site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26396 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There is not always a long arc of morality.

So this article is interesting, but the pessimist in me cant help but think that this is "wrong" in the long run.

Im not a fan of progressives by any means. I'm sure many here are not either but i also think that we must look reality straight in the face: Most conservative positions (Id argue at least 65% ) lose in the long run. Primarily due to demographic shifts. Primarily in age cohorts, but we cant be naive that race is likely playing a factor as well.

One example he takes that is in my opinion, quite poor, is Abortion. First and foremost, there have only been 3 states that have been to defend the pro-life position successfully at the ballot box recently, Florida (only be a 60% technicality), South Dakota, and Nebraska respectively. Many deeply red states have voted for the practice (Kansas, Kentucky, etc). And lets not forget the fact that there are 5 states in the union including DC, that have 0 gestational limits, and attempts to add limits failed in Colorado and New Mexico. This an extremist position by western standards, in is not law in the majority of the world.

This one particularly bothers me, because of how fucking disgusting and twisted many of these doctors who do these later terminations are, the fact that states protect them, and the fact that the mainstream media & democrats lie about them taking place on healthy children and mothers.

The pew research link ive sighted above also reveals that many among Gen Z support some level of gender ideology (well, surprisingly, most still think that gender is determined at birth) But id probably bet money that this could be shifted as well.

Lets all face the music, Conservative America is simply going the way of the dinosaurs. We have a declining birth rate, religiosity is going down the toilet, marriage rates are going down toilet. Same thing with "patriotism". I would love to optimistic here, but i simply don't see it. America is becoming a more progressive society, like it or not. While i don't think this is "Inevitable"... I also see no way it could be practically prevented. It just seems like historically and currently, winning the public over and tilting the overton window rightward is just really difficult.

But hey, who knows, maybe im wrong, and 50 years from now, we will be laughing at the idea of multiple genders, mass immigration, or secularism.

Despite the people in the comments (if a gentle white boy may lib out for a moment) refusing to looking up, this is the way it is and has been since Bush 2: The conservative message is premised on traditional morality, which is a powerful thing. I was actually a Mccain guy for that very reason, before I actually interacted with conservatives who had any power and realized that it useful idiots for tax reduction.

Because that is what they put out from the pulpit and the podium, people who aren't radicalized expect them to follow up on it, and what do they get?

Open lies, adultery, greed out in the open, blatant and contemptuous corruption. They get a vulgar populist grifter who is more concerned with his golden toilets and neuvorich tasteless architectural trash fires than the stupid wars he starts, a cowardly bully who punches and then cries, a dude who fucked a hooker on his third mail order bride, who has catastrophically anihilited our budget to the greatest degree since the last republican, which was also him, or the last guy before that, who was also a republican, or the last guy before that, who was also a republican.

This after the moral catastrophe that was the bush 2 presidency; which didn't need to be the case! Bush 2 was actually responsible for an incredible amount of charity, world historic amounts of suffering alievieted! Unfortunately, this suffering was not the right type of suffering because it was in sub-Saharan africa and the brown parts of asia. To be on the right side of the movement, you need to cheer it on. You need to withdraw your open and hand from the railing and watch them drown.

This shit is not conducive to a long term movement! It's like everyone forgot the reaction to Bush 1 and Bush 2!

I really wonder whether a Patrick Buchanan in 1992 victory would have actually accomplished some paleoconservative goals. He was very big on restricting immigration to Europeans only, and was a committed Catholic; a true isolationist too, which you hardly ever see in national-level politicians these days. RationalWiki calls him a xenophobe (as if that was a bad thing. Heh.)

Buchanan could never have won after Bush 1, so let's move him back in time: I think the conservative movement would be in kinda the same place; the party would have done the same dumb shit with the economy regardless: Increase entitlements and expenditures without raising taxes. If you are gonna cut taxes, the DOD and the olds need to take a trillion dollar haircut, not get an even bigger check.

That said, I imagine it wouldn't have the same moral rot it does now; the only reasons R's can even think about winning an election is because the D's are a combination of bought, incompetent, and too prideful to learn a lesson that has been taught to them twice now.

I wonder if you are significantly older or younger than I am, because I take the historical context very differently. I've laid it out at length elsewhere, but I perceive the acceptance of Trump as a discontinuity in response to the behavior of previous conservative politicians, not a continuation of the same.

Politicians in the Reagan tradition claimed to embody conservative principles; some got closer than others. But they were pretty consistently willing to sacrifice everything in exchange for an extra 0.2% GDP growth. After years of that, and the experience of a resurgent progressivism seeking to impose its social mores, the conservative right had to choose between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would fight – hence Trump.

