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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19115 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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I liked Jeff Maurer's take on Platner. The Dems are heavily pushing him because, unlike so many of their candidates, he comes off as an ordinary man of the people. He's a tough guy (a veteran), an oyster farmer, and he curses a lot. His working-class credibility make it easy to overlook certain flaws which would sink a more milquetoast candidate. All bolded text is in the passage below is my emphasis:

On the one hand, this doesn’t surprise me: Brawny dudes with the politics of a Portlandia character don’t come along every day. On the other hand, I’m surprised because the left just went through this with John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is now persona non-grata on the progressive left due to his strong backing of Israel and occasional support for Trump (he was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Pam Bondi). He sits alongside J.K. Rowling and Bari Weiss in the Pantheon of People Hated By the Progressive Left. Is nobody on the progressive left thinking that there might be a chance that if elected, Platner might go the Fetterman route?

Platner’s Reddit posts — some of which are as recent as 2021 — do not reflect uniformly left-wing views. Yes, he called himself a “communist” and an “ANTIFA supersoldier”, but he also mocked gay people and took a casual attitude towards sexual assault... Combined with the whole Nazi unpleasantness, these posts might cause one to wonder how deep Platner’s progressive convictions run...

And Fetterman, of course, is far from the only person to start out on the populist left and end up right-of-center... Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are journalists who made the switch. Tulsi Gabbard went from endorsing Bernie to being part of the Trump administration in just four short years, which makes you wonder if she was a centrist for 20 minutes as she rocketed from one end of the political spectrum to the other.

...the populist tough-guy schtick is a shallow narrative that appeals to people with shallow political beliefs, so we shouldn’t be surprised when those beliefs change.

Platner has showed a decades-long interest in being an anti-establishment edgelord but only a recent interest in progressive politics. Which isn’t too surprising — a lot of people who like the “high-testosterone progressive badass” persona really only like the “high-testosterone badass” part. As of four years ago, Platner’s politics were a mix of left and right, and now they’re hard left, but who can say where they’ll be in another four years? Nobody. But some people like Platner’s vibes and have decided that’s good enough.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if, in the next ten years, Platner jumps ship and joins the GOP.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if, in the next ten years, Platner jumps ship and joins the GOP.

I would be surprised.

The left/right split in the US is increasingly about identitarianism and collectivism vs individualism. Some like David Friedman would argue that it always has been about this. Plattner seems to be solidly in the identitarian/collectivist camp, contrast this with folks like Fetterman and Gabbard who consistently backed the Democrats' economic policies but always seemed a bit uncomfortable with the id-pol stuff.

As I said above, the right is not about individualism. Just a different collectivism.

The right is genuinely much more willing to evaluate people as individuals or members of small groups while the left is much more willing to generalize. Treating people as individuals doesn’t necessarily correspond to granting unlimited freedom.

The "right" often speaks the language of individualism, especially around markets, speech, guns, taxation, and personal responsibility. But for other topics like nation, religion, family, sexuality, immigration, crime, and cultural loyalty, its pretty damn collectivist. Realistically the "right" is multiple divergent camps, some are individualist, others are far more collectivist. Do you really want to tell me that the average HBD believers, Alt right, and dissident rightists are in any form individualists?

HBD believers,

HBD is a belief about an is, not an ought. It says nothing about collectivism vs individualism and in actual practical use is almost always used to counter a collective guilt blood libel.

nothing about collectivism

We must witnessing very different applications if you think the average HBD poster is making comments about African-Americans being more violent and lower IQ on an individual level. And not by definition on a collective level. There's a fig leaf towards it being an distribution and obviously not every individual. Followed up by here's my 10 step plan to reshape society so that AAs collectively have reduced social impact, freedom, rights, and political power.

HBD is a belief about an is, not an ought

Only in the most theoretical autistic form. If the belief is that certain populations underperform along ethnic lines and have increases in certain undesirable traits. The follow on is almost always policy actions to reshape society around that theory. That's an "ought" not an "is"

HBD itself is a term mostly used by us autistic online types. Your standard vulgar racist doesn't reach for academic sounding terms to justify their views.

Again in actual practice is used to argue against theories of disparate impact which are very collectivist. "reshape society" is impossibly vague.

theories of disparate impact which are very collectivist.

I don't disagree that disparate impact theories are collectivist but fighting a specific collectivism doesn't make you not a collectivist. The easy answer is you just want the collective to favor your theories instead of others.

"reshape society"

Idk, change policies, laws, culture so that certain theories are now fundamental to the fabric. If you think African Americans really are genetically less intelligent, and more prone to violence, do you really mean to tell me that the response to accepting that is: "Well thats neat but nothing should be done about it" or are there policy actions that people want to put in place in order to curtain all of that. There are clearly dissident right voices that want to use HDB for policy actions, the autistic folks just want it to be "this is truth, we should stop hiding it" but in a way they are being naive or useful idiots to the class of people who actually want to use those theories to change society. It's like Autistic Marxists being naive about what the hard core revolutionaries actually want to do to force a communist society.

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