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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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My intent was to demonstrate examples of the phrase in the wild, the connotations seem clear to me, even when they're not strictly military.

This uses the meme, but it has no connection between strong/weak men and military victory.

Huh? Did you miss:

Hard Times Create Strong Men 1920s - 1940 (Depression, WW)

There are two implication is that the Great Depression was a hard time, which created the strong men who fought in WW2. Alternatively, both count as hard times, and created a generation of strong men who produced the good times from the 1940s to 1970. Since it references a literal world war, what else do you want?I can only apologize for the poor quality tweets, but Ywitter's indexing sucks. I went to the bother of finding at least one robust example:

https://x.com/OrdainedPrepper/status/2018394819597660297?s=20

Another world war would fix all this nonsense. This is what happens when humans have extended periods of peace. Strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times and bad times create strong men … and round and round we go. Humans NEVER learn because we have insignificantly short memories.

Please try and guess the context first. It's a reply to a woman complaining about working 9-5s.

I'm sure there are more out there, but I'm calling it a night.

So it seems like your collection of slop tweets exactly proves my point. Ain't nobody saying that because they think "weak men" can't swing a sword, shoot a gun, or push a button just as well as "strong men".

It's hardly my fault that the tweets are slop when the topic is slop and the search functionality is trash. I think it's rather clear that unironic admiration of the Spartans as superlative warriors is relevant to the thesis, though they used spears rather than swords for the most part. It'll have to do for now.

I never said it was a particularly useful or thought provoking theory, just one that's quite a bit more useful than the strawman you make it out to be.

I disagree that you have demonstrated this.

It actually beats a quite significant theory though, that is: "the winners keep winning, forever." Simple models, such as those in chess, 4x games, etc, show that once one side has a decisive advantage, it's already game over. But civilizations in real life don't follow the same pattern.

Is anyone making that claim? Very well, your approach beats the two maximally degenerate models.

In some sense you might say it's stating the obvious. But why is that a problem? Tons of memes state the obvious, that's what makes them accessible. That doesn't make them wrong.

The obvious is the Motte. The bailey is all the additional extensions heapened on it. Devereaux does not contest that nations rise and fall, because that is obviously true. Neither do I. We both claim that the version he specified is immensely useless. The more you steelman the idea, the more it becomes something mundane. Add enough caveats, and you're describing standard history.

I also note that you haven't addressed my point about corporations, as of the time of this edit.

Hard Times Create Strong Men 1920s - 1940 (Depression, WW)

Another world war would fix all this nonsense. This is what happens when humans have extended periods of peace. Strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times and bad times create strong men … and round and round we go. Humans NEVER learn because we have insignificantly short memories.

Both of these tweets unambiguously point to the war itself as being the bad times. And the good times are built by the strong men that came out of it.

None of the tweets make any connection with strong men = winning wars. That's exactly the insane strawman you and acoup guy are trying to make.

I think it's rather clear that unironic admiration of the Spartans as superlative warriors is relevant to the thesis, though they used spears rather than swords for the most part. It'll have to do for now.

I disagree that you have demonstrated this.

We both claim that the version he specified is immensely useless.

Certainly acoup guy's interpretation of the meme is useless. But exactly what I'm saying is that it's a strawman.

If you can give me some actual examples where people claim that hard times -> strong men = military prowess, then I will be inclined to believe that it's not a strawman.

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