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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I'd rather have people with hard skills in my country than 'soft-skills' people. Better to have rule by high-INT than high-CHA. Nobody's ever denied that East Asians are clever, they make contributions in technology. If they've all joined the Democratic/leftist mainstream media ideological consensus, then that's really more our fault for founding it in the first place.

So what if they're a bit less creative and more disciplined? It's not a highly significant effect, there's plenty of start-ups and development in China. They lead in many sectors of technology: https://twitter.com/scienceisstrat1/status/1557866377486245889 How is this possible if they're not significantly creative?

Discipline can also be good in certain circumstances, if you've got a soldier who'll fight to their last breath, that can be useful. The conditions China fought under in Korea were horrendously bad, they had no air cover, negligible artillery/armour and their logistics were minimal. They could only move at night lest they get found and pummeled by the US air force. The mountains of Korea are immensely cold and tens of thousands of them died of frostbite. But they fought the UN forces to a standstill with skillful infiltration tactics and night fighting, using infantry alone. In terms of generalship and valor, they outclassed us as much as we outclassed them in firepower and materiel. Surely such feats deserve respect!

I really liked the Three Body Problem series, it was thought provoking. I also liked Reverend Insanity, which is very unlike other books and webnovels in various ways. Both are from mainland China. And there are considerable political problems in the mainstream publishing industry in the US, there is a tendency to market various politically-correct literature, from authors of favored ethnicities.

Anyway, of all the ethnic groups in the US, you're finding problems with the East Asians? The ones with the lowest crime rates and highest incomes? The ones who are getting lumped with whites in terms of anti-meritocratic discrimination?

If they've all joined the Democratic/leftist mainstream media ideological consensus, then that's really more our fault for founding it in the first place

Have they? Every Asian-American I meet is grounded in traditional responsibilities of the nuclear family & boomer era conservative society.

Natalists:
  • Have children....and live for your children

  • Take care of your old parents.... and they will do the childcare while you work

  • Pay for your child's education...which comes with the implicit expectation of getting grandchildren.

Merit & work ethic based values
  • Pull yourself up by your bootstraps --> go to school & get a job

  • Excuses like 'I do not have privilege' are never tolerated

  • Anti illegal-immigration --> pro skills based immigration

Emphasis on their culture's preservation
  • Take pride in being the race & culture they hail from

  • Kids are expected to come home for special events celebrated in a historically faithful manner

  • Defer to elders continues to be the norm.

  • Jadedness around blank-slatist neo-ideologies. The great leap forward and the general failure of neo-systems across Asia has made them quite resistant to 'brand new ideas that will fix everything'. There is a 'you have no idea how good things in the 1st world are, do not fuck this up' belief that pervades the culture. (I'd say this applies to 1st and 2nd gen immigrant culture at large)


There are 2 reasons that Indians and Chinese aren't solidly red-coded.

First is because of the Republican's insistence on 'Whiteness & Christianity' being core to the platform. If it gets reframed as 'protestant values & religiosity', then people-of-color would be more likely to associate with the group. Trump and more concretely: DeSantis, has already started this process by capturing Cubans & religious Hispanics. The model clearly works.

The second is the tricky one. Both Indians and Chinese diaspora really value social acclaim through institutional success. So as long as the institutions are coded left, they will continue to pretend, and eventually believe themselves to be coded left. It is a very Scott-Aaronson-ian approach to the world. Unless Republicans can tie themselves to being high status, they will never be able to pull Indians/Chinese towards them.

But going by values, Asian-diaspora embodies more of the boomer-era values that Republicans claim to stand for than Republicans themselves.

First is because of the Republican's insistence on 'Whiteness & Christianity' being core to the platform.

This is simply false and has been false for decades. Here's what George W. Bush said about the topic on Sept 17, 2001 for example:

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war."

Leftists insist that Republicans are racist, and push this meme by misleading media stories. A Bush II example of this was James Byrd (black guy) getting murdered by racists in Texas while Bush was governor. Leftists who oppose the death penalty wanted a hate crime law, Bush said such a law was unnecessary because Texas has strict laws against murder. Texas eventually executed the killers based on those laws.

A Trump example of this is creatively editing a statement to imply Trump described white supremacists as "fine people" when he explicitly said he wasn't referring to them. (Full quotes here: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/ )

Now I fully believe that Indians and Chinese believe this to be true - but their belief has nothing to do with any actual mainstream Republican views. Your second reason explains quite well why Indian and Chinese Americans believe this, regardless of how true it is.

This may be true of the immigrants themselves, but I'm not so sure it still obtains among the second- and third-generations; particularly those growing up under contemporary socio-cultural conditions.

In my experience, second-generation Asian Americans are divided between a vocally woke minority of mostly women and a quiet majority of mostly men who don't care about politics and just want to earn a living and be left alone.