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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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This is far too cumbersome, no wonder there are so few talented young people in the Republican party. Absurd dropping of the ball imo.

If they lack the talent to find their way in, they wouldn't be the sort of talent being looked for.

A political party isn't a technocratic assembly looking for credential applicants, it is a group of networkers who can network with and for eachother by their own initiative. People who just want to volunteer for an advocacy group can go to the advocacy groups directly. Networking societies don't fall into a well-structured hierarchy, but rather create an ecosystem of push and pulls as people put something out and offer/encourage/ask/trade others to put in. People who don't understand that / don't at least intuitively grasp it are not the sort of people fit for ill-structured coalition politics.

To bring an anime demonstration of the concept, have you ever read / watched Hunter x Hunter? Do you remember what the first test of the Hunter Exam really was? It isn't the sort of awe-inspiring feats, battles of wits, or hunter-and-hunted of the later series. It is to literally find the exam location.

Some entry tests aren't about streamlining or maximizing candidates, and then filtering over time. It is to filter out unsuitable candidates at the start.

While gatekeeping is typically good, one has to wonder who benefits when they hide there's even a gate to be kept in the first place.

Maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but I can't help but think that political parties shouldn't be taking notes from the Kybalion on how to manage entry.

This sounds like lazy cope, at best. The organization would be far better served by actively pulling talented people into politics and away from business or other life paths at critical moments.

I'm surprised by how many people here think this is some sort of optimal, or even thought out strategy. My money is on the party organizers being lazy or not caring about the party as a whole, and/or just general societal degradation of community activity, as other posters have pointed out.

It's the holidays during a non-election year, with 2028 nearly 3 years away. Nobody's looking for warm bodies right now. If you're not willing and able to put in some effort or write somebody a check, you're simply not useful to anyone at the moment. If this were September of an election year, the local party would be banging down your door for help phone banking and door knocking. But at this point in the cycle, you need an invitation to go to the barbecue. These fine people are telling you how to get yourself an invitation. Do you want to complain or do you want to get involved?