid-2010s, focusing on the liberal arts and cultural sectors. It does a good job of illustrating the similar dynamics at play in fields including journalism, screenwriting, and academia, interviewing a number of men who found their careers either dead on arrival or stagnating due to their race and gender. It's a bit long, but quite normie-friendly, with plenty of stats to back up the personal anecdotes. It also does a good job of illustrating the generational dynamics at play, where older white men pulled the ladder up behind them, either for ideological reasons or as a defense mechanism to protect their own positions.

A great quote from near the end of the piece that sums it up:

But for younger white men, any professional success was fundamentally a problem for institutions to solve.

And solve it they did.

Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.

Edit: typo

“What troubles me is that a lot of thriving white millennial men have had to follow the Josh Hawley path, where you have to leave liberal America,” an old friend, the father of two biracial children, told me. “I don't want to do that. Liberal America is my home. But if everyone says, this is not the place for you, what are you supposed to do?”

Can anyone clarify this part please? I don't know who that Hawley guy is, and according to Wikipedia, he was never a liberal.

Apparently Josh Hawley wrote a book called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. According to AI, in this book Hawley extols more conservative path for men, rejecting "epicurean liberalism" and embracing masculine roles and archetypes such as builder, warrior, father etc. So I think it is a lament that liberals reject men and masculinity, and thus shove men toward more conservative path in order to succeed.

warrior

Semi off-topic (but CW):

The word 'warrior' to refer to a member of the armed forces of a democratic state is, as kids say these days, Problematic.

ACOUP:

a warrior is an individual who wars, because it is their foundational vocation, an irremovable part of their identity and social position, pursued for those private ends (status, wealth, place in society). So the core of what it is to be a warrior is that it is an element of personal identity and also fundamentally individualistic [...].
[...] So the core of what it is to be a soldier is that it is a not-necessarily-permanent employment and fundamentally about being both in and in service to a group.

Angry staff officer:

Warriors came from a specific class of people, those whose lives were dedicated to violence – not violence for a specific end, but often just violence for violence’s sake. Warrior classes were – and are – often propped up on the backs of the people, the people they are supposed to be serving. They are supported by the state, segregated into a specific class, and essentially become diametrically opposed to a democracy – since democracies do not easily finance the exorbitant cost of keeping up a bunch of entitled elites.

The closest we have to a separate warrior class -- people who see themselves as permanently apart from the broader society, for whom to engage in violence is a fundamental part of their identity -- these days are probably criminal gangs (or especially corrupt police departments, if there is a difference).

The word 'warrior' to refer to a member of the armed forces of a democratic state is, as kids say these days, Problematic

Agreed, which kind of makes the point. You may aspire to be let's say a warrior of Christ despite degenerate "epicurean liberal" consensus. I think it captures the ethos of masculinity - to be disagreeable toward degenerate ideas despite it being unpopular to an extent, where you are willing to be martyred for it. It does not mean that you will commit violent acts of terrorism of course, but some bravery and confidence in righteousness of your worldview is commendable. You can maybe start with unabashedly saying blessings before eating your lunch in Google canteen. Very warrior like behavior.

This is a very strange word use problem that I suspect stems from the stick up the arse of the USMC. US Marines are not an elite amphibious expeditionary force like the modern Royal Marines, or seaborne troops who specialise in boarding actions like the OG marines. (In so far as that latter expertise still exists, it sits in the law enforcement function of the Coast Guard). US Marines are, in fact, soldiers in the traditional English meaning of the word, which is the sense that Dr Deveraux of ACOUP and the Angry Staff Officer are using. But as part of their effort to maintain a distinctive culture, mission etc. from the army the USMC profoundly object to being called "soldiers".

My guess is that someone sympathetic to the USMC started using "warrior" as a general term for soldiers and marines and it stuck, rather than someone deliberately trying to end up on the wrong side of the soldier/warrior distinction.

When British politicians want to talk about soldiers in a way which includes things like the Royal Marines and the RAF Regiment, they tend to say "troops".

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