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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11192 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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The destination is fixed, does it actually matter if we get there fast or slow?

In other words, "we're circling down the mouth of Charybdis, and the only reason we're all still alive is because we struggle against the flow, and you don't. Well, fuck that, we're all going down together"

Which is understandable, but ignoble behavior.

If we were circling Charybids, that would mean we were on a boat, and if we were on a boat, then there would be a captain who is actually in charge for the duration of the voyage, and we wouldn't vote on the captain midway through.

The reason why we're circling Charybdis in the first place is because we vote for where to go every other year, and who should be captain every fourth year. And now we are going to be sucked in no matter what, and we will have to come out the other side somehow.

there would be a captain who is actually in charge for the duration of the voyage, and we wouldn't vote on the captain midway through.

I mean, that can happen, but it's usually called a mutiny.

This tweet encapsulated it perfectly:

The breakfast question for small government conservatives

"You live in a welfare state. Federal taxes are taken from you, spent, and wasted. Would you rather have the money given to your friends, or your enemies? Remember that the money will be wasted either way, you're not allowed to get it back, the money needs to be spent. The only thing you can decide is whether the money is given to your friends, or your enemies."

"But I don't want to live in a welfare state."

Frame it and put it on the wall.

The post-Elon Twitter is interesting in that it serves as a sort of distributed intellectual movement that percolates the best ideas up towards people who can actually act on them.

Which is understandable, but ignoble behavior.

There is no durable consensus that we are circling Charybdis. The ask here is that people like me continue to act as though we are circling Charybdis and exhaust ourselves rowing away from that apparent danger, while Blue Tribe laughs at our absurd concerns and forces us to serve them the wine we're too busy rowing to drink.

To the extent that Charybdis does not exist, we should also drink wine. To the extent that Charybdis does exist, this is not an acceptable plan to avoid it. It does not seem to me that nobility comes into it one way or the other; if you require people to enslave themselves in lifelong, futile misery to secure your approval, do not be surprised when they shrug and turn their back to you.

One thing that needs to be asked is "how many rowers, how many drinkers".

Most people are fine with rowing if it's 90% rowers, 10% drinkers. But then we rescued a lifeboat full of drinkers, and now it's 50% drinkers on the boat. And the old rowers harangue the young rowers "I'm retired now, you need to row twice as hard to pay for me and all the drinkers I rescued. It's the noble thing to do."

Asking young white men to continue to bear the burden of society and make themselves subservient to other groups is no longer tenable.

A lifeboat of foreigners who hate us, don't care about charbydis, and just want to drink our wine and tell us where to steer the ship.

While singing the praises of the lifeboat.

The Master said, Entirely trustworthy, a lover of learning, faithful until death, exemplar of the Way, he never enters a state where there is peril, never remains in a state where there is disorder.

When the Way prevails in the world, he appears; when the Way is lacking, he retires.

When the state follows the Way, being poor and lowly is a cause for shame. When the state is without the Way, being rich and eminent is a cause for shame.

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