I'd hoped that Pence would evolve into a leader who could do both, but that's not how things played out.

I agree with the diagnosis, I just don't respect the participants.

They had a choice between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would drag their name through the mud while not actually accomplishing any of their goals while wasting 20 years of organizing, fundraising, and a unique cultural moment.

It would be one thing if it was a Machiavellian type who carefully hid his true nature but it was in fact the opposite of that, and everyone else was screaming about it at the top of their lungs. Unfortunately, noticing is woke and half the point of electing trump is to cut off your nose to spite someone elses face, so it is what it is.

Basically: "I'm easily fooled and refuse to learn from things that just happened to me" isn't a reasonable defense.

Reversing Roe v. Wade is a real win. Rooting out gender theory and DEI is a real win. Gutting much of the permanent bureaucracy, which drags society left regardless of the president, is costly but also a real win.

The folks who called even Mitt Romney a Nazi were going to throw mud at anyone who vaguely looked like he might try these things. Some of the criticism (not all) is genuinely deserved in Trump's case – but, deserved or not, it was already priced in.

He didn't do any of those things, and also they are impossible to do!

Roe V Wade is gone, and abortion rights are +- 90% as available as before, and the issue is more popular than ever.

Gender theory is not rooted out even a little, the rightists landed a plane on the Lincoln and declared victory without checking if they actually won anything.

The permanent bureaucracy is still there! It is reduced in some places, strengthened in others, and still present throughout all the areas where it is actually providing motion: every private company.

DEI is the biggest joke. DEI as it pertains to race is a fake and gay sop thrown out to the poor browns of the US as a symbolic gesture, it is a free way to get buy in from that part of the population, a little tiny minstrel dance the huhwiaghts can do to win some easy points. They place where it actually makes a difference is with White Women, who are exactly as likely to benefit from it now is they were 10 years ago.

He accomplished not a god damn thing, he is going to run the movement into the ground and his lickspitles will deserve the humilation that they will never feel "Because the deep state stopped him bro, it was the deep state, the demons and the ghosts did it, imaterial spirits make my retarded ideas fail to work bro!"

They had a choice between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would drag their name through the mud

What good is a leader that's personally conservative, if he'll let your kids get transed, and import 7 zillion immigrants?

while not actually accomplishing any of their goals

For all is faults, Trump did do more than any "conservative" leader I watched over my lifetime. The 180 on the war with Iran is a disaster, but that idea seems to be coming from the faction of the conservative movement you're actually praising, so I have no idea what your issue is.

I didn't mean to mislead: I think conservatives are all wrong or gritting. There are no conservative politicians or intellectuals that are worth a damn anymore, they all became centrists or libertarians when Trump became the golden calf that at which the popular right offers sacrifice.

I just think it's funny that they blew their shot so hard; this was possibly the best time in US history to get everything they want, and instead they are going to get less than nothing.

I would love to optimistic here, but i simply don't see it.

I have good news for you!

Lets all face the music, Conservative America is simply going the way of the dinosaurs. We have a declining birth rate, religiosity is going down the toilet, marriage rates are going down toilet.

Nah. Religiosity seems to be leveling off and irreligiosity is holding steady or dropping. You flagged an article from 2019 on changing support for gay rights, but later studies are showing that the popularity of gay marriage may have peaked and its decline is driven by young Americans. And in Conservative America, the number of children is growing, driven by higher birth rates and the migration of families to Red States in the post-COVID timeframe. The highly religious have many more children than the irreligious, near replacement, and non-denominational/Pentecostal Christian denominations (who tend towards political conservativism) are likely to continue growing given current trends.

I don't think we should extrapolate wildly and irresponsibly from current trends now any more than we should have in 2010, or that things are all gravvy (for Americans writ large, or conservative Americans, or religious Americans, or what have you) but Conservative America is very far from dead, and is arguably the part of America that is furthest from dead.

Evangelicals have high birth rates, but also low retention rates into adulthood.

Gays have lower fertility than straights, so surely we will have no gays at all within a few generations!

Gays have lower fertility than straights, so surely we will have no gays at all within a few generations!

Why is that implausible? Until fairly recently, if you were (marginally) gay, you were unlikely to act on it, because the social environment heavily discouraged you. This meant that carrying a hypothetical gay gene wouldn't depress your fertility all that much, since the overwhelming influence of the default social script would still push you towards having the standard 1-3 children surviving into adulthood.

That social script has now expanded to include being openly gay and significantly decreased the pressure to have children, so many more people that in earlier times would have just kept their romantic thoughts about their same-sex neighbor to themselves can now actually live out their preferences. Consequently, the fertility of people with genes that make them gay, after having survived centuries of open repression, now crashes close to 0. A similar argument can be made for other formerly oppressed behaviors that are associated with low fertility, e.g. being trans or queerness in general.

