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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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The guys who can't get women

Is it the girls or the guys who have the power on dating apps?

There's bad news about single men everywhere these days. It's portrayed as a societal problem that so many young men don't have the moves, and don't get sex, cuddles or offspring.

And women's "impossible demands" are blamed for their lack of success on dating apps.

The young men feel generous with the number of likes they get on the apps, but don't get the same amount of likes in return. They take it for granted that this little effort should earn them the chance to get laid, so you can imagine the frustration when that wish doesn't come true. Hordes of men whine that the ladies have the upper hand in the marketplace.

So poor young men.

But I'll share a little secret: The demands women have on men are ridiculously low. Here are some examples of what I've heard women my age being charmed by in men:

He was reading a book on the subway. He knew the definition of the term feminism. He moved (even with a smile) when he stood in the way of someone at the bread shelf at Kiwi. He apologized for interrupting someone.

It doesn't take much to get a star in the book.

Yet men who have given up dating often claim that they were ostracized from society by liberated women. For many, liberated women are synonymous with demanding women, who only consider men at the "top of the hierarchy" as good enough.

This hierarchy of alpha, sigma and beta males is the imagined reality of many men. The alpha male is usually at least 6 feet tall, has a perfect BMI and a status job. Preferably money too.

He gets all the women. Often in turn. The rest of the men get none, or have to settle for what they see as the basic scrap of women they don't consider attractive enough.

Below the alpha male you find all the other men. Totally average guys with slightly worse moves on the ladies. Their outfits may consist of yesterday's shirt and gym shorts, and their conversations often revolve around cryptocurrency, gaming or football.

Yet they scratch their heads as to why women are looking in a different direction.

It's the modern version of the romantic comedies of the 80s, where the woman only goes for handsome heartthrobs, while the poor good guy sits at home alone.

The most frustrated young men seek companionship in online echo chambers filled with depression, anxiety and body dysmorphic disorder. None of them have learned to talk about their problems. It feels easier to take what they call "the black pill", the belief that you are genetically predisposed to be ignored by women.

Women become scapegoats for men's existential loneliness. You don't have to visit many comment sections before you come across bitter men posting about insufferable women withholding sex.

Do these sound like nice guys to you? Someone you want to date and save from loneliness and celibacy?

The 21st century dating culture is not for sissies. Dating only through a screen is a poor basis for connecting with others. Of course you'll have delusions about what's expected of you. Of course you feel inadequate.

The difference is that many men's solution to this is to become bitter because women don't lower their standards for them. At the same time, women overexert themselves to meet the demands we think men have on us.

Because listen:

There are plenty of single women who feel just as insecure as single men, but they blame themselves, not the men who reject them. Instead, we empty our bank accounts to buy makeup and skin products. We get up before sunrise to remove every hair on our bodies. We starve ourselves.

Yet I'm supposed to believe that women have all the power in the dating world?

More women succeed on dating apps because they do more to get validation. Looking at women's profiles, you usually get a gallery of smiles and pretty outfits, shiny hair, friends' dinners, hiking and picnics in the park.

Men's profiles are mostly a couple of grainy selfies with a dirty room in the background. Maybe a shirtless photo in neon lights at a fitness center. What women are actually interested in, they don't seem to have given a second thought.

The criticism my friends and other female peers have of men's profiles on the apps usually has little to do with the men's appearance. It's more about the profile and photos being totally lacking in charm.

Women look more often for personality, because they are looking for a connection with someone, while many men only look at looks, because they are mainly interested in body and sex.

The alpha male is an ideal for men, not the dream man for women. On the contrary, I've heard many nightmare stories from bad dates with these types. They sit there and flaunt themselves, and are so full of themselves that they are completely uninterested in the person they are on a date with. It's like the old joke:

No, I've talked a lot about myself. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?

Dating the alpha male are the stories we laugh about most on girls' nights out.

Men on dating apps don't try to meet women's desires

  • -33

Instead, we empty our bank accounts to buy makeup and skin products. We get up before sunrise to remove every hair on our bodies. We starve ourselves.

Who told you that that's what men want?

It seems that men prefer thin women but you shouldn't have to starve yourself to be thin. Just have a healthy diet.

Many men don't like make-up, even if for some it translates into liking women that wear 'natural make-up'. Not drinking and having a good diet and good sleep (being healthy) goes a long way for good skin!

One could also see 'we empty our bank account for...' as a red flag. If you need a full face of make-up to just look good enough to go out, that could be an issue.

Maybe it's a self-esteem issue too?

Psychologically healthy women are very attractive too.

Obviously your post is full of simplifications (generics) but the spirit is right. I think that the fundamental source of almost all relationship problems - whether romantic or otherwise - is motivational. Even literal morons and maurauding spergs can be very socially adept when they are motivated correctly; I have seen this a lot of times now. On the other hand, I have seen extremely charismatic and gifted men/women screw things up, usually because:

(a) They were using another person(s) to gain some sort of internal self-esteem, rather than seeking deep and enjoyable connections for their own sake. This seems to lead to trying too hard or not enough, depending on the nature of the self-esteem pursued: proving that you are "lovable" as you are (a good way to be lazy and whiny), proving that you're a winner because you got a HVM/lots of chicks/a wife material woman/whatever.

Solution: stop pursuing self-esteem. Self-rating is a really stupid idea, as pretty much all the great religions and philosophies imply. Leave that to God, if anyone.

(b) They have perfectionist aims. It's fine to want to meet the perfect person, in the perfect way, and have the perfect romance, but that's not going to happen, and all love involves sacrifice. And unconditional love is clearly an insane aspiration, when one thinks it through.

Solution: admire the perfect but accept the imperfect. Perfection is for heaven, if anywhere.

As you suggest, it's really a lot easier than most men think. As a basically average-looking guy, it took me about 2 years to go from hundreds of unanswered messages to women to being messaged by hundreds of women, and it was largely just a matter of being motivated in the right sorts of ways. The actual changes themselves (losing weight, better photos, a more playfully written profile) were comparatively easy.

I feel like there's a lot of truth to this but it's also phrased in a way that's needlessly antagonistic.

I do think the current situation is largely fueled by women misusing their natural leverage, but oh well that's life.

Baity as it is, this post has something I agree with: men are not accustomed to the rat race that women have been running for decades. Women used to need men for their money (cf. Pride and Prejudice discussion downthread), but if you don't need a breadwinner to support you and your 2.2 children (and why want children, anyway?), why settle for a man that is just average? I've heard that Satisfyer is much better than any man if you only want an orgasm.

If you're a blue tribal around 20 you will probably have to learn all the stuff women have been doing:

  • is my body hot? What can I change to make it hotter? What can I wear to accentuate the hottest parts are hide the not-so-hot ones?

  • is my face attractive? How should I style my hair to make it more attractive? How will makeup help?

  • is my personality attractive? Can I be a good listener that at least pretends to be interested in the topic? Do I know how to talk about things that interest the other party?

  • are my hobbies attractive to women? What do they say about me? Do I have a hobby that lets me meet women easily?

  • are my male friends appropriate? Do I have a cool friend that gets me into places? A wingman I can trust? Do they all look good on camera without outshining me?

  • is my lifestyle attractive? Do I look like a strong independent man that doesn't need a woman in his life to feed and clothe himself and keep his apartment clean and tastefully decorated?

There is no way, based on objective empirical observation, that most women have ever considered their value this deeply and on this many axes for any period of time, much less decades. Almost all of them have always focused on the first two, mostly as a matter of intrafemale competition, and expected men to just like the rest or move on.

You're assuming male and female attraction is symmetrical/comparable. It isn't.

I'm not assuming that it is symmetrical. But at the "foot-in-the-door" level it's pretty comparable.

It makes sense, and it's doable, but it's backwards. The bag young men are supposed to secure is resources and social status. They may as well start looting and raping if it takes this much social intrigue to find a decent partner.

In any of your examples, did the women do all this effort to secure a poor, regular height man, with a great personality?

The difference between men and women is that for women, seducing a man is is standing in the vicinity of said man. Smiling and being pleasant, and then waiting for the man to actually initiate. Being there is 90% of the battle won.

It's different for men. If you think that the only reason I'm not dating Gina Carano is that I haven't ran into her, then I don't know what to say.

I went to an event like this recently in finance and it was like 60% women, all young, and because it was all PMC disproportionately skinny and attractive.

Huh, that's interesting. I always assumed those things would be as male-dominated as the industry as a whole; if they're majority female, that's a huge selection effect.

Ah, that makes sense. The FCA gave a ratio of 17% female in 2019, but only for people senior enough to need approval.

These are extreme examples. But men never seem to do even light versions of this. Some men will stalk specific women, sure, often women they’d have no chance with even under ideal circumstances. But the strategic pursuit of a certain type of woman appears very rare.

I feel like a certain amount of this is just down to how male & female sexual attraction differs. If a male's exposed to a reasonably attractive, friendly woman with similar interests for long enough he'll likely eventually swing her way. If a girl's exposed, far more likely for a permanent 'ick' to form or the window to close of perception.

If a girl's exposed, far more likely for a permanent 'ick' to form or the window to close of perception.

Not necessarily. For me, anyway, trust comes before lust so online dating is frustrating and I'm a 75% of lovers were friends first kind of person.

That said, I do consider most of my male friends unfuckable.

(Note: I read through this entire thread and discovered, along with everyone else, that the OP comment is at least low effort and maybe-probably ChatGPT or Norwegian copypasta. Cool. Still, @2rafa

s thoughtful response motivated my response)

Ulterior motive hobby-ing and socializing in order to date is a very bad idea. As @RenOS states in reply, if you're the guy doing the thing (hobby / career / social event) just to hit on women, you get a reputation as the dude who's just there to hit on women. Because you are and you have sort of concealed that fact. I would argue that if you do this in any way that's even slightly related to your profession, say by joining a "Young Professionals in Old Timey Dirigible Engineering," you're courting disaster. The lines between personal and professional spheres for conduct are very, very blurred (I'd argue this is probably a bad thing, but that's for a different thread and a higher effort post).

The solution to this is to be good at flirting. In fact, that's always been the solution. Flirting is a specific means of communication that lets both parties covertly communicate interest while allowing for exit points constantly without anyone getting too hurt. These days, really, really subtle flirting with slow escalation and a lot of indirection at the outset appears, to me, to be the default. I think this is a symptom of overall social regression due to the rise of emotional hypersensitivity, and, frankly, just a little bit of broad level social skill retardation due to social media. It amazes me how many "conversations" these days are just round-the-table sequences of references to memes and YouTube videos.

Therefore, I see a lot of things in my social group's dating rituals nowadays (late 20s early 30s) that reminds me of what early High School was like. People do track likes on social media as indications of romantic intent. People do have multiple group-of-friends outings where two interested parties are specifically there to be near each other before those two parties go on a one-on-one date. In fact, there are even literal practice dates where one party will ask the other if they want to do coffee / movie but in such a fashion that there's no possibility of it escalating whatsoever. I remember a ritual in High School where you would ask your True Love if they wanted to sit outside in the courtyard to eat lunch together and that this was absolutely necessary before an outside-of-school-in-real-life date.

