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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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I realize this isn’t a top quality post, so I accept the judgement of the mods, but a mistrial has been declared in the case of Lindsay Clancy. Shes the woman in Massachusetts who admitted to killing her kids, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

The jury deliberated for seven days. Apparently, it came down to one male juror holding out against the other (nine female, two male) jurors. The belief is that he wanted to vote guilty. The jury reported to the judge that the holdout refused to follow the law regarding reasonable doubt, and the defense tried to have him removed. The judge refused. This morning, the judge declared a mistrial but gave defense one hour to get a stay from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Predictably, the online discourse is off the walls. X lifts the holdout up as a hero, while Reddit believes he (we know it’s a male because the defense said so) is an MRA/red piller and needs to have his phone searched.

Personally, I think she’s guilty of premeditated, cold blooded murder. That said, I get the postpartum argument, but am horrified by the defense of her and holding her up as some kind of hero.

The short of it is that a sizeable portion of the population can't formulate a coherent idea of 'law' or anything similar that isn't just a system existing to personally benefit them. Having such people make decisions is untenable. And the weight of living under that system, knowing what it's made up of, makes everything more precarious.

Those folks are in one camp. Another camp tries to reason themselves away from this reality by pretending that what's going on isn't that, but some other factor: 'The law is actually complex, you see. 'Mental health is a serious issue!' None of these are real, none of these are relevant. It's just cope because there is no worldview that can both accurately fit in the Lindsay Clancy fans and not be incredibly sexist at the same time.

The feminist mantra of 'What's best for mom is what's best for baby' when talking about abortion isn't some one-off, it's a declaration of what reality is to them and how you're supposed to see it. The women supporting this aren't insane themselves, they just found a resonator in Lindsay who they can dump all their emotions into. And that's the thing, it's emotions they have. If they had at any point decided to kill their own babies, they believe they should not be punished for it. Their emotions aren't just valid, they're reality. And that's the system you live under today.

There is no delicate offramp here for the civil and socialized, who would sooner die than blemish their own ego by earnestly engaging in a low brow culture war, so they just close their eyes and keep driving straight, with no concern to where that leads. Which is how we got to where we are now.

The short of it is that a sizeable portion of the population can't formulate a coherent idea of 'law' or anything similar that isn't just a system existing to personally benefit them. Having such people make decisions is untenable. And the weight of living under that system, knowing what it's made up of, makes everything more precarious.

Do you volunteer to be excluded from decision making, or are you imagining this purely with yourself and others like you as those in charge and not someone like Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, or the other leaders of actual real world examples of powerful authoritarian societies?

I'm imagining that free white men of good character don't need to be weighed down by the obvious excesses of the luxurious societies they build. Part of maintaining that luxury for everyone is recognizing that it's just that, a luxury.