Note that I don't have any clue as to whether a gay gene really exists or how much it eventually influences the expression of sexuality, but our environment changed so much w.r.t. to gay rights that it's not impossible that the selection pressures at play here have changed massively as well.

There is no single gay gene. It's highly polygenic with significant environmental contribution. I did a deep dive into the topic for.... reasons, and also was slightly surprised to find out that the children of gay men and straight women are not meaningfully more likely to be gay/lesbian/bi.

So has that been meaningfully isolated F this point or are we still just guessing?

It's the annoying kind of trait, like schizophrenia or height. A gazillion genes that add up to increased propensity but do not guarantee homosexuality even when nearly maximally loaded. Then there's the environmental contribution, and that includes stuff like in-utero exposure to hormones and a bunch of other stuff.

Too much for me to get into, and I was using ChatGPT to look things up to my own satisfaction anyway. I promise that if there was a single gene or even a handful of genes that could reliably be used to gauge gayness, we'd know. There are ML models that can identify gay men with startlingly high accuracy off facial physiognomy alone, but they're hard to get because of Ethical Reasons™.

If you want a rough idea of why it's such a PITA to pin these things down, then look up Scott's relatively recent post on schizophrenia and polygenic inheritance. Even if you kill literally all schizophrenic people the moment they manifest, you will barely make a dent in the incidence rate for the next generation.

This meant that carrying a hypothetical gay gene wouldn't depress your fertility all that much, since the overwhelming influence of the default social script would still push you towards having the standard 1-3 children surviving into adulthood.

I've always thought this was a contradiction to a genetic explanation of homosexuality. Either it isn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be (like, you can have hetero sex you'd just maybe prefer not to), or it isn't genetic.

Because as explained by most homosexuals I've met, it's obligate, not preferential. Which, in virtually any society the majority of people had options to avoid breeding if they really didn't want to. Joining the navy and dying young, monasteries, that sort of thing. Their fertility rate would have been significantly depressed, even if not to zero, such that it would have been pretty much bred out. Or alternatively, it has been bred out over time and humans used to ALL have the gay gene.

The evidence here points towards a primarily behavioral or environmental explanation, with possible genetic confounders.

At any rate, my point is really that the "Right vs Left TFR" argument is retarded because leftist children of leftist parents aren't really necessary to liberalism. Aella's parents by all accounts raised her in an extremely right wing religious household, and she is herself. Out of church attending teenagers, 60% will not attend church at 29. Retention, not tfr, is the problem on the right.

Evangelicals have high birth rates, but also low retention rates into adulthood.

No, this isn't true at all. Evangelicals have the best retention rates among Christians, about three-quarters retention (and this includes evangelicals who switch to other Christian traditions, so the number of people raised evangelical who remain Christian is even higher).

Gays have lower fertility than straights, so surely we will have no gays at all within a few generations!

Ha ha, but while we're here, gays are significantly more likely to be party to a teenaged pregnancy than straights, so if the gay gene is real and gets flushed out of the gene pool, it's likely because of abortion, not because of their sexual preferences.

Minor correction- thé highly religious have a replacement birth rate. Secular conservatives have near replacement.

Red tribe spaces like bass pro shop are full of kids. Parents of young children are like R+20. A crude correlate between birthrate and county vote share gives counties above 80% Republican as the threshold for replacement. There are two large American cohorts that are mostly replacing themselves- republicans and Hispanics.

White liberals, on the other hand, have a birthrate like Asians do.

thé highly religious have a replacement birth rate.

Awesome. The source I grabbed had the number bouncing around a bit, but it's also a few years out of date.

The long arc of morality doesn't mean for every topic, but in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones. They win out so strong that you don't even think about it much anymore, at least for these examples of the US.

Women wear pants and show skin above the knee, they work in leadership roles, and marital rape is illegal nationwide.

Universal suffrage is the default of democracy around the world now, even the pretend democracies of Russia or North Korea often act as if everyone can meaningfully vote instead of just property owners.

Left handed people are not only left unbeaten, but left handed products are readily available to buy for anyone who needs them.

Barely anyone cares about interracial marriage or gay marriage anymore. There is a small movement to try to shift the needle but it's not mainstream.

Tattoos are now widely accepted (within reason) and tons of people have them without much societal pushback or shame anymore.

The Catholics are just considered a normal form of Christianity now (our VP is a Catholic even!) Jews/Italians/Irish/etc are now considered an ordinary form of white instead of as foreign criminals and scum. Most blue laws go essentially unenforced nowadays, with alcohol as the only meaningful vestigial exception in some states.

