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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32973 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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First of all, I'd say you're definitely counting your eggs before they hatch here. It is plausible that Good's death will have the chilling effect you hope for, and anti-ICE obstructionists will vanish overnight, but we're rather far off from that being a certainty, and it could certainly go a lot of different ways.

Nor would I call murder a "new technology". People have been bashing their brothers' skulls in with jawbones since before humans developed language, often to secure the chieftain's authority. Some of us had rather hoped that we were in the process of outgrowing that sort of thing.

And I would never be so insulting to my political opponents as to say that "nobody cares" who wasn't a political ally of Good's. I do in fact believe that an overwhelming majority of human beings are generally against killing people, and especially against arbitrarily killing people to create a state of terror. This is, I repeat, an evil thing to do. Wicked. Wrong. Sinful. There may be millions of people who will buy the idea that Good actually had it coming, or that Ross's actions were otherwise justified in context; but, thankfully, I think there are very few people in America who would endorse your view that making an example of her would have been fine and dandy regardless of how much of a threat she actually posed to Ross.

I don’t agree it’s evil.

I think the average person at this point just wants the train to run on time. Which some of that includes deporting as many Somalis as possible.

I didn't ask what the average person wanted, I asked what they would consider evil. It is perfectly routine to want things which could (only?) be achieved by means which you know would be immoral. Whether or the average person wants the train to run on time, I don't think that they would consider murdering random women in order to terrify people to be an acceptable price for that.

What are some things you would consider "evil", if not this? Is there any foul deed which you think would be too far, if it could magically remove all Somalis from Minnesota and restore train schedules to their platonic ideal?

Evil only applies to people thinking in religious terms. It doesn’t exists in nature.

I just think of what’s good for civilization.

I just think of what’s good for civilization.

Specifically, White civilization. After all, I'm sure that you'd prefer to avoid total Chinese conquest, even if it would advance civilization in the abstract.

Really, the "enlightened spreaders of civilization" framing for global white dominance strikes me as thin cover for the standard ethnocentric motivations, or at least it's trivially reducible to them. Indeed, would it not be better for "civilization" if Somalia were to belong to the white man, so he may remake it in his image? What, then, should a Somali who recognizes this pattern do, to prevent his people going the way of the Amerindian?

"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is indeed a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. [...] it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Sure. Somalians aren’t capable of civilization unless they undergo extremely strong evolutionary pressures for a few centuries.

If civilization collapses now and we go back to being hunter and gatherers we probably don’t get another shot at civilization for a few million years. An Industrial Revolution likely requires access to surface level fossil fuels which would take a while to naturally occur again. Maybe we could get to a Roman level civilization without access?

I will not say whether industrial civilization is a good or bad thing. It’s good for my interests.

I doubt pressing this point will get us anywhere, but "civilization" and indeed "good" don't "exist in nature" either. Why do you "think of what's good for civilization"? What is it to you whether civilization lives or dies, if you are a cold nihilistic Darwinian machine? And anyway, can't "I just think of what's good for civilization" easily be rephrased as "I just consider things which hinder the flourishing of civilization to be evil"? Either you have 'arbitrary' preferences about world-states that don't entirely depend on your own survival and genetic fitness, or you do not. If you are going to plant your flag in a concept as woolly as "civilization" then you have already accepted the idea of a value system not rooted in nature; we're simply haggling over price.

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