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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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With three days until Election Day, is there still enough time for the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Michigan?

Cenk Uygur's Rebellion PAC dropped a controversial new ad supporting the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed featuring a grocery store conversation about Israel. Some are calling it the most antisemitic ad of all time:

"You're going to have to put those eggs back."

"They don't like eggs anymore?"

"No, they like eggs. But we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians."

"What? I mean, don't we give Israel $4 billion a year anyways?"

"Yeah. And now we're giving them another $26 billion. Do you know how much that is per American taxpayer? It's like $161 per person."

"Apparently, it's costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza. It's terrible."

Now, I don't think this is a very good ad. It's poorly acted and a bit too on-the-nose, but accusing the political opposition of wasting money on unpopular special interests while regular citizens deal with rising prices is probably the most common political maneuver in modern American politics. Apparently, this ad is at the center of a possible last-minute fracture of the Michigan Democratic coalition.

Haley Stevens, El Sayed's defeated challenger in the dem primary, released an incredibly passive aggressive statement preemptively thanking El Sayed for his "Expected Condemnation of Antisemitic Campaign Advertisement". Amusingly, long-time TYT host Ceng Uygur has been demoted to "Hasan Piker's Uncle". In case you didn't catch the subtext, this is a threat to pull her support (as explained by Haley Stevens's fiance on TMZ for some reason?). Abdul appears to have no intention of disavowing the ad.

This doesn't seem to have affected El Sayed's chances in the prediction markets. He is now up to an 80% chance to win, but I guess we'll see what happens at the black church on Sunday.

This mostly just illustrates the enormous gap between perceptions of the elite and perceptions of the actual voting public. Abdul runs 7 points ahead of his baseline support with voters who are "focused on Israel". Support for Israel among normies is around 65-35 at this point, on the level of "trans the kids", "open the borders" or "raise my taxes". If the media remotely reflected actual public opinion they'd be asking Rogers why he supports unconditional support to a country with an approval rating comparable to syphilis.

This whole "controversy" kind of reminds me of that time Trump compared MS13 to "animals" and then the media ran with it for a week assuming that it would hurt him somehow.

I think the voters know that, if Abdul were in charge, he wouldn't merely take money away from Israel. He'd want to give money to Hamas instead. Charitably, the money wouldn't go directly to Hamas, but laundered through NGO's first. Same difference though.

Americans may feel negatively towards Israel. But they really don't like terrorists. The choice isn't Israel or nobody. It's Israel or global Islam.

I echo @Vollerei when I say that I would like to live the rest of my life without having to think about Islam even once. But, they're here I guess, and they seem determined to seize as much political power as we'll let them have.

I think the voters know that, if Abdul were in charge, he wouldn't merely take money away from Israel. He'd want to give money to Hamas instead. Charitably, the money wouldn't go directly to Hamas, but laundered through NGO's first. Same difference though.

Americans may feel negatively towards Israel. But they really don't like terrorists. The choice isn't Israel or nobody. It's Israel or global Islam.

Virtually all Muslim countries except Iran don't support Hamas materially even if they hate Israel. And his anti-Israel leftist base don't particularly like Hamas they just hate Israel and particularly view the war in Gaza as a genocide. I find the idea that Abdul would need to mirror the US support for Israel if it become pro-Palestine questionable I think I pro-Palestine America would look a lot more like Ireland than Iran. Both extremely pro-Palestine nations but obviously very different in how that support is expressed. Americas Arab allies as well all hate Hamas with a burning passion.

So, if he does win, how much will you update towards "the voters don't know (/believe) (...)" and how much will you update towards "they know, but they like Hamas more than Israel"?

(To begin with, voters are not uniform! It could in fact be the case that the majority of voters believe he will give money to Hamas, and the majority of voters likes Israel more than Hamas, but the majority of the former group likes Hamas more than Israel, and so he wins on the votes of that set \cup the set that does not believe he will.)

All of the above I guess. I’m definitely gonna update if he wins and it’s not an enormous blue wave.

Given demographics, Islam is almost certainly never going to be powerful enough in the US to accomplish any of the goals some of its subsets have that I find most annoying, such as imposing authoritarianism or ending social liberalism. So if I look at things from a self-centered chess-playing perspective, then in the US I am relatively comfortable with tactically using Islam against my more significant political opponents if and when there are opportunities to do so. I'd just want to make it clear to Muslims that no, this does not mean they should feel free to go beat people up for being Jews or whatever, or try to impose some sort of anti-free-speech pro-Palestinian regime on college campuses. Stick to electoral politics where you can be useful to me without doing bad shit.