Casual clothing is now commonplace in many work environments, with people even wearing branded tshirts and the like.

Jazz/rock/hip-hop/metal/etc are just considered normal forms of music instead of the work of Satan corrupting our kids.

There are a ton of things like this, victories that are either so absolute no one even considers going back (like women in pants, oppressing the Irish, or opposing rock music) or have opposition that is niche and opposed even within "traditional values" groups.

It's the same way the comment before me pointed out, even religion has changed. They're more accepting that the earth is round, heliocentrism, that germ theory exists, that changelings and witches aren't commonplace in the world. Many religions are even accepting of (or at least softer in opposing) the ideas of evolution and the earth being billions of years old. Many believe in no fault divorce, Trump himself has been married three times. And like the other example I gave above, left handed people aren't oppressed. We have a Republican presidency where one of the main advisors and figures in it (Elon Musk) was an unashamed fornicator who barely disguises his atheism, and no one cared. The average American Christian today is a sinful heretic to someone a thousand years ago.

Casual clothing is now commonplace in many work environments, with people even wearing branded tshirts and the like.

I know I'm old now because I get viscerally annoyed when I see people wearing Uggs or hoodies in the office.

It's Friday so today I'm wearing a quarter-zip without a collar underneath for casual Friday (which no longer exists post pandemic).

Yes I'm probably autistic.

casual Friday

At my previous job I and a couple other guys did Fancy Friday instead since it was so casual, though we only went as far as wearing ties or bowties, not full suits.

You are using a circular definition of 'progressive'. The things that did change are progressive by definition because they 'progressed'. The ideas that didn't take hold are not progressive because they didn't 'progress'. Using this simplified logic we can tautologically demonstrate that 'progressive' ideas will always win out, we just don't know which ideas were actually progressive until they succeed.

Is trans women in men's sports a progressive issue? Because the Olympics just rolled it back. If society reaches the concensus that this was wrong, will you still claim it as a progressive position, or just let it fade into memory, deny that it ever existed? Shrike mentions a few such issues before, but how many more are there that we don't even remember? This is the standard progressive playbook.

I do agree though that sexual deviancy has been normalized. That's why people of moral character need to stand on principle and not roll over to what's popular.

Casual clothing is now commonplace in many work environments, with people even wearing branded tshirts and the like.

Not entirely a good thing.

Jazz/rock/hip-hop/metal/etc are just considered normal forms of music instead of the work of Satan corrupting our kids.

Not entirely a good thing, either.

Jews/Italians/Irish/etc are now considered an ordinary form of white instead of as foreign criminals and scum.

Well. Not all of those are actually wins among progressives! Making Jews white was probably worse for them, in some ways, this decade. And surely crushing the mob played a role in that shift for the Italians?

They didn't seem to be passing judgement on how good/bad these are, just that it all happened, which it did.

I would be quite surprised if Kitty didn't consider all of these things good, especially given the things left off

They probably do!

The long arc of morality doesn't mean for every topic, but in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones. They win out so strong that you don't even think about it much anymore, at least for these examples of the US.

So, the mother of all Texas Sharpshooter Fallacies?

Where's the Free Love that was as or more popular in progressive circles in the 1960s than full racial equality?

Agreed 100%. I'd go even beyond that, and say ultimately the Moldbug/arc of history meme of 'progressives always win' is a massive Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. I think one needs to consider additionally is the question 'what is progressive?' To give perhaps the most central example of progressivism/Enlightenment liberalism: the Jacobins basically trampled on every single right enumerated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, generally in a fashion far more intrusive and extreme than anything in the then recent history of the Ancién Regime. This wasn't even a case of hypocrisy: the National Convention and leading Jacobins very explicitly explained why they had to do what they did for the good of France and the revolution and, according to them, their actions were perfectly consistent with the revolutionary project. The Soviet Union was the same story on an even larger scale. You kind of get a paradox: either the Jacobins not following what was then identified as progressive principles means they are not progressive, or those rights enumerated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man are not progressive values. The necessary conclusion is that 'the left', especially over time, is actually somewhat hard to define and includes tons of social/historical dead ends.

Where's the Free Love

I don't really know much about the 60s but tinder et al exist, which feels pretty in line with what I imagine "free love" was all about.

Ironically people are having less sex, but I think that's for other reasons, because sex outside of marriage is now the social norm for the supermajority of Western Civilization.

The modern online dating market is nothing like the concept of free love that was extremely common and important within progressive circles. Maybe on Fetlife or whatever the modern equivalent is. Read Stranger in a Strange Land some time. That's what progressives in the 60s pictured as the enlightened future.

