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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15043 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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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.

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.

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.

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