One especially obvious counter here:

some sort of anti-free-speech pro-Palestinian regime on college campuses.

Since when has the left prevented any sort of anti-free-speech regime on college campuses, so long as it's aligned with them?

My political strategy is not to create a leftist hegemony. It is to keep the left and right balanced against each other in such a way that each of the two groups, both of which I largely despise, is restrained by the other.

In my strategy, one of the "useful idiot" roles that I have for the right is to prevent leftist censorship.

I look at that and say to myself you’d make a good defense contractor for wanting to prolong the inevitable conflict. Unless you’re a moderate or centrist. By default something always wins. I’ve been living under leftist hegemony for far too long. Not that a rightist hegemony would be any better, if it doesn’t reflect my particular bend. A dictatorship of rednecks, trucks, overhauls and meth isn’t anymore desirable than one with blue haired feminists, limp wristed men questioning their sexuality, and kids moving around and discarding parts of their body.

I have actually considered trying to figure out how to make money from both sides at the same time. I would find that amusing. However, I'm not sure if my conscience is sufficiently loose to let me engage in the necessary deception. Maybe I should let go of such qualms if I really want to really become a political player at some point.

My more fundamental motivation is that: I am neither a left-winger nor a right-winger -- however, I don't currently see a way to create a viable movement that would represent my actual political desires. The next best thing, then, is to play the left and right against each other in a way that prevents either from taking complete control, maximizes the chances of things that I want happening, and perhaps lays the groundwork for creating a movement that does reflect my desires.

Sure, there's never going to be Sharia law in the US during our natural lifetimes.

But as the Margaret Mead quote goes, "never doubt that a small group of Third Worlders can wreck your country". More seriously, as time goes on and the El-Sayeds of the world grow more bold, we will start to get more and more patches of religious domination like we already have in Hamtramck, Michigan. The call to prayer will blast over speakers in major cities. Sure, us people with lots of resources will be able to live in nice white areas. I do personally and let me tell you that it's quite nice. But many parts of the country will experience hardship and a loss of identity.

I'd also be circumspect about making tactical alliances with religious Islam. Sure, they will help you get votes for gay space communism in the present. But that only lasts until they have enough votes to make banning gays a priority. See also: Hamtramck.

It's much more stable and prosocial to make alliances with the outgroup than the fargroup.

My state already has sharia law, with clerics ruling over everything from sideburns to showing your hair. The extremists are 5% of births and doubling every twenty years; they are projected to be 80% of births by 2300, but they are so adept at politicking that they will have functional control over the state within 40 years. These extremists have so much influence that one of them born in my state has vetoed the president’s choice of cabinet for not settling matters in their sharia courts. This sharia extremist was a key voice in causing America to enter a disastrous war with no way out. The sharia courts rule that women are forbidden to divorce without their husband’s permission and forbidden to sing in public where men might hear. Artistic representations are largely forbidden, as is any socializing with non-extremists. They have so much power already that when they get caught engaging in large-scale welfare fraud, the state merely offers an amnesty program so that the cleric’s favorites don’t get jail time. I’ve seen them take over my own relative’s school board where they cut all funding for extracurricular programs because they only attend their own extremist schools. The sharia extremists engage in a variety of schemes to fund their operation. Feel free to swing by New Jersey and check out our sharia towns if you ever get the chance.

That was actually my pretty funny, I knew that Chris Christie was butt hurt about the whole sending, his dad to jail thing, but how absurd that he actually thought the Rabbis should’ve dealt with that.

Is this... the origin story of @coffee_enjoyer?

By the way, I agree those people are terrible. I'm fully against desert tribes of all stripes having political influence anywhere where I live or might want to visit.

And this has how much effect on people who don't live in their Jewish welfare ghettos? I've no sympathy for them, but it's not like New Jersey was going to give people a nice tax break instead of just wasting it on some other form of corruption, and it's not like they actually want gentiles in their weird communes.

