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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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A brief epilogue to my previous post about the cabal of Former Theatre Kids who appear to be running every significant Western government and international organization:

On Thursday, the official NATO Twitter account posted a thread in support of the Ukrainians which included this jaw-dropping statement:

Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century

We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.

The official honest-to-God NATO account posted that. Not some third-rate dingbat functionary, like the execrable Karen Decker who posted about how Afghanistan needs more “black girl magic”. No, this is the public-facing voice of a war machine that controls hundreds of billions of dollars, and it decided that the best way to make its case to skeptical world was to spam references to media primarily targeted toward middle-schoolers.

Besides being yet another Theatre Kid shande far di goyim (Rod Dreher had us dead to rights with that line) in an era that has been full of them, I think this is a data point in favor of a pet theory I’ve had about progressives/post-Marxist culturists/“the woke” for a while.

When I see some fat black woman or horse-faced lesbian activist rail against how society “reifies hegemonic standards of beauty and body shape which disparately marginalize the bodies of subaltern identities” or whatever, I cannot escape the impression that these people - mostly women, but not entirely - just never really recovered from the petty traumas of middle school. The jocky white boys were all attracted to the slim white girls with the straight hair, and not to the chubby girls, especially the black ones. And I’m not just taking potshots at my outgroup here; I’m guilty as hell of this in my own life as well. (“We must reimagine masculinity to de-center violence and the domination of others,” says the noodle-armed kid with low testosterone, certain that in the Glorious Future, women will prefer guys like him.)

If we’re getting deep into psychoanalysis, it seems at least plausible that for a certain personality type - highly neurotic (and thus liable to experience negative emotions acutely, leading to traumatic imprinting on experiences that non-neurotic people are likely to move on from with no issues), extremely creative and imaginative, great at constructing arguments and manipulating symbols - combined with some social/physical handicap which places them at the bottom of a local social/sexual status hierarchy, you get a perfect storm that leads to becoming trapped in a sort of arrested development - results in a failure to mature emotionally past that formative period, and a predisposition to escapism translating into political utopianism.

Now, presumably this is where someone like @FCfromSSC would jump in and dismiss my attempt to draw a clean through-line between psychology and ideology. Agency is key, and equipped with the right religious and cultural guidance, anyone with these baseline psychological traits and formative experiences can transcend them, becoming a normal and functioning member of society with a healthy worldview. In this telling, in pre-Enlightenment societies, either 1. this personality type basically didn’t exist at all, or 2. those civilizations were far more adept at social engineering, such that they could far more successfully integrate people like this into their social fabric and find roles for them which utilized their strengths and defanged their more dangerous and subversive tendencies.

I am genuinely unsure whether or not I accept this telling! To hear psychology researcher Ed Dutton tell it, these “proto-woke” people or “spiteful mutants” were precisely the type of people primarily targeted by medieval witch hunts. I tend to intuitively favor the explanation that these people have always been a sliver of humanity; maybe that’s because it gives me psychological comfort to imagine that even in pre-literate warrior nomad societies, there were scrawny little guys like me, preoccupied all day long with stories of the gods and ancestral heroes while they were supposed to be sharpening their spears and hauling bags of cured meats. If it is true that the Enlightenment unleashed the full latent power of this sliver of the population, propelling us first to great heights but then succumbing to the poison pill at the heart of the project, then perhaps this offers a roadmap to reintegrating the “spiteful mutants” back into the fabric of healthy society by showing them both the benefits of giving them a day and the grave dangers of letting them monopolize power. Certainly at the very least they shouldn’t be running NATO’s Twitter account.

Are you familiar with Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism?

“The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking”

There’s also Spandrell’s Bioleninism thesis which is that basically all of politics boils down to jockeying for status. So socialism is particularly attractive to High-IQ people who are ill-suited to a capitalist society (intellectuals, journalists, other wordcels, etc.). These people can then recruit various types of resentful underclass people (addicts, generally stupid or lazy people, ethnic and sexual minorities, weirdos of all kinds) who, since they have nothing to lose, are much more loyal and politically active than the people who are content with the system as it is. What makes his thesis “Bio”leninism is that in the 19th-20th century, society was less egalitarian and there were people being oppressed who would have otherwise been successful without these barriers which made socialism/communism attractive to a wider group of people than In current year, when all de jure discrimination is gone. Leftists then have to reach further and further into the dregs of society for loyal enforcers to the point where they draw from people who are biologically incapable of succeeding for genetic/HBD or mental illness reasons.

