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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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"living well is the best revenge."

It's a nice sounding cope and maybe a good rule to follow if you want to be happy and/or avoid sullying your soul with the rot of politics.

But it is also absolutely terrible strategic advice.

The people who obsess over winning at politics at the expense of everything (including their principles) are the people who will inherit power. And they will not leave you alone. Because they need more power to sustain power itself.

This may be disgusting but it is the true nature of power, in its complete and naked Machiavellian form. The ring only obeys to Sauron. Wearing it only slowly makes you Sauron or destroys you. But if you refuse to wear it and destroy yourself thus, you have to accept the woe that befalls the weak.

Of course in the heroic tale of anarchomonarchist propaganda, we campaign for the ring to be destroyed. And this is a different path from blind confrontation with Mordor using its own weapons. But it is also not living the best Hobbit life waiting around in the Shire to be sacked by Orcs.

If living a good and moral life sufficed, the Mormon wars would not have been necessary.