They expand, and they also take advantage of anything in neighboring communities that they can. For instance, there's a zoo in my area. It sometimes has free days. The ultra-orthodox will come from long ways around to visit the zoo on free day (because they're both poor and cheap and have many children), and they park in the neighboring developments (because they're too cheap to pay for the zoo parking). Many also drive like shit even by New Jersey standards. "This is why we can't have nice things".

The basic problem, though, is we have a welfare system designed to transfer money to mostly-dysfunctional fools assisted by more-or-less average social workers, and it's completely defenseless against a population which has no moral compunction against exploiting it AND is uniquely genetically, culturally, and educationally optimized for rules lawyering.

The communities expand, and when they take electoral control by becoming kingmakers in New Jersey politics, they will expand with little resistance. And they will probably decide to steal more money, like they’re doing with the federal security grant program. Or maybe they will force Rutgers to bend over backwards a la lawfare:

For the proposed listening sessions, the agreement names Rutgers Hillel and the school’s Jewish law student association — the same one pro-Palestinian students accused of doxing them — as relevant “affinity groups” to the campus Jewish community. Rutgers currently participates in Hillel-led antisemitism training seminars; the school also previously announced an internal antisemitism task force, but unlike other universities it has yet to release a report. In December 2023, the school became one of a long list of universities to suspend its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine; it reupped the group’s suspension in August.

I imagine they will try to expand New Jersey’s K-12 holocaust education, to maximize the demoralization of the goyim and the special social privileges for Jews. Children already have to read books like this as part of New Jersey’s mandatory holocaust indoctrination:

Browse these literature recommendations to help young white children see racism and bigotry and understand how to take a stand against it: THE LEGEND OF FREEDOM HILL ($15.95) tells the story of two young friends in 1850s California -- Rosabel, an African American, and Sophie, who is Jewish. When Rosabel's mother, Miz Violet, is captured by a slave catcher, the two young girls put their heads together to win back her freedom. The lively text and colorful illustrations enliven this moving tale of friendship and bravery. (Grades K-4)

Why shouldn’t your child read “White Antiracist Biographies” starting in Kindergaarten?

https://www.nj.gov/education/holocaust/curr/materials/docs/Holocaust_K2_Suggested_Activities_WhiteAntiRacistBiographiesEarlyGrades.pdf

In the part few years the Jews in New Jersey have already expanded the program and ADL and Gottheimer are looking to add even more guilt-based propaganda for your children to read before they can count.

Ask the UK about demographics.

Very different situations given the types of immigration the two countries get.

Get to date.

Or just like, visit a Costco. People get so into their liberal white bubbles they don't realize the vast changes that have happened.

What opportunities do you have in mind?

I dislike both the Democrats and the Republicans, so for me one useful thing would be if I could use the Muslims to hurt the Democrats when the Democrats become too powerful and hurt the Republicans when the Republicans become too powerful.

I also dislike the size of US military spending and the US Presidency's pretty unrestrained ability to make war, so Muslims could also potentially be used to affect US foreign policy in ways that align with my goals.

Most people don’t know how American military spending works. That’s one thing I’ll hand to the progressive democrats in that they at least have the ship pointed in the right direction when it comes to monetary accounting operations. Back when AOC was even more popular (sadly) than she is now, she was making waves about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and you saw a whole litany of books come through the pipeline like Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth. It’s an accurate understanding of how a modern economy works, but where the progressives flew completely off the cliff was when they pointed to it as a way for them to fund transgenerational entitlement programs, the Green New Deal, etc. A great example of the heuristic, “A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” (Especially when it’s misused). A great example of how MMT does work is the American military occupation all over the planet.

Is there a good entry point (book, essay, etc.) you would recommend for better understanding MMT as enacted in real life?

First you have to understand what MMT is. All it is, is a fully accurate description of how a modern economy works. The kind of understanding you’d get out of a Krugman, undergraduate textbooks is adequate for introducing basic concepts, provided you realize in the back of your mind it isn’t ’really’ how things work. Once you get out into the real world, you have to jettison much of what you’ve learned throughout school. This is basic applied versus theory. And that’s where MMT begins.

If you want a basic book, Randall Wray wrote a good one a few years ago, but it can follow a steep learning curve if you aren’t already acquainted with basic concepts. If you want to understand where MMT goes wrong, Cullen Roche has a great series of articles on this from the applied, investing world that are very much worth reading. He gets some things wrong, but a lot of what he says is on point.

Hope that helps.

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