It failed. Young couples today are, if anything, more jealous and possessive than they were in my grandmother's day.

This is what I mean by a Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. It's circular reasoning. You don't even know what progressives aimed for but assume that it must be pretty much what we have today because progressives always get what they wanted so this must be it.

I've noticed this tendency as well. First, progressives claim that changing the law or cultural mores on something will improve this or that, or everything altogether. When their predictions inevitable fail and the changes turn out to be somewhere between less good or outright negative, but everyone already got used to the new norms, the claim becomes that this is what we wanted anyway. Ideally, you start a bunch of tv shows how terrible life as before [X] changed. Didn't chesterton have a quote to that effect?

Ah, found it:

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."

The implication here being that the progressives of old are now the contemporary conservatives.

I was mostly making that comment to learn more, I was taking a shot in the dark in the hope someone/you would correct me and I'd learn something.

I love the book Stranger in a Strange Land. Excellent point and I totally grok Free Love now.

Cheers!

I have a long effortpost I need to get around to about the political things you see in a 1968 Playboy that are vastly more radical than you see today.

in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones

I think it's important to remember, when assessing this, that it's easy to skip over progressive defeats, because what's "progressive" is measured by what is progressive today and not what was always considered progressive. Few people remember to count temperance or eugenics or removing the age of consent when evaluating the progressive k/d ratio because those ideas lost out and quickly became no longer progressive.

I think a lot of it is that conservative politics is basically defense. A reactionary party is something different trying to remove a progressive idea and replace it with something that was common in the past. No one can win a game by just defense, so of course in a contest between progressive ideas trying to make a change and conservative values trying to say no. A progressive agenda that wins once is going to be ahead of a conservative agenda that prevents 99% of those progressive ideas.

This is an interesting trend in history, but i think another way to look at it is why its happening, and why certain societies and not others?

First and foremost, this doesn't seem to follow geo politically. It seems to be a phenomenon that's unique to specific societies, like the US, and this "progress" is not uniform nor takes place everywhere.

Most of east Asia is much more "racist" & "sexist" than the west. China is insanely oppressive and controlling, they are not democratic in the slightest. Out of wedlock births are few and are stigmatized in those societies, they do not allow gay marriage.

Ukraine is currently "losing" its war with Russia.

What would be the morally correct position on the Israel-Palestine conflict? Can we say that history is bending towards Palestine, Israel, or a 2 state solution?

The Taliban taking over in Afghanistan.

There is a loss of privacy & general alienation that comes with modern technology.

Why does this only happen in certain countries and not others? If its about morality, why is history permiting some "immorality" in some places and not others. What makes progressives such a cultural power house in the states?

It’s due to the nature of social progress and western responses. De Maistre defined how the revolution would be defeated 200 years ago; not through a revolution against, the Orleanist solution that failed not only in France but with Franco’s shogunate and which is at least unsuccessful in Iran, but through the opposite of a revolution, adaptatory and distributed change which coalesces into its own antithesis in a reverse dialectic, gradually restoring the civilization of the west.

The western right by and large does not realize this, and does not realize how to do this; this despite the distributists completing the system of de Maistre’s counter-revolution in an inculturated form nearly a century ago. In east Asia, things are different, as the embedded Confucianism of these societies naturally generates its own antithesis to revolution, resultant in the dialectic restoring their tradition passively. But we’re talking about the west, here, where Confucius is a strange foreign import of made up wisdom to sell fortune cookies. Things are different, and that’s ok.

What can you do? You can join real traditional communities and contribute to rebuilding functional villages which, by their very nature, will seek to confederate, turning into a standardization feedback loop that rebuilds a healthy society over the centuries. Quick and cheap doesn’t work; neither right wing Leninist vanguard parties nor neo-orleanism can push the process through, although political accommodationism to this societal rebuilding is probably a good thing.

How are you using distributism here? You seem to mean something smaller scale or more grass roots than I am accustomed to.

I am used to seeing distributism proposed as a full-scale alternative to socialism and capitalism. Distributism in that sense seems unachievable in an industrial or post-industrial society; it will eventually reduce to capitalism or socialism, depending on how you treat the accumulation of capital. A small-scale approach is far more interesting.

Distributism as a full scale alternative to socialism/capitalism is selling a bill of goods, and more of a feature of neodistributism than chesterbelloc(indeed continental contemporaries attempting this saw themselves as doing something different).