The elevated risk with current flirting, however, is that incompetence is punished nearly as harshly as the clandestine operation of hobby-ing to date. If you're socially less than replacement level (that's a baseball term, look it up), and go off half-cocked (yes, I'm having a little bit of fun now) and ask someone on a date too early in this process, or announce romantic intent with even a pretty basic - but direct - compliment, you could risk getting the creeper label. The modulators here are 1) how attractive you are 2) existing social standing 3) communication awkwardness. This is where you see a lot of angry TRP'ers and blackpillers raging "WhY caNt womenz take ComPLiments?" Well, if you're so incapable of recognizing social context, cues, and current rituals, your "compliment" is seen as a random mad raving by a whirling free radical that's too dangerous to be engaged with. When the man in three layers of sweatshirts in two layers of urine cologne on the subway salutes me and says "Morning, General!" on my commute, I don't feel flattered.

Well, how does a fellow with underdeveloped social skills go about improving? The answer is to talk to everyone about boring shit all of the time. Master small-talk. "But small talk is bullshit! I want to get into deep conversations! And isn't that also what a mate wants?" Sure, eventually. But being able to make small-talk that isn't cliche ("crazy weather we're having"), or boring, or just you free-associating demonstrates a similar kind of subtle communication very much like flirting.

If you can get a stranger, in 60 seconds, to tell them something about themselves (basic, nothing deep), laugh at an observation, and then ask you a question, you've just made a stranger begin to trust you (in the telling of the something), enjoy being around you (laugh), and take a reciprocate interest in you (the question). And, remembering that being sneaky is bad, you're doing this in a context where you don't already want to have sex with the stranger (or, you preemptively discard that outcome. Sometimes the Barista is cute, but you're not really trying to make it happen).

But, Uncle Toll Booth does kind of think all of this is bullshit. I think traditions had it right. A big part of relationship formation in the West before World War 2 was a clear demarcation between socializing and courting. Sticking with the High School image, the entire point of specific dances throughout the year was do create an unambiguous way for one party to announce interest to another (interestingly, these went "both ways" very earlier ... my Grandfather told me fond stories about his Sadie Hawkins dances where "the girls could do the pickin'" -- you take that however you like, dear reader). These dances were also the monkey-see-monkey do practices for adult courting. An invitation to dinner and/or entertainment was unambiguous as a symbol of interest. A polite decline from the offeree was respected.

[I'm going to skip the part on why / how this changed because I'm already way off topic and want to bring this ramblin wreck home]

I think a massive cause of mutual frustration in heterosexual western dating today is hyperabundant ambiguity. Friends-to-lovers, officemates-to-lovers, hobbying-to-lovers, means that a lot of young women, upon meeting a guy who is perfectly nice to them, think "wait ... is he trying to fuck me?" Not does he want to (which even Grandma had to deal with) but "is he already trying to, but won't be clear about it." Or, if he is clear about it, it's so crass, direct, and awkward that it's not just a turnoff, but, potentially, a cause for mild alarm.

[Self-critique: This post got away from me a little. I hope the Mottizens can salvage some value from the wreck]

That ambiguity is on purpose.

Social mores had to adapt to the forced mixing of foreign cultures, at gun point.

Gone are the days of the real #MeToo movement, when a woman could get any impudent Emmet Till lynched for allegedly showing misplaced interest.

Now the time is at 'what timmy gon do' and the answer is jail time

There would be a lot more clarity in a society that appropriately (violently) dealt with incivility, and where there would be no get out of jail card for every rapist, molester, drug addict, deadbeat dad etc.

I agree that actually meeting the other gender is a critical part of dating success. But I disagree that most men aren't trying this.

The extreme examples obviously wouldn't work for the men the same way as for women, because women are much more sensible to possible stalking, for good reason - male stalkers are much more common and far more dangerous. Any men attempting the kind of things you're listing here would risk being branded as an ultra-creep. Even typing out "strategically pursuing a certain type of women" I feel like I'm writing something about a male serial killer.

But the "light" variant of this is done all the time. "Has lots of women" is a top positive criteria for choosing what to study, together with "pays well". I know several men who have told me explicitly that they chose their field because it has lots of women. Same for hobbies. Hell, I would count that as negative attribute of men; They constantly try to find novel ways to pretend to be into something that women like to get laid under false pretences. "I totally care about the environment babe, please tell me more about it while we make love"

My wife studied psychology and both she herself as her female fellow students complained a lot about suspecting that the men in the course only studied it for dating (based on the few male humanities students I know, I concur with her entirely). One in particular had tried to hit on a few too many girls and now struggled to be accepted at all. As you see, even the light version you risk being branded a creep as a man. So unless you already have a decently above-average baseline of social capability, it is a wiser choice to not attempt it as a man and stick to "safe" options like clubs or dating apps where, if you screw up, you don't risk ruining your entire social circle and several years of your life (one of the prime reasons why men flock there despite the abysmal stats). And what you definitely do not do is admit it to any women (and if you want to be really safe, ideally not even to yourself).

I would even go as far as saying that the light version is done much less by women. No women ever studied a field because it has lots of men - no, that is usually one of the top negative criteria, a reason not to go into a field. I have never heard about a women going into a hobby because it has lots of men, either. And women also do lots of gatekeeping of their fields and hobbies, while men often actively try to recruit women into their hobbies. Back when I took advanced dancing lessons as a teen (in my region, basic dancing lessons are a social requirement), the girls would often complain about how many of the boys dropped out after the basics and just a moment later about how many of the boys who didn't are only doing it for dating and how creepy that is. I dropped out since I already was insecure about myself and that didn't help. None of the girls even cared to my knowledge, so it was probably a correct choice.

Looking back, the broad social dynamic is obvious; The already successful (in the broad sense) men do the minimum social requirement and get out, a minority stay in since they like it or as a courtesy for their girlfriends, some of the unsuccessful but socially above-average stay in to increase their chances to get lucky, and finally the great bulk of average and below men get out before they are branded creeps. The women wanted more of the successful men to stay in, and less of the unsuccessful. Being a bit but not terribly socially awkward I stayed in a bit longer than what was considered appropriate for me, but I got the hint after a short while and also got out before it was too late.

On the other hand when doing traditionally nerdy hobbies like LAN parties or pen & paper, even just a single women being part of such a group was treated as a coveted grand prize. Even as I got out of the nerdy circles into more normie ones, the basic dynamic has never changed in my experience. In college our lab (which itself is ~ 50-50 gender split) played football and people were always complaining about the lack of women, and nobody ever complained about the wrong women joining for the wrong reasons. Most of my time at university there have been more women than men at almost everything, and the few times anybody mentioned that at all it is either seen as a positive accomplishment or followed by crickets chirping.

You have an interesting circle of friends.

The question of where to find single, available women IRL is something I see repeated alot on men-focused forums, reddit included. The conversation tends to devolve down in the same way;

  1. 'Where do I find women to interact with and touch grass?'

  2. insert list of women-focused activities and hobbies

  3. 'I'm not interested in any of those; should I pretend to be invested in them just to find a girlfriend?'

  4. Cue a mixed response of 'Just give it a shot, you might like it!' and the inevitable chorus from online women of 'Ew, you shouldn't join a hobby just to meet women, that's disgusting and women can always tell!'

  5. Cue frustrated response from several men about how they've been told they shouldn't talk to women in a variety of social spaces, so what exactly are they supposed to do?

  6. No response.

itsallsotiresome.jpg

So, yeah. This is something that's I feel has been happening alot as of late, and has been exacerbated by covid. Whether this is all antecedent data or indications of a larger social trendline with ominous implications for the future has yet to be determined.

Ah, yes. I've seen that advice, as well.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone remarking on it actually working, though. Most of the time people comment how nothing ever comes of it, and I've never actually seen it occur in real life.

If I had to venture a guess, this idea stems as an artifact of european style dating, where I've heard a more slow, organic, 'start as friends and become more' is seen as a standard thing, whereas in American it's often considered openly verboten.

That's mostly a wild supposition on my part, though.

I would say it is considered the ideal here in Europe, yes. But it mostly works for the guys who don't struggle with women anyway. If you're an average guy with average social skills you will be able to meet women at bars and clubs and might get lucky. But if you try to weasel your way into a friend group with plenty of women, they will be nice and considerate but simply not invite you to most events except the biggest, which will functionally be the same as the bars and clubs you've already been frequenting. If you try to invite them to something, they will not show up. If you get pushy, they will start actively avoiding you.

I think many women really struggle to process the male perspective. As a woman, as long as you are nice and social and put in just a minimal effort to get along with any guy, he will generally don't mind your presence or even want to actively invite you to every social event he knows. More women is ALWAYS better. As a woman, your main problem is the opposite; You're bombarded by male attention and need to make sure to avoid the lazy fuckers, the losers, the stalkers, the cheaters and so on. Otherwise you'll end up being one of those wifes who does all the house work while also working full time and also caring for the kids, or you will end up having to bankroll your husbands stupid ideas that go nowhere or you will be replaced by a younger model once you're older etc.

As a guy however even woman you're friendly with will by default see no reason to invite you to any social event. All else being equal, a social event gets worse with more average men present. Men will want to come less since they want to meet women, women will want to come less since they want to meet the good men.

As a woman in America I only ever considered the "become friends and fall in love" method.

As a very plain woman I secured a husband by working at a IT Service Desk where I was the only woman and joined a fantasy football team without knowing anything about football (I picked players based on the vibes I got from their name.) I fell for the best man out of the bunch, someone of healthy weight, high intelligence, and emotional self-awareness. He fell for me. It probably helped that by that time half the single guys (and one of the married men) were interested in me, driving up my perceived value.

It took two years of spending time in male dominated spaces, but I think I married the best man I could.

Well, my go-to advice has always been speed-dating, which doesn't require any specific interest, and only involves women who explicitly want to meet men. It's a lot easier if you live in a large (non-tech-focused) city, but that's true of pretty much everything.

I do think the hobby stuff can be more pleasant if there are hobbies that work for you, and that "try things you don't expect to like, at least once" really is good life advice. (Of course don't keep going if you hate it.)

The "Ew" people do not have your best interests at heart, and - outside of school or work - can usually just be ignored. Some women really do go to social activities to meet men; some other women like to get in the way, for reasons I wouldn't dream of imputing.

Dating apps have a severely skewed gender ratio, so the competition is indeed stiff no matter how much work men put on their profiles. Throughout university and even after graduating, I've always found my dates through shared hobbies and mutual friends. Never installed a dating app on my phone and don't plan to.

The most frustrated young men seek companionship in online echo chambers filled with depression, anxiety and body dysmorphic disorder. None of them have learned to talk about their problems. It feels easier to take what they call "the black pill", the belief that you are genetically predisposed to be ignored by women.

Well I partially agree, though I'm not sure it's easier to take the black pill that you're inescapably fucked genetically instead of just deferring your happiness to the future. "I'll get there but I'm finding myself right now" is an easier coping mechanism than "It doesn't matter how much I lift, how much I read and how much I spend on clothes, I didn't win the lottery at birth and all that awaits me is a lifetime of desolation and solitude". Guys who take the black pill genuinely do believe what they say, they aren't merely making excuses to avoid overhauling their lifestyle and routines. And the only medium of human interaction they're exposed to confirms every negative bias they have about themselves, be it through what randoms say online about them or through "experiences" of men like them. You see this kind of behaviour the most among Asian-centric spaces, particularly South, East and South East Asians. So they give up, because they do believe it is futile to try.

