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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17291 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal

As someone who has frequently been mod-slapped on the wrist and eaten temp bans for responding immoderately, I can only advise you:

  1. Bite your tongue. Hard. No, harder than that. Bite all the way through if necessary.

  2. Yes, you are angry and hurt and taking it personally. This is a "you" problem, not an "OP" problem so far as the mods are concerned.

  3. Play by the rules. Even if you feel very strongly the rules are stacked against you.

  4. You can call the [expletive deleted] all the bad names you want in the privacy of your own skull, but when writing on here you must - and it will not be excused if you do not - adopt the persona of an early 20th century academic in an M.R. James tale. Well dear dear, I was somewhat taken aback by the proposal as set out by my good colleague KillTheScum about killing the scum, i.e. me and those of my ilk. Perhaps some gentle converse and exchange of views in a civilised manner at a tepid degree might be in order? Though I quite understand if the community feels that would be outrageous over-reaction on my part!

  5. This last is just my own means of dealing with the tension. It may or may not help you. Recite to yourself while typing the tepid, moderate, response the verse of Hilaire Belloc:

Heretics all, whoever you may be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
Caritas non conturbat me.

You can call the [expletive deleted] all the bad names you want in the privacy of your own skull, but when writing on here you must - and it will not be excused if you do not - adopt the persona of an early 20th century academic in an M.R. James tale. Well dear dear, I was somewhat taken aback by the proposal as set out by my good colleague KillTheScum about killing the scum, i.e. me and those of my ilk.

"Killing scum is certainly not a policy humans innately abhor, but the wide variance in definitions of 'scum' seems to me worthy of attention in discussions such as this one. It appears to me that a large plurality considers those who espouse the views you are arguing for here to be scum worth killing. If this be the case, how should we proceed?"

Hilaire Belloc

Aside from his Cautionary parodies, I was always a fan of his Epitaph on the Politician Himself:

Here richly, with ridiculous display,

The Politician's corpse was laid away.

While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged

I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

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