But while neo-distributists have nothing useful to say about running a whole economy, their discussion around the conditions pertaining to small scale capitalism are very interesting. And that smaller scale refugia is necessary to build the basis for a societal rebuild. There are entire industries dominated by cultural enemies which cannot simply be dispensed from, even as their alt version never needs to rise above the ideologically driven niche- and ideologically driven niche capitalism at small scale is the version of distributism advocated by most of the neo-distributists, with the Belloc version rural by necessity- unlike Medaille’s theories.

You've lost me with the references to particular schools and thinkers. I can't promise to pick it up right away, but I'm likely to have some more reading time soon – is there a source you'd suggest starting with?

Hilaire Belloc was a British Catholic reactionary intellectual from the interwar era- in other words, from the same milieu and basic worldview as JRR Tolkien, GK Chesterton(with whom he cooperated on his vision of distributism), etc, and his vision shares the expected blindspots of such thinkers- that is, it's not very well suited to modern industrial society, because it's agrarian, ruralist, and asystematic in approach due to the aim of preserving traditional, and by that point more or less dead, social structures. John C Medaille is an academic economist or philosopher or something, it's hard to tell(he doesn't have an advanced degree and the University of Dallas plays kind of fast and loose with the separation between the two), who attempts to bastardize the theory into a modern industrial society compatible version, which of course in practice would at broad enough scale probably reduce into vanguard party socialism. He does, however, put together an interesting framework for small scale and less profit-oriented businesses to compete in the modern USA, and can point to a few small scale successes, mostly on the scale of reviving main street in singular small towns and the like.

Where this gets interesting is applying his ideas to the sorts of industries which hold back attempts at building genuine parallel societies, a la the Gab endgoal. Like it or not a parallel society in the 2020's USA needs an alternative to big tech, hollywood, etc, and 'just be Amish' is unworkable. The traditionalist project can only succeed by forming a parallel society which takes over the American mainstream through natural population growth, like what mohammedans are doing to some Euro countries. Ideologically driven niche coordination problems tacking into the winds of economic rationality are literally the problem. Once that precondition is solved and begins achieving broader adoption it generates a positive feedback loop which of its own volition begins to purify the stratum embracing it of modernist influences, and superior social function increases the appeal still further, sort of like how the gradient of Jewish practice in Israel drags the entire country increasingly to the right. Yes it takes time and needs kinks ironed out but traditional structures can only come about through traditional, not revolutionary, means.

Thank you. That explains some things about Internet distributists and also gives me some things to think over – not least the difference between red and blue state dynamics regarding your second paragraph.

"parallel society in the 2020's USA"

There are many families and small groups rejecting System Approved (TM) normie way of life and living fully "parallelly" because they are small and quiet enough to stay under the radar. You do not have to go full hobo mode.

When you grow enough to be noticeable, the problems begin. TPTB have so many legal options to crush you like a bug it is not even funny.

edit: links linked

Like it or not a parallel society in the 2020's USA needs an alternative to big tech, hollywood, etc, and 'just be Amish' is unworkable

Being Amish also will not be workable in a long term.

Amish existence relies on big pile of unprincipled extemptions from the system with dubious constitutional legality, that were granted long ago, and could be revoked at any time when TPTB decide that Amish are problems that needs to be solved (before it grows into unmanageable size as in Israel).

It will not come as bolt from clear sky, Amish have rather good PR among normies, so to do it, full propaganda artillery preparation would be needed. The best angle to go about it would be animal rights - Amish attituda to animals is fully trad, with all what this means.

edit: link

More comments

First and foremost, this doesn't seem to follow geo politically. It seems to be a phenomenon that's unique to specific societies, like the US, and this "progress" is not uniform nor takes place everywhere.

I'd say it's taking place in most places. Outside of like the hardest of Muslim countries, women wearing pants and showing skin is basically the default now. Things like rock music/hip-hop/etc are listened to around the world. A lot of the examples I gave apply worldwide. Not every country is going to have equal "progress" on everything. That Japan still widely shuns tattoos in a way the US doesn't anymore, does not mean they aren't still warming up to them and becoming more lax on the topic.

Most of east Asia is much more "racist" & "sexist" than the west. China is insanely oppressive and controlling, they are not democratic in the slightest. Out of wedlock births are few and are stigmatized in those societies, they do not allow gay marriage.

It's true they don't allow gay marriage, but that's not the only thing related to homosexuality to begin with. They decriminalized it a few decades ago for instance. And polling seems to suggest same sex marriage is also getting more widely accepted too.

Results show that about half of the respondents agreed that same-sex couples can be capable parents (48%), should be able to marry (52%), and that they would personally attend a same-sex wedding (46%). An additional 37% somewhat agreed with each positive attitude toward same-sex families.

So even this is still changed in a way that just a few decades ago would be considered insanely subversive in China.