Guys who take the black pill genuinely do believe what they say, they aren't merely making excuses to avoid overhauling their lifestyle and routines.

It wouldn't be a good coping mechanism if people didn't sincerely cling to it. I'm not sold that it's just an empirical judgment and not a result of the fact that trying to dig oneself out requiring high investment and being more than a little demoralizing.

To put it another way: if you see fat activists who've "taken the blackpill" that weight is just genetic and there's nothing they could have done would you trust this as a mere reasonable response to the data?

Forgive me if I'm misreading you, but I take it you mean black pill beliefs don't necessarily stem from reality? If so, I don't really disagree. My point is that the response itself need not be reasonable and there could be more to the data than the OKCupid stats for example might reflect. But if some asocial Asian fellow in an Ivy League school sincerely believes that even if he shoots for a Lanny Joon physique, he'll never match the SMV of an average white athlete in his class, and ends up deciding that it's all too much effort for too little gain that isn't even guaranteed (in his mind), is it really just a coping mechanism or has he prematurely given up on life altogether? There's still a section of woke who'd sympathise with fat activists, but a maladjusted young male who effectively exists as a ghost in society, who can literally disappear today and no one will notice and let alone miss him, is fair game for shaming regardless of his ethnicity.

but I take it you mean black pill beliefs don't necessarily stem from reality?

I think they're catastrophizing - there's a basis for the negativity but it's taken to its maximal extent.

Any individual may be driven from the dating market in despair. The entire intellectual edifice that justifies this as inevitable serves as the cope.

he'll never match the SMV of an average white athlete in his class

Plenty of people can't and don't give up.

is it really just a coping mechanism or has he prematurely given up on life altogether?

The coping mechanism helps him give up on life by emphasizing downside and de-emphasizing upside - kind of like a depressive mindset. The depressive also believes that there's no point in working out cause he's so tired and it'll make it worse. The empirical evidence is against him though.

It seems obvious that women tend to have more success on dating apps because it’s inherently a looks oriented medium and women have an inherently easier time leveraging looks, especially through a screen, compared to men.

What does success mean? It is getting what you want. Women have high standards in a number of different, often vague and socially informed attributes like status. Dating Apps are absolutely terrible at helping you to find this out. Even worse, they are by their nature most conducive to casual hookups, which most women aren't particularly interested in. I think it is not surprising that they broadly speaking steer clear of them as a result. Yes they can leverage this mismatch then to make the men on apps jump through ridiculous hoops if they so wish, but it doesn't really mean that women have more "success" in a meaningful sense or that the experience really is more pleasant for them unless they have a specific kind of personality.

Your definition just rationalizes away success, where if someone gets objectively better outcomes, but their expectations are higher, they somehow aren't doing better because the gap between expectations and outcomes is similar.

Inappropriately high standards from women is a thing I like complaining about myself, but that was not my point here. The point is that the look-based nature of online dating cuts both ways: Women can advertise themselves better, yes, but they can't themselves effectively select for the things they care more about, while it is trivial and obvious for men. So in practice women are naturally disadvantaged in online dating - being able to better advertise yourself while not getting what you want is a net negative - and this disadvantage translates into them not going on the platform in the first place.

I suspect this post is bait, as some have said, and it also has some characteristics of being run through ChatGPT. Nonetheless I clicked the "approve" button because, well, it is interesting and at least argues something from a non-standard POV.

That said, if this is is your only engagement, @kungen, don't expect that we'll keep letting posts like this out of the new user filter. When something smells like trolling but is just passable enough to give it the benefit of the doubt, that benefit of the doubt is highly contingent on demonstrations of good faith, which dropping a manifesto and then disappearing is not.

I wrote it in a different language and published it on a different site, but translated it and posted it here as I wanted to get some more critical feedback from heterodox folx

Its a verbatim translation of this op-ed from Norway: https://www.nrk.no/ytring/gutta-som-ikke-far-damer-1.16355535

..how did you find it?

And the mystery is solved.

New mystery: why was this posted here?

Some men do not realize this, but what men want from sexual relations with women is not just sex. Men want at least these three things from sexual relationships:

  1. Sex

  2. Validation (ego boost)

  3. Intimacy (cuddling, deep conversation, etc.)

Different guys want these three things in different degrees. Some guys care 99% about just the sex part for example, but this is probably actually pretty rare. Some guys consciously think that they just want the sex part but actually without realizing it want validation and/or intimacy more than they want sex.

Guys who are mainly driven by wanting the sex have no reason to avoid doing relatively minor things to make themselves more attractive, like grooming and exercise. However, guys who are mainly driven by wanting validation and/or intimacy can sometimes encounter the problem that they want validation for being themselves as they are now, they want intimacy for being as they are now. The whole idea of first having to change themselves to get validation and/or intimacy is somewhat logically contradictory.

I think that the solution for such guys is probably to become more aware of what is actually driving them to seek out sexual relations with women. Seeking mainly validation from sexual relations is usually a bad idea in general if for no other reason than that it makes one's ego dependent on what other people think of you sexually. Seeking mainly intimacy from sexual relations is a recipe to go into the friend zone. So the solution, it seems to me, is to try to be mainly driven by wanting sex as opposed to validation and intimacy.

Edit: If a man is 100% driven by sex as opposed to validation or intimacy, the logical solution is to see prostitutes assuming that the man has no ethical qualms with that. But almost no man is 100% driven by sex as opposed to validation or intimacy.

You forgot number 4: housekeeper, chef and personal shopper.

However, guys who are mainly driven by wanting validation and/or intimacy can sometimes encounter the problem that they want validation for being themselves as they are now, they want intimacy for being as they are now.

I want to take a screwdriver

Mutilate my face

Find a beautiful woman

Make her love me for what I am

Then say I don't need it and walk away

  • Hank Rollins

You have an interesting perspective but I wouldn't break things down into distinct categories as you have. In my experience, the needs you listed aren't unrelated at all but rather all play into each other. The sex and intimacy validate the ego. If you have sex with no ego validation (for example by having sex with a prostitute) it is extremely unsatisfying because you don't feel that your partner likes you in any way, so there is little to no ego validation. This is the same if you have a sex partner you don't feel equal to and feel they only like you for your money/status/power/something other than your intrinsic qualities or physical characteristics.

Intimacy is also a motivation only insofar as it validates the ego. It reinforces your feelings of power and worthiness to be held and admired and to offer admiration and intimacy in turn.

The whole idea of first having to change themselves to get validation and/or intimacy is somewhat logically contradictory.

In my experience it's very gratifying to be able to change yourself and have power over your own body and physicality and then be validated through sex. When I felt very badly about myself I was incapable of having good sex because I hated myself so much that anyone who liked me as I was repulsed me. After improving myself I am much easier to love. If you are so insecure that self improvement points to your weaknesses rather than as a place to improve yourself, you are working against your ability to be loved and have your ego gratified. Men are competitive and will always have insecurities so if you aren't working on yourself you're doomed to be stuck in a mode of self doubt which leads to misery.

I think men who don't appear to be driven by intimacy are insecure about their ability to show love to other people and avoid this part of relationships. It's not that they don't want to feel loved, but they have experience from not being loved in the past or are afraid of their partner rejecting the showing of love so they avoid it.

Seeking mainly validation from sexual relations is usually a bad idea in general if for no other reason than that it makes one's ego dependent on what other people think of you sexually.

Yes, men must find a source of validation from within themselves or else any amount of external validation they get is just not going to work on them. If you've known insecure people and tried to give them a genuine compliment they often reply with bitterness or as though you're attacking them when you're just trying to be nice, it's the same thing.

So the solution, it seems to me, is to try to be mainly driven by wanting sex as opposed to validation and intimacy.

Sex without ego validation is completely pointless. As a gay man I can get so much sex but if I'm not feeling loved by my partner it just feels like masturbation with the extra needless steps of looking for a partner for no reason if they don't validate my ego or provide some intimacy toward me.

I think all men want sex and intimacy as a way to boost the ego. They are not separable. I am a gay man so I don't know how straight men think but I suspect motivations are largely the same.

Sex without ego validation is completely pointless. As a gay man I can get so much sex but if I'm not feeling loved by my partner it just feels like masturbation with the extra needless steps of looking for a partner for no reason if they don't validate my ego or provide some intimacy toward me.

The vast, vast, vast majority of straight guys will never experience casual sexual availability on par with a gay man, though. Like I agree with your statement, but I also feel like there's likely an inflection point of novelty at, let's say for the sake of this, 15 casual partners, where it loses a lot of the luster.

I’ve had around 100 casual sexual partners. I’m engaged now but a strong desire for novelty is still there.

edit

Yes. Because everyone uses dating apps now

I'd like to see some numbers to back up that claim, I know nobody that has used dating apps for anything more than hook ups and even then, that's not exactly common. It's my experience that people find relationships through work/school or mutual friends.

My experience in general with how people talk about relationships and dating online has been one of bafflement. It's always this sturm und drang about how dating is impossible for the average man, women are ruthless harpies and the dating world has become this mad max style post apocalyptic wasteland ruled over by the new supermen. Then I look out the window and everything seems fine, people pursue relationships that aren't much changed from the kind that their parents would have pursued.

I've increasingly come round to the idea that talking about relationships online attracts a certain kind of individual, with a certain kind of world view and experiences and that this lends a certain tint to the discourse.

edit

And yet, the stats are what they are.

Maybe you're the "certain kind of individual"? My own social circles are chock full of men so lonely they've given up on even talking about it because there's nothing to say and nobody cares to do anything to help anyway. And they come from a variety of social classes too.

I mean, the stats are that 39% of relationships start on apps. So, yeah, lots of people meet their partners that way; more don't. I completely agree that the app experience and the in-person experience are night-and-day; conversations about dating will seem like two separate universes depending on whether the speaker meets more women online, or in real life.

Last time I checked, the average app had a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 gender ratio, so galaxy-brain analysis aside, it's really just not that weird that apps suck for men.

1st comment on the account, immediately going for the top level? Straight for the grade A1 industrial-grade rage-bait topic of gender inequality in dating? Plus the obnoxious one sentence paragraphing?

I confidently predict that this is disingenuous trolling designed to get a bunch of people angry and ten + comments. It's good disingenuous trolling, I was tempted. But still, don't fall for the bait!

By the same token, dating in NYC shouldn't be taken as representative of dating more broadly. Most places are somewhere between SF and NYC in dating dynamics, in large part determined by gender ratios and who you're looking to date (i.e. if you're looking for college educated professionals, you should choose to live in a place with lots of college educated professionals).

That said, "go to NYC, young man" has been by far the most successful bit of advice I've given to struggling men; it's actionable, and when they follow through with it, 100% end up coupled within a few months at most. Any pay cut isn't going to be too significant, and you get better food, arts, and more fashionable people surrounding you to boot.

edit

This is heavy on assertions and light on reasoning and statistics. I suspect you're failing the ideological(gender?) turing test. But most of all it's repetitive. You can condense this down into 3 short paragraphs easily and it would be a far better, if not totally unoriginal, post.

He was reading a book on the subway. He knew the definition of the term feminism. He moved (even with a smile) when he stood in the way of someone at the bread shelf at Kiwi. He apologized for interrupting someone.