I’m not sure if I agree entirely, and I probably butchered the summary so it’s worth reading the actual blog. I think it does a good job of explaining why the people most loyal to the party (activist types) and enforcers (antifa types) seem to be fat, ugly, crazy, stupid, mentally ill, or some type of sexual minority.

To answer your question, I don’t think that something went wrong in these people’s development, I think most people’s politics are at least in part “taking a position that would benefit you personally, and then using whatever justification is available to explain why it’s necessary for society”, and the people who seem hilariously non self-aware about this are just in a bubble where nobody they respect has ever called them out on this. Didn’t some of the founding fathers have comically self-serving justifications for why slavery is good actually? I think pre-enlightenment societies had plenty of those type of people but most non-nobility had absolutely no ability to influence politics so probably didn’t worry about it too much, and no one with any power cared about the peasant’s political opinions. On a more local level, the scrawny wordcel who is resentful that he was born a peasant farmer’s only option was to become some kind of monk or something, where he can debate the number of angels dancing on a pin and scratch his itch for subversion (or become Martin Luther). What makes the “subversive” types dangerous now is that in a democracy these people as a whole have power, so harnessing their resentment becomes a viable political strategy.

Are you familiar with Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism?

“The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking”

This, along with related comments in the post above, is just so lazy and trite. For one, the actual evidence for this is quite limited; people sometimes cite one study from 2017, which mostly takes election results from the 1970s and so seems of limited usefulness for today. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much. As a wise man once said, if you cannot measure it your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

In any case, the whole line of argument is just absurdly uncharitable. Republicans are much more likely to be obese than Democrats, but if I said something like 'Republicans only dislike public transit spending because they are fat fucks who can't arsed to walk from the bus stop' I would rightly be dismissed as an annoying twerp, which I am afraid is very much how you come across.

I mean, it is true that that seems to be the motivation behind the "fatphobia" push.

What does?

That the activists in question will be considered more attractive when they get their way and destigmatize fat.

While that may be some kind of motive for some activists in that specific area, in any broad sense I don't think it's really important considering the aforementioned point that there is a positive (though not necessarily huge) correlation between obesity and voting Republican. I mean, here are the ten most obese metropolitan areas in the US.

McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas: 38.8 percent

Binghamton, N.Y.: 37.6

Huntington-Ashland, W. Va., Ky., Ohio: 36.0

Rockford, Ill.: 35.5

Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas: 33.8

Charleston, W. Va.: 33.8

Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla.: 33.5

Topeka, Kans.: 33.3

Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, Wash.: 33.2

Reading, Penn.: 32.7

yeah, this is why the right's preoccupation with body image risks alienating some voters. Go to your typical red state Walmart, or people who show up to rallies. most look overweight or average. not too many gym bros among them, and plenty of gym people vote democratic anyway. My dad for example is a huge health nut, voted blue forever.

I don't think it matters that much in the same way that red tribers want a Christian in office even if they themselves are poor Christians. Being healthy, physically fit, strong, and masculine/feminine (depending on your sex) is universally seen as a good thing by red tribers. Being too fat, too skinny, or too effeminate is seen as a bad thing.

My model of a physically fit red triber is a guy who does a bunch of free weight lifts, maybe does a moderate amount of cardio, maybe uses his strength for worker or outdoor hobbies, with a slight chance of being on roids or some other PED. He eats steak and eggs and burgers and might do CICO but that's about it. He plays pickup contact sports like football or basketball. He thinks the skinny runner physique looks DYEL or even "gay."

My (admittedly less clear) model of a physically fit blue triber is a distance runner or CrossFit-type gym goer. Probably uses Strava and has a bunch of exercises gadgets or at least an Apple watch. Eats a balanced diet of organic and locally grown foods heavy on the greens and micronutrients. Probably takes a collection of supplements, some of which are woo, some of which are not. His fitness is never really used in real life except for the 10Ks or half marathons he runs with his running buddies. He does a few other sports that require pricey equipment like snowboarding or paddleboarding. He thinks big muscles are gauche, low-status, and make you look kind of dumb.

As long as the Right pushes for the red tribe version of the physically fit man, they won't lose voters because even an obese habitual McDonald's patron acknowledges his superiority even if he won't say so outright.