Ukraine is currently "losing" its war with Russia.

That Ukraine has been able to put up this incredible fight against Russia, long considered one of the world's superpowers that was in intense competition with the US, for years on end is by itself an accomplishment is it not? I remember how it was expected Kyiv would fall in days.

What would be the morally correct position on the Israel-Palestine conflict? Can we say that history is bending towards Palestine, Israel, or a 2 state solution?

The Taliban taking over in Afghanistan

Again, that it doesn't apply to every conflict and country at all times equally doesn't stop it being generally true that things are a lot more "progressive" than the past on a lot of different topics worldwide.

Outside of like the hardest of Muslim countries, women wearing pants and showing skin is basically the default now.

Interesting/sad/etc to watch self-inflicted backsliding in parts of UK, Belgium, Germany, France, and Sweden.

I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it or how anyone thought this was a good idea

I can imagine the kind of bright-eyed naïveté that takes blank slateism and "of course they'll assimilate" as a baseline assumption. For a time.

I can't imagine how they let it drag on for decades, how they're so terrified that they'll erode their own culture, they'll let girls get gang-raped with no consequences.

Yeah like it clearly worked quite well (eventually, apologies to the Irish and Italians) with euros of all flavors in NA. But there were some reasons... that worked well and importing Syrian refugees did not.

There is not always a long arc of morality.

It depends how you define "morality" and "winning" in the long terms. Many causes marched towards to victory, and few of these victories looked as the founders of movement would imagine triumph.

If, for example, first century Christian fell asleep for 1000 years and woke up in 11th century, what would he think? He would be dismayed that Jesus hadn't returned yet, and he would be even more revolted by this barbarian world that reveres Jesus by worshipping golden idols and sheds rivers of blood in his name.

He would see history of this thousand years as complete triumph of satan and possibly started to question his whole faith.

The same with more modern examples. What would communist from 1926 think about world of 2026? He would see it as maximally degenerate and depraved world where capitalism won in the most decisive way possible and stomped the workers of the world to the dirt.

If, for example, first century Christian fell asleep for 1000 years and woke up in 11th century, what would he think?

What would communist from 1926 think about world of 2026?

A fascinating difference in standards between the to worldviews you're using here. If you asked for a description of "capitalism stomping the workers of the world to the dirt", would a 1926 communist describe a world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors at the time, yada, yada, yada? Don't get me wrong, I have lots of problems with modern capitalism, but the idea that early Christians would find be revolted by 11th century, but OG, materialism-obsessed, communists would think anything other than that they must have died and gone to heaven upon seeing the modern world, is a bit rich.

It's interesting to read Sidney and Beatrice Webb's 1936 Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? because it shows you how the USSR was supposed to work. According to the Webbs, the true-believers were working toward a future where every peasant, factory janitor and Chukchi tribesman would have a standard of living equivalent to a Western European university professor.

Edited to add: it goes into elaborate detail on the economic planning process, and I think it might even have worked - if it was overseen at every level, down to the individual factory, kolkhoz and shop, by an all-seeing, all-knowing AI, devoid of human frailties like corruption, favoritism, laziness, ego and urge for revenge, and this AI had some way to compel humans to follow its directives!

Hmm, there's a speculative fiction story in there somewhere . . . too bad I've got no writing talent.

The main problem of Soviet propaganda was it claimed the utopia was already achieved, lie as brazen as completely unnecessary.

See Ayn Rand skewering Soviet propaganda movies (made in capitalist Hollywood to support capitalist US state war effort)

She was right, the propaganda was so over the top it was counterproductive.

When, for example, farmer from Kansas saw on silver screen Soviet peasants living in mansions, eating luxuriously and visiting grand opera house, would he think "We should help our gallant allies, whatever the cost!" or "If Russia is so rich country, why they do not send aid to us?"

would a 1926 communist describe a world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors at the time, yada, yada, yada?

Were those 1926 communists true believers in fixing the plight of the common worker or were those causes instrumental memes to get the masses on his side. Because if they were anything like the modern champagne socialists they wouldn't be. They pay lip service to the workers of the world even as they hate everything about them.

world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors

After 100 years of scientific and technological progress, the workers are not starving any more, how great!

You mistake communism for trade unionism.

Communism was never about higher pay and longer lunch breaks for proletarians, and it was ever less about wokeness and LGBTQ+. It was about building new world, world free of all oppression and exploitation, world where man in brother to man, not wolf. This is what communists believed in, this is what they were dying and killing for.

(to quote famous post-Soviet "We tried the best, happened as usual")

Here is one very rare piece of history - interview with last pre-WW2 German Jewish communist (the ultimate devil for many ppl out there). The hypothetical man IRL.

