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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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far-left

I've found the far leftists to be a lot easier to engage with than the shifty trend followers. We disagree on everything, but I get along pretty well with proper communists. At least they've read their first sources and reason from a concerted set of first principles.

Jonathan Haidt and John McWhorter are idiots

Why would any of the reasonable ones hold this belief to begin with ?

best way to argue with woke leftists?

You can't. You can only properly argue with someone who engages with you in good-faith. The second you engage in wrong think, you are considered an enemy, and all avenues for a real discussion are shut down.


UNLESS...........

1.You build a mountain of good faith.

In your closest circle, there is enough good faith, that you can set yourself on (a metaphorical) fire by mentioning these names and still have enough in store to keep them listening.

they can always accuse their opponent as "lacking empathy"

The people closest to you hopefully know you well enough to not accuse you of 'lacking empathy'.

2.You play the idiot.

Keep asking questions without revealing your preferences. Defer to the person as if they are the expert and you know nothing, while ignorantly poking holes in their ideas. If they get suspicious and start asking questions, reply with something innocuous like , "idk. I just want people to be able to live their best life." If they are engaging in good faith, they should run into a logical-hurdle at some point and at least question their own belief because of it.

One good way to throw questions at them is if you have some unique cultural context that they don't. Eg: The minorities in my country are repressed, but also rich. Refugees in western nations are considered terrorists in their home nation. Or, the military imposes woke ideas in the nation through authoritarian suppression and explicit violence. They don't know enough to counter you. At the very least, they should see the core issue with the non-transferability of woke ideas across cultural contexts.


Things to never do: Don't ever play their jargon games. They will trap you in it. They are better at spouting bullshit than you are. You will only be embarrassed here by the end of it. The Chris-Rufo-esque bastardization of terms like woke/CRT still convey more specifics than a woke-leftist ever would. If you defer argue on their playing field, you will be destroyed before you even open your mouth. Yes, it means that you cannot resolve an argument amicably with someone looking for a fight. Either concede (by playing within their Jargon) or put up a proper fight with a Rufo-esque fight-fire-with-fire approach. Either ways, if you end up angry at the end of it, then might as well go down swinging.

Keep asking questions without revealing your preferences. Defer to the person as if they are the expert and you know nothing, while ignorantly poking holes in their ideas. If they get suspicious and start asking questions, reply with something innocuous like , "idk. I just want people to be able to live their best life." If they are engaging in good faith, they should run into a logical-hurdle at some point and at least question their own belief because of it.

There's immunity against this tactic; it's called being a concern troll.

Also, even asking honest questions that are merely neutral on issues important to the left verboten in many circles.