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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   24646 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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I’d say they only get involved in a culture war matter when anyone is questioning, ridiculing, criticizing or delegitimizing women’s sexual choices and behavior.

I’d say they only get involved in a culture war matter when anyone is questioning, ridiculing, criticizing or delegitimizing women’s sexual choices and behavior.

Agreed. As near as I can tell, progressivism is 100% a who/whom ideology.

For example, suppose an aspiring male actor alleges that he was sexually taken advantage of by a female casting director. Will progressives take the man's side in order to support the principle that these sorts of accusations should be taken seriously? Generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, the best progressives would do would be to remain silent.

Agreed. As near as I can tell, progressivism is 100% a who/whom ideology.

Perhaps the same could be said of all ideologies.

The thing that gets me, though, is that progressivism specifically is supposed to be not about that, because it's specifically supposed to be about progress (as the name might imply). Which means progressing away from the old, bad way of figuring things out based on tribalism and moralizing and such, and instead using our modern, enlightened tools to figure out what the best things are. Unfortunately, it seems like there are like 30 progressives who try to think like me and about a billion witches bitches tribalists who simply use the stated principles of progressivism to launder in their own tribal opinions as the Officially Good Beliefs, almost always without conscious intent or even awareness.

Perhaps the same could be said of all ideologies.

I certainly wouldn't say it about libertarianism. But I do think that if an ideology starts to gain power, it's going to be a magnet for psychopaths, narcissists, and various Machiavellian types. The kind of people who have a very strong who/whom orientation.

Which means progressing away from the old, bad way of figuring things out based on tribalism and moralizing and such, and instead using our modern, enlightened tools to figure out what the best things are.

Not only that, progressives are always going on about fairness, justice, tolerance, being against hate, and so on. When in practice they are extremely hateful, intolerant, unfair, and unjust. What other ideologies have practices which are so wildly at odds with their stated principles?

What other ideologies have practices which are so wildly at odds with their stated principles?

The groups progressives treat as boogeymen?

The groups progressives treat as boogeymen?

Well, what are the stated principles of National Socialism (more accurately, neo-Nazism?) Seems to me they are (1) white separatism; (2) white superiority; and (3) opposition to Jewish influence. And what are the practices of followers neo-Nazism? It's hard to say with absolute certainty since they have so little power, but it does seem that they oppose non-white immigration to Europe and the United States and they oppose Western support for Israel. And I am pretty confident that if (unfortunately) Neo-Nazis did get power, their practices would be pretty much in line with these principles.

Say what you will about neo-Nazism, but there doesn't seem to be a disconnect between their talk and their walk as there is with progressivism.

I'm not sure what your point is here, but to the extent you are simply asking a question in good faith, my answer is "no."

Edit: Just to be clear, I absolutely positively hate Nazis, including the ones who post on this discussion board. It's interesting that Nazis and Progressives/Bolsheviks/Whatever-you-want-to-call-them hate each other so much that it's easy to not fully appreciate just how horrible one of them is when one looks at the horrors of the other.

Tribalism is too baked into human psychology. You can taboo all the old tribal markers, but then people will just find more indirect, abstract, and novel markers to be tribal about even while earnestly believing themselves to be non-tribal. Tribalism is not optional. Its excesses can only be mitigated. It cannot be effectively mitigated by denying or hiding it, but only acknowledging and restraining.

That very well may be true. It seems to me that progressives ought to try to do actual credible scientific research to to figure that out, and, to whatever extent that's true, to use actual scientific tools to figure out how to structure society, systems, organizations, etc. to channel people's tribalism in productive or, at least least deleterious ways. Instead, most have been just embracing their own tribalism as well as ignorance while also destroying our very ability to do credible social science research.

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