“A Communist Doesn’t Whine — He Shows His Teeth”

Theodor Bergmann, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 101, was the last of his kind. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin in 1916, he gravitated to Germany’s explicitly socialist workers’ movement as a young boy and remained what he called a “critical Communist” for the rest of his life. Known among friends and comrades as “Young Theo,” he was, as Mario Kessler wrote, “the last participant and eyewitness to the German labor movement of the Weimar era.”

Most of the interview is about the vanished world of interwar Europe, but here is how he feels about modernity.

TL;DR: He does not think 62 different brands of toilet paper in every supermarket equal paradise on earth.

Everything in our society today is swindle and betrayal. Even the words are lies. “Social market economy,” “people’s shares,” “capital formation in workers’ hands” — everything is a lie today, there are no true words left. The “social market economy” is gone, now we have the “new social market economy.” Everything is a lie!

An expression of a defeat, an expression of our inability to create our own media and make ourselves self-sufficient, and an expression of our weakness. The Left back then had self-confidence — we don’t have that today. We have a deep depression. There are only a few who would write in the newspaper, “I’m a Communist”. What’s happening in America now — that this old man says, “I’m a socialist!” — is unthinkable [in Germany], but it must happen.

After 100 years of scientific and technological progress, the workers are not starving any more, how great!

Something that the commies were struggling with despite the same technological progress...

Communism was never about higher pay and longer lunch breaks for proletarians, and it was ever less about wokeness and LGBTQ+. It was about building new world, world free of all oppression and exploitation

I know communism includes some crazy utopians thinking the oceans will turn to lemonade, but I thought it also had some hard-headed people mostly preoccupied with the material conditions of the working class.

Also totalitarian states running on command economies are not what I'd call "free of all oppression and exploitation".

Most of the interview is about the vanished world of interwar Europe, but here is how he feels about modernity.

Yeah, and if an early Christian managed to live 10 centuries I'm pretty sure he'd say how fucking awesome it is that we converted all the heathens. Most of what he's saying sounds pretty copey.

Most of what he's saying sounds pretty copey.

After everything that happened, most of what he says sounds superhumanly calm and level headed, looking to the future instead of past grudges.

Loren Balhorn: When you met people, didn’t you often ask yourself if they had been Nazis?

Theodor Bergmann: I knew that about some people. Professor Röhm, he was the rector for the anniversary in 1968, 150 years of Hohenheim. He said to me: “Mr Bergmann, I was foolish. My wife was smarter. I was foolish, but I’m not a Nazi anymore.” I can understand that: “I learned.”

Loren Balhorn: You can accept that? That was enough for you?

Theodor Bergmann: That was enough for me, yes. I can’t say “you’re guilty forever”. The people didn’t know any better. He’s from a small village, the village was full of Nazis. “But my wife was smarter,” he said. I accept that.

I don’t believe in collective guilt! There were Nazis and there were others. I have nothing to do with the Nazis, but I’m in solidarity with the others. We’re trying to do something better.

I know communism includes some crazy utopians thinking the oceans will turn to lemonade,

Charles Fourier wasn’t technically a communist, he was a different, unrelated branch of utopian socialist.

Communism as a technical term refers to the end state of history predicted by Marx. This end state doesn’t happen to exist, ofc, but there is a reason that the Soviet Union did not claim to be a communist regime. Thé Leninist idea was a departure from orthodox Marxism(which held that this end state will just happen after a series of events that were falsified in the Victorian era- more of a prophecy than a policy plan) in that it held socialism could be directed into a communist society- this of course didn't happen, because communist societies are, it bears repeating, not real, but still, thé idea was to reach a wild eyed utopian project even if for the time being quite a number of concessions need to be made to practicality.

Charles Fourier wasn’t technically a communist, he was a different, unrelated branch of utopian socialist.

Context for Fourier's visions: This sort of utopia was not delusionary dream, it was extrapolation of cutting edge science of the time - agricultural science.

This time - late 1700's - early 1800's - was time of British Agricultural revolution time when plant and animal breeding was for the first time done in systematic, scientific way with astonishing results.

It was not unreasonable to ask: "If in mere 50 years, science can double size of swine and sheep's wool yield, what could be done in 500 or 1000 years?"

No surprise that utopian visions of the far future, genre common of the time, were of biopunk genre. Future where carriages are drawn by lions at breakneck speed, ships pulled by whales, menial human labor is replaced by trained animals, eagles tamed and bred so big they can carry riders.

Well, this future hadn't arrived, dirty grease and coal dust covered mechanics had other plans.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats