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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21291 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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On choosing your destructor.

An outgroup is any group in which status change is mirrored by another group.

The best endorsement any potential leader could have is the fear and enmity of the outgroup. This in turn means that every group has a significant (though not decisive) voice in the leadership and direction of their outgroup. The political lesson of the Trump era is that the hatred of one group is as good as an endorsement for their outgroup.

If you ask me, the reason both Trump and Mamdani won election is that they sought and exploited the condemnation of their side's outgroup. This leads to a lot of rhetorical brinksmanship which is completely divorced from actual policy, and acknowledged as Kayfabe publicly by both men.

How do you figure for Mamdani? He was running against Cuomo, another Democrat, no?

Sure, he pledged to #resist Trump, but mostly in the exact same way that almost every other Democrat has.

I'd say his path to victory was more affordability. If anything, the right made it easy for him to look gracious by constantly calling him a radical Muslim jihadi.

Alternative reading: Trump and Mamdami are very charismatic and ran against absolute ghouls.

Trump is quite fortunate that Hillary Clinton was the second most disliked presidential candidate since the invention of opinion polling. Polls implied any other Democratic candidate would beat Trump. He ran against the only one reviled enough to lose to him.

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