This is a list of things that women have told you were the things that charmed them.

I hope you can agree that a person may worry she'd be thought of as superficial were she to admit (to herself or others) that her thought process was "He was jacked and dressed like he's rich".

As described by Robin Hanson in Elephant In The Brain, what we think are our motives are rarely our actual motives. Add on to this the social opprobrium that may come from admitting certain motives to others, and self-reported testimony on this topic becomes highly suspect.

This is true. However, at least some non-trivial fraction of attractive women must be into stuff besides exceptional height/BMI/status/money, since I pretty regularly see men who are average in those things with attractive women. Some women, for example, are into mature daddy figure type men even if they are not physically attractive or exceptional in terms of social status or money.

I don't believe that to be the case for a non-trivial amount of people. Sure, you can justify what you have as being what you want. Or you can make the best out of the situation you felt you found yourself in and settle for someone. But if you give people the anonymous choice between a 9 vs a 6, accounting for an 'objective' height/bmi/status/money, and all else being equal, and neither 9 or 6 will know if they are not chosen so you are not hurting any feelings, people will go for the 9.

I think there are cases where people will intentionally lower their standards due to their own circumstance and insecurities. But if you told them that they could have a 9 that loved all the things they hate about themselves, or a 6 that does the same, I'd say, yeah, we are talking trivial amounts of people who go for 6.

I am not sure about that. Just off the top of my head, I can think of three very conventionally attractive women (pretty face, shapely body with nice breasts and/or backside, skinny) who, for an extended period of time, went out with physically average guys who did not have exceptional levels of money or status. None of them were foreigners looking for citizenship, either. I find it hard to believe that these women could not have easily found men with higher looks/money/status to date for an extended period of time.

This post has a lot of red flags. It's coming from a new account with 0 other posts, so there's a nontrivial chance it's a ban-evading troll trying to e.g. harvest responses for sneerclub, which this community has had issues with in the past. The syntax of the post is a bit stilted as well, indicating it's not OC but rather came from something like a news article or opinion piece, although I've put in a few sentences to search engines and can't find anything. Perhaps it's translated? Finally, it's coming from a culture war angle that people on this forum usually argue against. Stuff like "He knew the definition of the term feminism" is a big red flag. Is this asking about a boring dictionary definition of "feminism"? If so, I doubt most people would have difficulty coming up with something vaguely correct. As such, it figures that this is arguing for the sloganeering, meme definition where "feminism" means "the belief that women are people", which is a motte-and-bailey where the bailey is "if you don't agree with all third-wave feminist dogma, then you're equivalent to someone who believes women are akin to dogs or chattel-slaves".

I'll bite anyways since I think it makes for interesting discussion.

This post sounds like the Hollywood Romcom-esque advice that women often give to impressionable men that "if you want to succeed in dating, the most important factor is being Nice Guy". This is flatly nonsense. Women automatically filter out any men that don't meet a certain attractiveness threshold. The most important dating advice for men, bar none is "be attractive, and don't be unattractive". For men, this mostly involves being physically fit, having at least an OK fashion sense, being tall, and other stuff that gets stereotyped as "Alpha male". Once this basic threshold of attractiveness is reached, then other factors like personality can matter at the margins although it tends to manifest in ways that go counter to Hollywood and feminist claims, e.g. being confident and arrogant is almost certainly better than being kind but unconfident.

On section of your post illustrates this quite well:

Women look more often for personality, because they are looking for a connection with someone, while many men only look at looks, because they are mainly interested in body and sex.

The alpha male is an ideal for men, not the dream man for women. On the contrary, I've heard many nightmare stories from bad dates with these types. They sit there and flaunt themselves, and are so full of themselves that they are completely uninterested in the person they are on a date with. It's like the old joke:

No, I've talked a lot about myself. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?

Dating the alpha male are the stories we laugh about most on girls' nights out.

Yes, women joke about arrogant assholes. But notice that the woman went out on a date with such a man in the first place. An unconfident, unattractive nerd doesn't even get a chance.

Even if it is a troll, it is good to have some content like this here to prevent TheMotte from turning into a right-wing circlejerk.

If the quality were higher I might agree.

But if the opposing side is always represented in easily refuted, poorly argued form it's only going to make the right look more reasonable in comparison.

The young men feel generous with the number of likes they get on the apps, but don't get the same amount of likes in return.

I think my local LLaMA-13B does better.

Stopped reading after that sentence.

Yea, that sentence was a head-scratcher.

So you think the comment is AI-generated? That certainly seems plausible.

My first thought after reading that typo was either a foreigner or a content farm journalist, but AI probably works as an explanation too.

a content farm journalist

Yes. From above: https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/ytring/gutta-som-ikke-far-damer-1.16355535?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Yes. And even if it is organically farmed, we should have standards and not engage with something less coherent than a punch-drunk copywriter's shower thoughts.

If you've used right wing websites for any amount of time, you're bound to find someone pointing out the vast and far reaching influence of zionists in the US government, media, and finance. I'm sure you've seen the infographics showing the prolific and far reaching influence of groups like AIPAC or other powerful zionist special interest groups, as well the Epstein/Maxwell Mossad connection.

  • I define "zionist" as people with a real or imagined Jewish identity or loyalty, conspiring to promote their ideological and financial interests at the expense of others. This is done through finacialization, campaign finance and lobbying, and manufacturing consent through media.

  • Race is a social construct. George Soros literally changed his race to white, and worked for the Nazi party during the Nazi occupation of Germany during WWII.

Now, I've heard plenty of arguments pointing all of this out, but what are the arguments against it?

Since I'm capable of self-reflection, I'm aware that Black identity politics have a similar view of white people.

  • I might have a high probability of seeing zionists among journalists/bureaucrats/intelligentsia I don't like.

  • However, a Black person will look above them and see a white person in power nearly 100% of the time. After all, the diaspora of "white" people are quite prolific.

I want to try taking off my magic sunglasses that cause me to see zionists everywhere, and see a different perspective. Most left-coded media either denies that this is happening at all, or accuses you of being a bad person for noticing it. What other arguments are there against it?

I think the fundamental problem with this sort of post is that that the vast majority of people like you do not seem to understand what the word "zionist" means. If you think that the holocaust was bad and that the survivors deserve a homeland of their own, you are technically a "zionist" but that's not how the term is typically used. My first thought reading your post is "Tell me that you are a self-hating jew without using those exact words".

Well, for one thing, George Soros was 14 years old when the Nazis surrendered, so I am guessing the claim that he "worked for the Nazis" involves some serious spinning.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SGWizajL7tA&t=264

Ignoring the obviously loaded question video title, here's him talking about it.

If you look at the entire story - that he was posing as a relative of a Hungarian collaborationist official, who was himself a traitor for hiding a Jewish relative, and helping said official confiscate property in 1944, that is, at a time when everoyne knew the war would be over very soon, and the confiscation themselves mostly irrelevant.. It's not charitable at all to say that he 'worked for the nazi party'. It's stretching the truth to the breaking point, really.

  1. It's happening, but it's a prospiracy instead. Jews aren't necessarily aware of their own thought processes that causes this.

  2. It's happening, but it's the equivalent of Russell conjugation. Non-Jews have a stick in their eyes that prevents them from seeing that were the situation reversed, they could be described in the exact same way. I forget who said it here, but it's about how those without power don't seem to understand the experience of having it.

  3. It's happening, but it's in response to history. Basically, Jews have been so poorly treated by others that they were funneled into doing things others did not want to and built their advantages upon that. In this case, Jews are acting rationally and have learned that they benefit from the existence of a state for their people (and whoever else they want to allow), among other things.

These are just a few I can come up with. This says nothing about evidence, of course, and that applies to both sides of this debate.

I'm aware that Jewish people are smart, and intelligence is a predictor of improved life outcomes. However, you'll notice my post only contains the word jewish once, as I'm specifically referring to the subgroup of zionists. Bernie Sanders (or at least, the idealized 2016 version of him) is "Jewish" but very clearly has a different agenda then zionists do. Netanyahu is clearly a zionist, but is becoming unpopular with Israelis.

Basically, Jews have been so poorly treated by others that they were funneled into doing things others did not want to

I've heard this one before, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that as to how money lending is an oppressive job. If you were to oppress a people group with high intelligence and labor skills, it would probably look like the Nazis forcing interned Jews to assemble radios and electronic components.

I think it has to do with the fact that for a long time Christians were not allowed to do money lending, and Jews didn't have to rely on Christians' good will in order to get into that business.

My understanding is that Christians at the time weren't allowed to charge any interest, as that was considered usury.

I've heard this one before, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument that as to how money lending is an oppressive job.

It's not an "oppressive" job, but it is one that historically - not just in Europe - was carried out by a minority caste who was generally despised, because unsurprisingly, people who loan you money and then expect to be paid back, with interest, are unpopular. The fact that everyone considers them wicked and greedy and yet they're rich rubs salt in the festering sores, which from Japan to England to Russia would periodically result in a purge of the moneylending class when the ruling class found it inconvenient to repay their debts.

The fact that everyone considers them wicked and greedy and yet they're rich rubs salt in the festering sores, which from Japan to England to Russia would periodically result in a purge of the moneylending class when the ruling class found it inconvenient to repay their debts.

There's a general argument saying that perhaps it's better for long-term stability of society that debts gets annulled from time to time, because otherwise, especially in relatively static farming societies, Matthew effect result in socially undesirable concentrations of wealth, no ?

What’s ironic is that very notion was written into the founding documents of the Nation of Israel, the Year of Jubilee. No generational debt, and everyone has a home property they can return to.

I don't know, is there? "There's a general argument" seems awfully vague and evasive to me, almost as if you want to make an argument that you do not want to state explicitly. So please elaborate. I'm particularly interested in how you think such an annulment should be executed vis a vis moneylending classes.

They were never forced to be money lenders, though. They held lots of other skilled urban jobs. And despite what some sources say, there were no prohibitions on Jewish land owning that would prevent them from simply living as farmers.

I define "zionist" as people with a real or imagined Jewish identity or loyalty, conspiring to promote their ideological and financial interests at the expense of others. This is done through finacialization, campaign finance and lobbying, and manufacturing consent through media.

Well then you define "Zionist" wrong. A Zionist is someone who is in favor of a Jewish state in Israel.

I'm guessing the bit you quoted is aimed at pro-Israel neocons in America? Because I can't help but suspect the word "imagined" is doing more work there than at first blush.

And when I see people being anti-Zionist, it's usually the left wing, and it usually has to do with problems in the Gaza strip.

Clearly given your username this isn't really a good faith post.

Can you explain? Is there some meme I don't know about?

It's a reference to the naming scheme that was used by the ban evasion subreddits for Million dollar extreme, which follows the Number, Currency, Rhymes-with-extreme pattern. Sure, I might be biased, but I've been reading a lot of rationalist stuff recently, and I've been reconsidering some of my viewpoints. (I'm a problem theorist, not a conflict theorist.)

"6 Gorillion" is a common revisionist jeer at the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Would you please explain to me the thought process behind including this in your reply? If you genuinely believe this to be a bad faith actor then the appropriate response would either be to ignore and move on or to publicly register them as such first. Actual engagement, while an enticing option, is their intended goal - granting it to them just doesn't make any sense.

Alternatively you don't actually think that but you want to call out their belonging to a group/antisemitic signalling, in which case you may want to address that (e.g. Are people of differing ideological beliefs allowed to post here? Are they capable of posting here within the rules? Are usernames even useful for anything other than marking a continuous personality across conversations/threads?).

I am aware that this is a very hot button issue to ask, and had cleared it with a mod before posting.

A post can be a bit, but not entirely, bad faith. Being "bad-faith" doesn't prevent its topic from being interesting to discuss. Maybe the 'best response' to a bad faith post is an earnest one. Maybe you want to convince readers, if not the poster. Even the worst poster - maybe an earnest response will plant a seed of doubt, or something.

Would you please explain to me the thought process behind including this in your reply?

I would think it obvious. I understand that rationalists suffer from a form of institutionalized autism where in they genuinely believe that you can separate the reliability information from the source (IE that someone has lied dozens of times before should not be taken as evidence that they might be lying now) but that doesn't make theirs an accurate model of the world. Obvious bad faith actors are obvious and should be treated as the degenerative communal disease that they are.

To be clear, we are not talking about humans here, we're talking about alphanumeric strings on an an anonymous internet forum. IE the intellectual equivalent of bacteria in a gut.

What makes @GorillionRialGraphene a bad faith actor? Where are they lying?

The theme of my username is commonly associated with trolling campaigns.

What other arguments are there against it?

Jews are the highest-IQ subpopulation, are concentrated in big cities, and have a culture promoting intellectual endeavours. Is it really a surprise they are overrepresented in fields that draw from urbanites with high IQ and high work ethic?

The higher IQ applies to the ashkenazim and is thought to be from selection in the late middle ages and after, but the pattern of concentrating in certain elite professions and the majority getting mad about it applies to jews much more generally, and so is presumably not explained by it.

What about the Hibernian conspiracy?

And more.

Yet more.


☘☘☘They☘☘☘ don't want you to know who's really in charge. The Jews take the heat, but the media, government and major companies are run by ☘☘☘them☘☘☘.

Terrible idpol response:

  • There aren't state laws mandating Irish potato famine education courses in 23 out of 50 US states.

  • The US doesn't give disproportionate amounts of money to Ireland, and then also have to give money to their neighbors to incentivize them to play nice with the irish.

  • Ireland has never been caught spying on US politicians or planting Stingray units around the White house. (However, in fact checking this, I did discover that the IRA got weapons from the USSR once.)

  • Our relationship with England is not actively sabotaged by the Irish.

While clever, this works the same for Italians or Germans. You could even stretch it to work for Asians too.

Crackpot rightoid identity politics response that probably doesn't meet posting standards:

Honestly, just posting that as a rebuttal would probably have been okay, but explicitly saying "I don't think this meets posting standards" and then posting it anyway with spoiler tags is just obnoxious. Post what you want to say and stand by it, or do not.

Isn't it a bit odd that Irish-Americans are less than 10% of the population but they make up around half of all Presidents historically and almost all modern Presidents? And look at this list of major bank CEOs. Bit strange that a single digit percentage ethnic group ended up in charge of almost all American banking. Coincidence? "Prospiracy"?

And this small group also ran the Fed for almost the entire 20th century? Yet another bit of happenstance or a "prospiracy" where they just all happen to independently desire control over money and banking? The coincidences and prospiracies are piling up. Let's admit the fact that in-group bias and ethnic affinities exist. And one small group inexplicably gets almost all the presidencies and banking CEO positions.

You say this is identity politics. I say yes, of course: they are playing identity politics and they're winning. The evidence is right in front of us.

God dammit, not the Droods again, I can't withstand the memes...

Did someone mention droods?

I watched a Let's Play of that once and remember nothing but 'What the hell did I just watch?'

Mindfulness as an extreme form of withdrawal

What follows are my conclusions from the research I painstakingly did to better understand my wife's spiritual past with Vipassana.

It is this simple: the word ‘mindfulness’ (which means more or less the same as ‘watchfulness’, ‘heedfulness’, ‘regardfulness’, ‘attentiveness’) has taken-on the Buddhist meaning of the word for most seekers (just like the word ‘meditation’ which used to mean ‘think over; ponder’), and no longer has the every-day meaning as per the dictionary. The Buddhist connotations come from the Pali ‘Bhavana’ (the English translation of the Pali ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ is ‘Insight Meditation’). ‘Bhavana’ means ‘to cultivate’, and, as the word is always used in reference to the mind, ‘Bhavana’ means ‘mental cultivation’. ‘Vipassana’ means ‘seeing’ or ‘perceiving’ something with meticulousness discernment, seeing each component as distinct and separate, and piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing and which leads to intuition into the basic reality of whatever is being inspected. Thus ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at seeing in a special way that leads to intuitive discernment and to full understanding of Gotama the Sakyan’s basic precepts. In ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ , Buddhists cultivate this special way of seeing life. They train themselves to see reality exactly as it is described by Gotama the Sakyan, and in the English-speaking world they call this special mode of perception: ‘mindfulness’.

Consequently, when the Buddhist practitioner carefully cultivates ‘mindfulness’, it is a further withdrawal from this physical world than what ‘normal’ people currently experience in the illusionary ‘reality’ of their ‘real world’. All Buddhists (just like Gotama the Sakyan) do not want to be here at this place in space – now at this moment in time – as this flesh and blood form, walking and talking and eating and drinking and urinating and defecating and being the universes’ experience of itself as a reflective and sensate human being. They put immense effort into bringing ‘samsara’ (the Hindu endless round of birth and death and rebirth) to an end ... if they liked being here now they would welcome their rebirth and delight in being able to be here now again and again as a human being. They just don’t wanna be here (not only not being here now but never, ever again). Is it not so blatantly obvious that Gotama the Sakyan just did not like being here? Does one wonder why one never saw his anti-life stance before? How on earth can someone who dislikes being here so much ever be interested in bringing about happiness on earth? In this respect he was just like all the Gurus and God-Men down through the ages ... the whole lot of them were/are anti-life to the core. For example:

• [Gotama the Sakyan]: ‘If there is someone who is unaware of the Tathagata’s most profound viewpoint of the eternally abiding, unchanging, fine and mysterious essential body (dharmakaya), that it is said that the body that eats is not the essential body, and who is unaware of the Tathagata’s path to the power of virtue and majesty; then, this is called suffering. (...) you should know that this person necessarily shall fall into the evil destinies and his circulation through birth and death (samsara) will increase greatly, the bonds becoming numerous, and he will undergo afflictions. If there is someone who is able to know that the Tathagata is eternally abiding without any change, or hears that he is eternally abiding, or if [this] Sutra meets his ear, then he shall be born into the Heavens above. And after his liberation, he will be able to realize and know that the Tathagata eternally abides without any change. Once he has realized this, he then says, ‘Formerly, I had heard this truth, but now I have attained liberation through realizing and knowing it. Because I have been entirely unaware of this since the beginning, I have cycled through birth and death, going round and round endlessly. Now on this day I have for the first time arrived at the true knowledge’. (Chapter 10: The Four Truths; [647b]; ‘The Great Parinirvana Sutra’; (T375.12.647a-c); Redacted from the Chinese of Dharmakshema by Huiyan, Huiguan, and Xie Lingyun (T375); Translated into English by Charles Patton.

It can be seen that he clearly and unambiguously states that he (Gotama the Sakyan) is ‘the eternally abiding, unchanging, fine and mysterious essential body’ even to the point of repeating it twice (‘the Tathagata is eternally abiding without any change’) and (‘the Tathagata eternally abides without any change’) so as to emphasise that ‘someone who is able to know that the Tathagata is eternally abiding without any change ... shall be born into the Heavens above’. And to drive the point home as to just what he means he emphasises that ‘the body that eats is not the essential body’ ... which ‘essential body’ can only be a dissociated state by any description and by any definition. Whereas I am this body that eats ... and nothing other than this.

Put briefly, the idea of meditation is to cut off from sensate experiencing and to stop thinking (as in become the watcher) and allow imagination and affectation to take over … and lo and behold … a new very-grand ethereal-like alter-identity emerges.

A mod of one of the largest subreddits, /r/BlackPeopleTwitter, just posted a picture supposedly of a recent mod meetup:

https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/1289ba6/in_honor_of_the_anniversary_of_bpt_we_would_like/

In case the post is taken down, this is the image link, though perhaps it'll get wiped too.

The stickied mod comment reads as follows:

trashlikeyourmom

MOD

Comments attacking us for being white are Reverse Racism and will be removed, and may result in a permanent ban.

Where does this community think this falls wrt Poe's Law?

I would say this is 99% serious and 1% satire. If the picture only had three people, then the odds of satire would be more substantive. But with nine, I cannot imagine enough coordination to pull off this hard of a troll.

Further, I would bet my bottom dollar that this cohort are all college educated. I'd throw in a combined five M.A.s.

Which begs the obvious question--how could a group this size and degreed be so oblivious? I'm not saying it's inconceivable that a group of nine non-black redditors decided to manage a black subreddit. But it is inconceivable that the same group would think it smart to advertise that fact. If I'm missing some subtle nuance, do explain. What exactly is the next layer up? Did I miss the memo that it's more fashionable to be post-racial now?

Edit: Yes, I got owned. And yes, I'm glad I didn't post this on Twitter using my real name, thank goodness. But actually though, I had a good laugh that makes the embarrassment here worth it, because it's been a very long time I've been fooled by an April Fool's prank. Kudos to the mods at BPT for having a great sense of humor, and jokes on me for assuming a sub that seriously features a black-only "country club" designation that requires users to submit photos of their black skin to be admitted for participating in highly upvoted threads is capable of poking fun at itself in this fashion. In my defense, it wasn't April 1st when the thread first went up, at least not unless BPT operated on Brazilian time, which means I'm definitely not stupid, you guys!!!

The same thing happened with /r/antiwork. These communities are nothing like they let on to be.

Further, I would bet my bottom dollar that this cohort are all college educated. I'd throw in a combined five M.A.s.

Not really. Let's assume that an IQ of 110 is needed to finished college, or about 40% of the general population. Even if these people are in the top 10% of the population by IQ and have a 90% chance of finishing college, to have all 9 finish college would still only be 38%. To get a degree you need your life together. Even if you are smart, illness or other factors can derail that. These people do not come off as being exceptionally stable.

The same thing happened with /r/antiwork. These communities are nothing like they let on to be.

Point of order; /r/antiwork turned out to be exactly what they had let on to be.

This would be true if all the odds were independent, but obviously the odds are not independent. This group isn't pulling at random from the whole population, or even from a certain statistically-distinguished fraction of the population. It's a group of people who congregated around a common interest, and selection effects there can be very powerful indeed.

Also, it's an April Fools joke.

It's easy in hindsight to say it was a joke after many hours have passed and multiple people confirmed it was a joke. When OP made the thread it was no so obvious. If it was obvious, why did he ask?

If you look at the hands of the guy, they look deformed, so I assumed this was an AI-generated picture. This is really the Baudrillardian hyper-reality.

It's April Fools Day. They had the black girl take the picture, that's all.

But with nine, I cannot imagine enough coordination to pull off this hard of a troll.

The coordination to find a picture of nine white people?

You realise it's April Fool's Day, right? The odds of this being anything other than satire seem low to me.

At this point it's impossible to tell if anything is a joke anymore

it really was completely easy to tell though. this is like when hbomberguy said

It may be a lie, but the fact I believed it speaks volumes about my enemies, and not me

https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/1423633477543596040

Check the date, at least.

Which begs the obvious question--how could a group this size and degreed be so oblivious?

Your post has indeed raised such a question, but I'm not sure if it's about the group you're expecting. Then again maybe this subthread is your April Fools' joke on us.

If not, then you should be aware that you've been struck by the overwhelming forces of irony like an unauthorized GPU in Yudkowsky's America.

PS: To whoever is reading this, if for even a second you thought that post was anything but a 100% fake joke, please do not trust your "Bayesian priors" (or whatever ratspeak magic terms that actually just mean assumptions) ever again. Your license has officially been shredded.

Shouldn't vpn be the one seething in this instance? What a bitter response for such an excellent joke.

I'm not sure what you mean by this at all. Am I supposed to be the one who is seething and bitter?

While yes, there are certain clues that suggest this is a joke, I had originally assumed the “MIRI Announces New Death With Dignity Strategy” post on LessWrong was an April fools joke too (this was before DALL-E 2). I guess the first air strike target was the Bayesian evidence value of the calendar reading 4-1.

My assumption at the time was that the date was chosen deliberately, to allow an avenue of retreat/plausible deniability if the piece's reception skewed towards ridicule.

I assumed he thought the situation was bad. It wasn’t until DALL-E 2 a few days later that I realized, “oh, he’s been getting insider information. He thinks we’re doomed doomed.”

I'm not doubting that he believed it, but surely putting out that piece was risky, in that a bad public reaction cascade could have resulted in his and his organisation's credibility tanking and possibly poisoning the well for all attempts to put brakes on AI. ("Alignment"? Lol, you're one of those doomsday sex cultists, aren't you?) This way, if Twitter's predominant reaction were "check out this crazy drivel", they could at least have shouted April Fools, haha, but it is important that we continue working on AI alignment anyway.

Sounds like an obvious April Fools Day joke.

It is, they pulled the photo from the Nerdfighters subreddit.

I have previously discussed Ron DeSantis's prospects of becoming GOP nominee here and probably back on the old sub as well, but events of the past few weeks make me want to revisit the topic. During this period, several op-eds appeared suggesting that DeSantis is already flaming out. The biggest evidence for this is polling, which shows him losing ground to Donald Trump. While I think these reports are a bit premature—after all, polls from a year out aren't exactly the most reliable, especially concerning a candidate who hasn't even announced yet—they seem to underscore a point I had made previously. Ron DeSantis is a great candidate if the goal is to wed the Trump spirit to a candidate that doesn't want to directly invoke Trump. Some call him Trump-lite but that's not really an accurate description. He knows that the Republican party desperately needs to move on from Trump if they want to win national elections, as most Americans find direct MAGA invocations and claims of rigged elections to be distasteful at best and dangerous at worst. There's value in appearing to be the reasonable Republican who might have a shot at winning the general election in the face of an unpopular octogenarian. On the other hand, he knows that Trump has a large base that is now well-integrated in the party and is distrustful of Romney-type moderates who will sell them out to wealthy elites if it puts an extra nickel in their pockets and will play dead in the face of woke excess. RINOs, in other words. The Tea Party and later Trump reinvigorated a Republican party that had been moribund in the wake of Bush's disastrous second term, and the voters who made 2016 possible won't stand for some squish. They need someone who will fight.

DeSantis sought to split this difference. He balanced effective, bland government with culture-war ostentation. He refused to kowtow to Trump but was reluctant to criticize him. He built up plenty of media buzz. The thought among his supporters was that he would have the upper hand on both Trump wannabes and boring moderates in the primary. And then Trump himself announced his candidacy, and started attacking DeSantis directly, even though DeSantis hadn't (and still hasn't) declared. When he finally announces (probably in June), the primary fight will be a bloodbath. And no, DeSantis can't wait until 2028 because his buzz is solely based around his supposed candidacy. If he sits this one out he's a popular governor who no one outside of Florida gives a fuck about, at least not until 2027, when he'll have to compete with whoever the next wunderkind is, assuming Trump isn't running yet again.

The smart money says that DeSantis would have a shot in the general but is hamstrung by the fact that, having to go against Trump directly, he'll have to run further to the right than a general electorate will find acceptable, and will come out of the primary looking like another MAGA extremist. This is the conventional wisdom but I think this wisdom is wrong. First, DeSantis would have a tough row to hoe in the general even if the GOP handed him the nomination on a silver platter. What's the man know for so far? His COVID response put him on the map, but COVID isn't going to be an issue in 2024, and he'll have to do better than pointing out an isolated glory from four years ago. Everything else he's been in the news for has been culture war bait that is of dubious effectiveness, has nearly no national relevance, and is distasteful to moderates in any event. Part of the reason why Republicans were so disappointing in last year's midterms is because they failed to address things voters actually cared about. As much as the GOP would rag on Biden for inflation, they never presented a coherent plan for how to deal with it. No one knows what Ron DeSantis thinks about inflation. No one knows what the thinks about healthcare. No one knows what he thinks about crime, or how he plans to explain how Florida's crime rate is worse than both New York's and California's. When he's on the debate stage with Biden, what's he going to do, talk about the STOP WOKE act and the Don't Say Gay bill?

But then, he had an opening. Earlier this month, "Justice for All", a new single by Donald Trump and the J6 choir, went to No. 1 on iTunes. The single features president Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over a choir of heavily autotuned January 6th prisoners singing "The Star Spangled Banner" over prison phones. To most people on the left, this was just a hilarious example of how nutty the right is. But it gives DeSantis a chance. This is, for once, proof positive that there's no outflanking Trump on the right. No amount of MAGA-adjacentness is going to cut it here, when Trump represents the platonic ideal of MAGA. DeSantis's culture warring has proven that he's no RINO squish; now he can use this credibility to fight Trump directly. Come out directly and say that Trump's implicit support of the J6 prisoners, most of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement, is a disgrace to the idea of law and order and legitimizes left-wing violence. Come out and say that the 2020 election wasn't rigged. Come out and directly attack every MAGA conspiracy theory out there. Run on all the good, boring things he's done in Florida that no one has paid attention to, like environmental legislation, which has greater GOP interest in the wake of the East Palestine debacle. There's little doubt that if he wins Iowa, or New Hampshire, or wherever else, Trump will claim that the election was rigged, so get out ahead of it. He'll lose the Trump faithful but he wasn't winning with them anyway, and the rest of the party will be able to get back to some semblance of normal.

Of course. I wrote all this before I saw the news last night of the latest developments in the Disney scandal. I thought his move against Disney was stupid at the time, and said so here, but all of the DeSantis supporters assured me that this was the right move. It was clear almost immediately that simply ending the special district wasn't going to work, and I wasn't surprised when he said that the legislature would be dealing with the issue at a date that was conveniently after the election. Around this time, Bob Iger came back as Disney CEO, and apparently realized that a drawn-out court battle wasn't in the company's best interests, and it looked like the two sides had reached the kind of compromise that allowed both parties to save face: The state would get a couple token board members and everyone would forget about the whole thing. Then, at some point, DeSantis got greedy and made a deal that looked too good to be true—the entire district would be replaced with a new one whose board would consist entirely of political appointees, including a self-described children's activist and a self-described Christian nationalist, along with some wealthy donors for good measure. Some even went so far as to suggest that the board could monitor the content of Disney's theme park programs. The new board took over last month with relatively little fanfare.

And then, yesterday, weeks after the crucial documents had been signed, it became clear that the whole thing was one big setup, and that Disney had completely outfoxed DeSantis. It turns out that, back in February, the existing RCID board had entered into an agreement with Disney that devolved almost all of its powers. At least the powers that would have given DeSantis any leverage over the company. The board will still oversee infrastructure, but won't have any ability to influence development. Florida officials are obviously livid and the new board is seeking legal redress. I won't comment on the legality of the whole mess because I don't know, but even if the state has a good case against Disney, it doesn't really matter. First, the RCID was a public body and thus subject to sunshine laws. The whole thing was done out in the open—the agreement was posted online so you didn't even need a records request, the meeting adopting the agreement was public, etc.—so the only excuse DeSantis has for getting into this mess was not anticipating some kind of funny business and not noticing that anything was wrong until weeks after the deal was done. Second, it doesn't matter because any litigation won't be resolved until well after the election is over, and I doubt anyone will be issuing preliminary injunctions enabling the board to operate as it desires. One of the centerpieces of DeSantis's culture war has been delayed significantly due almost exclusively to the incompetence of public officials. Who knows, maybe this will blow over, but it significantly damages any attempt by DeSantis to run on competent administration.

I believe Ron attempting to use government overreach and taxpayer money to punish an independent business for expressing opinions he didn’t like has got to be the most anti-small government move around. I believe it will be an excellent sales point for every Democratic nominee and will sway over true moderates who see the hypocrisy.

I actually think Trump has rightly called out DeSantis’s bigger weakness which is his previous positions on cuts to Medicare and social security. I haven’t looked deeply into how RDS is navigating this topic but if he cannot effectively get around it trump will pound him mercilessly on it and no amount of tough talk about Micky Mouse will help RDS.

During this period, several op-eds appeared suggesting that DeSantis is already flaming out. The biggest evidence for this is polling, which shows him losing ground to Donald Trump. While I think these reports are a bit premature—after all, polls from a year out aren't exactly the most reliable, especially concerning a candidate who hasn't even announced yet—they seem to

It's a horse race. No one has any idea until the primaries begin. We can obviously exclude someone like Nikki Haley from consideration, but otherwise it's a coin toss between Trump and DeSantis and will likely remain this way until at least Feb. 2024. Trump suffered similar misfortune and gaffes but still sailed through primaries.

I don't think being outsmarted by Bob Iger changes this . It does offer some insights into how he will lead as president. He's very much entrenched in the culture wars and traditionalism...unlike Trump, no one is voting for him because of immigration or to 'return jobs to America'.

I think Desantis has a better shot than most people give him credit for. He’s basically the GOP redemption arc, if you like. Trump might excite the base, but he’s got just as many people — even in republican circles— who want nothing to do with him. I expect the negative reaction to grow after the indictments, as this would be hard to justify in a candidate for any office. I’m not sure if Trump can legally be president, but the thought that we’d have a president of the United States governing while having a felony conviction is uncommon, and no one has ever done it. Trump is thus reduced to a third party spoiler, not really a candidate in the traditional sense.

Biden has several negatives. He hasn’t yet curbed inflation to a degree noticed on main street. He seems to be suffering from dementia. His administration is inept. He’s been hung out to dr6 several times by the courts for illegally trying to order things done without going through channels (once in mandatory vaccination through OSHA, once in the student loan relief). There really aren’t things that Biden can say he’s done for the general public that helped anyone. He won the first time as a near stealth candidate (helped greatly by the perception that it was about COVID) avoiding impromptu events and interviews, not holding rallies. He can’t get away with that without COVID, and given some of his gaffes during planned speeches (at one point looking for a long dead colleague in the audience) I don’t think they can hide his dementia at a rally.

So really as it stands, there’s Desantis — who’s competent, Trump — who is a populist who says things that the mainstream rejects, and Biden — who doesn’t seem too aware of his surroundings.

Your theorized pivot is tidy, appealing, and, as the kids say, “cope.”

People have been theorizing a moderate backlash to Trumpism since roughly 2017. Each new headline is met with thinkpieces about how the GOP can finally jettison this guy and go back to repealing Obamacare. The most credible time was after the election, when Pence shot down the Eastman plan. It didn’t happen then, and it won’t happen now, because the GOP doesn’t want to lose.

Trump has the moderate wing over a barrel. He is absolutely able to parlay his outsider branding into a protest vote big enough to hand the ‘24 election to the Democrats. A drawn-out primary battle with DeSantis will ruin the guy for some fraction of the Republican base. No, as long as Trump wants the job, the party can’t moderate too far.

I agree with you about Trump but I don't know what other option DeSantis has. If he goes full MAGA the best case scenario is that he denies Trump the nomination by splitting the vote, but even that's a long shot. What do you think he should do, were you advising him? Telling him not to run isn't an option.

What do you think he should do, were you advising him? Telling him not to run isn't an option.

If he isn't willing to wait until 2028 and telling him not to run isn't an option, then I'd tell him to spend large sums of money on a marketing company run by a close friend/family relative of mine. It wouldn't change his chances of victory at all (they would stay at a solid 0), but if he's stupid enough to think taking on Trump in 2024 is a good idea it would be unethical of me to let him keep his money.

Hm.

I want to say run perpendicular. Hit more moderate issues and avoid contradicting Trump on his traditional talking points: jobs and exceptionalism. Do some deficit hawking, at least if that’s compatible with whatever he tries to say about inflation. Maybe immigration works out okay for Ron; I don’t know how well his stunts in that area have been received.

That might all just be a recipe for disaster, or it could be compatible with Ron seeking a VP seat. Not really sure how that works historically.

Honestly, I think it’ll be a moot point; Trump will call him “Small Dick Ron” or something, and the campaign will be over.

That seems to me even more of a surefire way for him to get slaughtered. I mean, who the hell is this supposed to appeal to? People who like Trump enough that they'll be offended by Ron attacking him but who don't like him enough to actually vote for him? People who want Trump but don't think he can win but a guy who says all the same things as Trump but isn't Trump can? He's not getting the VP seat because he already refused to kiss the ring when he declined to seek Trump's endorsement, and Trump is already pounding him mercilessly even though he's not in the race yet, so that ship has sailed. There's literally nothing to gain at this point by trying to appease Trump or Trumplicans. I'm not saying it will work, but I think taking the offensive is really his only shot. Call out Trump for not building the wall. Call out Trump for criticizing states that pass restrictive abortion bans (right after signing the six week ban in Florida which may or may not actually be popular). Call out Trump for his womanizing. If he says Ron "Desanctimonious", lean into it and say something to the effect of "It's easy to appear sanctimonious to someone with no morals whatsoever". He's already implicitly called out Trump for the Stormy Daniels indictment, saying “Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I can't speak to that". He said the thing was politically motivated, which is so obviously true that the New York Times isn't even saying otherwise, so it's not like he's toadying by criticizing it, but it's best that people are reminded that the man was banging a porn star while his wife was at home with their newborn son. Say that the Jan 6 committee is political theater but nonetheless lambast the rioters and Trump for election denial and all the rest of it. He doesn't have to be moderate, he just has to criticize Trump. Then bring up all the stuff he's done in Florida that's effective and say that Trump could never have that much of an impact. No of this is necessarily true, I just don't think there's any way to tiptoe around the issue anymore.

Desantis needs to run in the primary as ‘trump but gets stuff done instead of getting distracted by his ego’. Remember the Republican base, even most of the trump republicans, doesn’t actually like trumps personal behavior, so hitting him there is also a good strategy.

I'm just going to throw out personal experiences and anecdata right here. I'm a lifelong Republican, living in a purple region of a purple state. I've been campaigning for friends in the primary election coming up for local campaigns, knocking on doors and going to events. I've spoken to somewhere around 500 likely Republican and 200 Democratic primary voters in the past two months. This is what I'm seeing...

-- The Rs are very much split between die-hard down-with-the-ship MAGA who will not vote against Trump, embarrassed Republicans who barely want to be Rs any more but are kinda stuck, and R registered voters whose knowledge of these issues is so shallow and uninvolved that they're not predictably committed to any ideology. The political equivalents of Pentecostals, Episcopalians, and Christmas-Easter Catholics; one group passionate and moronic, one group that treats what should be a whole-life commitment as a social club that they really only stay in because it already exists, and one group that doesn't really know what they believe but they're pretty sure they'll believe the hell out of it when they get around to it. I would guess the MAGA has the slim plurality, but not a strong enough one to be certain of victory depending how the Christmas-Easter contingent breaks.

-- There are really smart and interesting Trump supporters in the world, including a good number on this website, but his base is the Lumpen-Proletariat. The downscale end of the Republican party is where Trump gets yardage against Desantis. Desantis can carry the McMansion Suburbs that Biden did better with than HRC, but Trump dominates the houses with an old car parked on the lawn.

-- School board fights are vicious around here where they used to be staid. In my two local school districts, there are cross-party slates of people violently worked up about Trans Issues, opposing a group of Covidiots who would probably still have schools closed if they had their druthers. There are going to be vastly more schoolboard fights across the country this year, I predict school CW will dominate early primary headlines as they win some elections and implement new policies. Things are going to get much worse on that front, especially because the sole actual policy that seems universal is that all school board business should be operated by livestream. So (no offense to present company) assholes on the internet from Ireland to Russia to Canada to Missouri are going be able to tune into my small town schoolboard to criticize and look for something to turn into CW fuel? It's going to be a bloodbath.

-- Democrats are in a pissy mood. Even in very local races, where we're not CWing or really doing anything to do with national politics, nice old ladies would scream at me that they're never voting for any Republican ever again. This correlated strongly in a neighborhood with knocking on R neighbors' doors and getting a hard MAGA type. I'm not sure there's really any traction to crossing the aisle unless the R candidate renounces Trump. Desantis will not draw significant Democrat votes unless he personally renounces Trump/J6/etc. He will not be able to walk the line between the two, Trump must be slain before any moderate Reagan Republican run is possible.

I'm not sure where all that leaves your Desantis theories, and it's all just anecdotes collected by me personally (a white guy in a blazer or a patagucci vest depending on weather) knocking on doors and getting responses. But R candidates ignore it at their own peril.

I'd rather De Santis sit tight in Florida for another four years, and work on cleaning it up, and let Trump lose another election and maybe finally go to that TV show host position he is desperately overdue for. Because the alternative is a huge fight between De Santis and Trump that will only hurt the Republicans, will still lose them 2024 and will both tarnish DeSantis image and possibly prevent him from doing any good in Florida and from running later.

most of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement,

Is this actually true? I see a lot of charges of "parading", "entering", "disorderly conduct" and so on.

And no, DeSantis can't wait until 2028 because his buzz is solely based around his supposed candidacy.

This is not true, it's reverse of the truth actually - his supposed candidacy is based on the fact that he created a lot of buzz. It'd be a shame to waste it all on a futile fight with Trump.

is a disgrace to the idea of law and order and legitimizes left-wing violence

That's baloney, the left-wing violence has been legitimized long before - at least since 2020, where widespread BLM/Antifa riots had met with warm embrace from the politicians, but actually earlier - similar, though smaller, violent outbursts in 2016 and earlier were also equally embraced. Laying it at the foot on J6 is going to cut it only for people who have no concept of time and no memory beyond yesterday's headlines.

Come out and say that the 2020 election wasn't rigged

So, lie.

Come out and directly attack every MAGA conspiracy theory out there.

So, alienate your base.

Run on all the good, boring things he's done in Florida that no one has paid attention to, like environmental legislation

So, pander to people who hate your guts, and paint yourself with "blue tribe" virtue signals, because that's what Republican base would love.

which has greater GOP interest in the wake of the East Palestine debacle

East Palestine wasn't an environmental legislation failure. It's like saying that limiting the thermostat settings at homes would be popular because there was a series of arsons nearby, and since both deal with heat...

They need someone who will fight.

And so, you are proposing that he'd fight - Republicans. A brilliant strategy.

And so, you are proposing that he'd fight - Republicans. A brilliant strategy.

Yeah, interesting that the suggested tactic for Desantis, who has achieved massive success by directly going after Democratic malfeasance and punching back against lefties on social issues, is to... pander heavily to Democratic voters.

I mean yeah he may have to slide towards the middle for the general, and as @Rov_scam has now helpfully noted he has the tactical ability to do so by pointing at certain parts of his record.

But to follow this suggested strategy would effectively throw away the entire persona he's crafted AND suborn himself to the very narrative he's aiming to overthrow or at least divert.

"Pump up your reputation for being Cathedral-friendly and promise to follow Cathedral-friendly policy suggestions, and then hope the Cathedral lets you win."

And it's not like Republicans didn't try exactly the same strategy before. There was Romney. There was McCain. Both were duly declared literally Hitlers and both lost. But of course, true pandering to socialists has never been tried yet.

That's arguably the real elephant in the room.

Trump was in many ways a result of a repeated failed strategy to moderate the message, then getting shellacked anyway.

Desantis seems to be pulling off the impossible. Someone who appeases the GOPe whilst actually engaging in red meat culture war policies that should attract the base too.

The thing worth admitting is that it's unclear if he can attract moderates while being called "fascist" by most of the media at once, but early signs are promising.

Being called "fascist" by most of the media at once is a given, comes with being a Republican candidate, and has been so since "fascist" has been a thing (really, it's amazing how fast this word came into use in US politics - even before WW2!) - so, since there were Republicans elected since then, it's possible to deal with it successfully.

I'm pretty sure DeSantis knows that it is unwise to take tactical advice from one's enemies. In fact, him knowing this is a large part of what differentiates him (and Trump) from the run-of-the-mill GOP candidate.

That's been consistent, yeah. By all accounts he seems to have a crack team (as much as politics allows these days) who are loyal enough to not leak things and know who the enemy is and to disregard enemy input entirely.

The broad rule to refuse any sort of interview or interaction with 'non-friendly' (read: actively hostile) media outlets is a good example. Basically prevents anyone from becoming at all dependent on such outlets for coverage, and probably reduces the risk that anyone on his team might end up angling for a spot at such a network.

He runs what could be the very definition of a 'tight ship' compared to Trump's leaky tugboat.

I am always slightly amused when people cite fluctuations in poll numbers as proof of any politicians' overall chances well before the election, especially since polls have had a rough few years missing some election outcomes in the late-stage polling.

In the leadup to the 2022 election the polls had Desantis with a commanding lead over Crist but gave him somewhere around 52-54% of the vote.

He won with 60%. Okay, 59.4, but who is counting?

There is very little question that Desantis owns the Florida vote, which is a hefty stick to swing around.

Does this mean Desantis is inherently going to overperform? Nah.

Has Desantis been consistently underestimated, over and over again, by people who WANT to believe he's a buffoon and thus keep stepping into 'traps' that ultimately raise Desantis' profile?

Yes.

Trump is the big unpredictable variable in all this, and I'm curious to see what Desantis' team's containment strategy is.

And it just got interesting with NY handing down an Indictment and Desantis signalling he is somewhat taking Trump's side in all this.

Florida officials are obviously livid and the new board is seeking legal redress. I won't comment on the legality of the whole mess because I don't know, but even if the state has a good case against Disney, it doesn't really matter. First, the RCID was a public body and thus subject to sunshine laws. The whole thing was done out in the open—the agreement was posted online so you didn't even need a records request, the meeting adopting the agreement was public, etc.—so the only excuse DeSantis has for getting into this mess was not anticipating some kind of funny business and not noticing that anything was wrong until weeks after the deal was done.

I'm more genuinely surprised that Disney would take an action that would IMMEDIATELY raise the ire of the incoming board in such a way that they now KNOW that they're not being dealt with in good faith.

Indeed, what's to stop the new board from simply ignoring the agreement at the next meeting and daring Disney to bring the heat.

This is basically a sovereignty fight, and the way our governmental system currently works, a state government will win that fight, every time. Unless Disney cedes its property to the Federal Government or something and we know that ain't happening.

By all appearances, it now looks like Disney is actually afraid of what the new Commissioners might do. This isn't some flex on Disney's part showing off their authority, this was a move that at best is a delay tactic (maybe hoping for a new governor?) and at worst an invitation to throw down, which is just not a good idea when Disney has literal billions upon billions of dollars of capital stuck to the ground in the state.

You've misjudged the politics. Trump was already the leftward turn on policy for the Republican party. He's against cutting Medicare/Medicaid, wanted to tax the rich heavily to pay for infrastructure projects, was by far the most pro-gay GOP candidate ever, and made a big deal of signing major reductions in criminal justice efforts. He also was exceptionally dovish by GOP standards.

There is no outflanking that on the left, and Trump wasn't getting criticism because he was too far right on policy - he got attacked as the boorish tribune of declasse plebs; all those rural white men ... YUCK! Can't be any less cool than that. Didn't anyone tell them the Future is Female? And takes a train in a big city to an email job? Deviating significantly from a Trump-ish attitude signifies that the candidate isn't with the base, and that's no way to win a primary.

No, the way DeSantis attacks Trump is on details. DeSantis can sell himself as the type of executive who actually can do things. This means culture war stuff about defunding woke educational bureaucracies, sure. But it also means basic good-governance stuff like public order, disaster recovery, COVID management, firing rogue prosecutors, etc. (Whether or not DeSantis can make good on this is another question - he's benefitted mightily from having good connections with the friendly legislature in FL while governor; he's significantly less well-connected or -liked in Congress, and there's no guarantee that a Pres. DeSantis would have majorities in both houses).

The RCID thing is not as big as you make it out to be. I'm not even sure people remember why they were mad at Disney in the first place over this.

Yep, MAGA has it's visionary, it needs someone who knows how to govern and implement it. I'm not sure DeSantis is that guy but there's room for someone to be.

Desantis seems like he has the ability to pull friendly appointees from high profile state positions(both Florida and elsewhere) a lot more easily than trump, helped along by just being a better boss/personnel manager.

Being a disastrous people manager and completely unable to assemble a working team is the source of the most Trump's failures. In fact, he was the one who hired the lawyer on whose words the current accusations against him are based, didn't he? DeSantis would do well to be much better at this - and there's not much space to be worse.

Can Conservatism assimilate the Dissident Right?

Recently Matt Walsh, conservative commentator from the Daily Wire, had a monologue on white identity that was basically word-for-word pulled from DR standard fare.

Conservatives have long used the "Democrats are the Real Racists" retort, which is an easy target for the DR to mock and differentiate itself from conservatism with a more radical viewpoint that has a stronger force of truth. Only very recently has "anti-white" migrated from DR to Conservative lexicon in its denunciations of progressivism. But this clip goes much further than both and does seem to indicate a sliding window on acceptable thought around race within the Conservative movement. It starts with rhetoric that you've probably heard from conservatives before, but it moves into territory that you do not see from conservatives, and this is clearly a scripted monologue rather than off-the-cuff comment. The end of the clip explains:

Black and brown can and should have a sense of racial identity, white must not- I mean that's the rule. It's why segregation can be promoted and instated as policy but only to give non-whites their special spaces, never to do the same for whites. Because to do the same would be to acknowledge the existence of white people as a group and to give that group permission to care about its own wellbeing.

The "Democrats are the Real Racists" (DR3) rhetoric is essentially a complaint of progressive hypocrisy in an effort to discredit progressive concern over racial issues and progressivism's own crypto race-essentialism which Hlynka equates with the DR.

Conservatism has traditionally used progressive hypocrisy on race in order to denounce progressive racial advocacy. The DR uses progressive hypocrisy over race to advocate for white identity. But I think Walsh's monologue here indicates a potential conservative assimilation of the DR position. It could be said that Walsh does not directly endorse white identity, but he describes it in positive terms that are exactly what you would read within the DR. His monologue here is clearly more in the DR ethos of using progressive framing of racial conflict in order to provide rational justification for white identity: "... Because to do the same would be to acknowledge the existence of white people as a group and to give that group permission to care about its own wellbeing" is essentially an endorsement of white identity rather than a typical conservative denunciation of racial identity altogether.

Particularly in the past 15 years, if you were a young conservative or libertarian or something and basically came to the conclusions of Matt Walsh without hearing those words ever be said by anyone in the conservative establishment, where would you gravitate to? The circles where you'll be handed Culture of Critique, circles where Nietzsche is looked to rather than John Locke or Milton Friedman, circles where WW-II and Holocaust Revisionism that would make a conservative faint is conventional wisdom.

It's possible, and potentially a threat to the DR, if Conservative Inc were able to assimilate an overtly pro-white platform into its rhetoric and ideology. One thing that is inseparable from identity, and is the primary reason why white identity has been taboo since the end of the war, is the friend and enemy distinction. If the Daily Wire for example were able to be the outlet for pro-white inclinations in the conservative movement, then it would also have much greater power in framing the friend and the enemy with the traditional shibboleths rather than losing those people to radicalization. Think of Rush Limbaugh, who could constantly lambast the Drive By Media and Hollywood to build credibility in order to ultimately keep everyone on the reservation.

It's not sustainable for the Conservative movement to completely ignore and denounce white identity. They have to acknowledge it eventually if they want to avoid being eclipsed by a more radical movement that offers that bundled with a lot more radical thinking. They do need to figure out how to assimilate white identity and advocacy with conservatism, and if they do that effectively then the DR is going to lose an important monopoly which has driven many to that sphere. Walsh's monologue here is an indication that this is likely going to happen.

It's not sustainable for the Conservative movement to completely ignore and denounce white identity. They have to acknowledge it eventually if they want to avoid being eclipsed by a more radical movement that offers that bundled with a lot more radical thinking.

You're totally right when you say that it isn't sustainable for the Conservative moment to completely ignore and denounce white identity. Failure to integrate those perspectives and deal with the sources of pain and frustration that fuel them is going to be the end of the Conservative movement.

They do need to figure out how to assimilate white identity and advocacy with conservatism, and if they do that effectively then the DR is going to lose an important monopoly which has driven many to that sphere. Walsh's monologue here is an indication that this is likely going to happen.

But this is where your statement goes wrong - they are not going to effectively do that because their entire raison d'être is to make sure that the DR does not gain power and their ideas remain at the fringes of political discourse. The conservative moment will only change when the human infrastructure of the movement's nervous system is ripped out and replaced with people who are at the very least DR sympathetic.

The main difference between the MR and the DR is the racial narrative, so they can probably be expected to merge if DR race narrative goes mainstream.

If the racial narrative really were to go mainstream it seems to me that the far more likely outcome is that the "Dissident-Right" ends getting reabsorbed into the mainstream democratic party as the two parties return to their historical roles with the Democrats being the party of "racial discrimination is good and constitutional" vs the Republicans as the party of "we hold these truths to be self-evident."

the two parties return to their historical roles with the Democrats being the party of "racial discrimination is good and constitutional" vs the Republicans as the party of "we hold these truths to be self-evident."

Oh absolutely, only this time the Dems will be supporting discrimination against whites.

They don't need to "reconcile" just recognize eachother as allies of convenience like baptists and bootleggers. If Group A wants discrimination based on race to be legal, Group B wants discrimination based on race to be legal, and Group C wants it to be illegal, there will be pressure for groups A and B to vote together.

DR, in general, is also not very hot on things like democracy and female franchise, meanwhile, the MR seemingly worships it and idolises women.

This makes them less tactful but not very different from hardliner social conservatives, who have a definite place in the mainstream right.

Huh?

The whole reason for the existence of the MR is to marginalize and suppress the DR. If the MR is incapable of being a decisive political force and assuming power, as in the Weimar Republic for example, there's always the spectre of a DR takeover. The farthest the MR is willing to go is expropriating and repackaging some DR ideas like stricter border control etc. to the extent it's absolutely necessary to keep the DR politically marginalized. (Or so I've heard from some liberal normies, as an accusation.)

I despair reading this. But the antidote to White identity - and woke identity - is likely Christian universalism. Hell (so to speak), even Muslims are not hung up on race, save for the Black Muslim heretics, an American phenomenon. They too are a colorblind universalist doctrine.

even Muslims are not hung up on race,

I've heard different claims - that e.g. Arabs look down on Turks, Malay and Indonesian Muslims and non-Arabic speakers in general, despite objectively speaking those latter groups are seen as more sympathetic and seem to be doing better on most metrics.

Universalism, Christian or otherwise, fails against racial identity. As long as blacks hold to their racial identity, whites will be at a disadvantage holding to universalism. That's what the rise of "woke" (which was, after all, a term from the African American grievance community) demonstrates.

But not adhering to racial identity allows you to partner with others. Racial particularists wall themselves off from that possibility.

The non-white coalition sticks together just fine. Usually, anyway.

I don’t see DR and MR (Mainstream Right, I like the theme here btw) as oppositional. As someone who has been reading DR’s notes for a decade now, DRs have always loved when MRs started listening to their prognoses and advice. When Trump entered the scene, DRs rejoiced that he called attention to problems at the border and made implied comments on white identity. It’s often forgotten that the DR meme machine is what pushed Trump into the MR, implicitly coordinated around /pol/, Reddit, and Twitter. The “Real Enemy” (RNs) knew this, which is why they botswarmed /pol/ and deleted any plausible DR Reddit community while catastrophizing DRs and dis-uniting the Right, to prevent a repeat of the hype train. Whenever a MR comes closer to DR, DRs love it. Whenever MRS (mainstream right spaces) allow for more DR talk, DRs love it.

Part of this is that DRs have next to no real organizational capacity. They are more of an idea generator than a startup hub. (Side note: the fact that this isn’t a fair fight is lost on many DRs, who surprisingly cling to a lost moral code of actually trying to tell the truth. The mainstream does not think “how can I tell the truth about the DR”, neither do they think “what is the worst thing DR has said.” They think from consequent to antecedent, which is what we saw during the Jewish “day of hate hoax”, only utilizing truth when it enhances the potency of the propaganda. 99% of their focus is “what story or spectacle will persuade someone given what I know about the frailty of human psychology”, with the remaining 1% ensuring that they are not lying so obviously that their house of cards crumbles. DR’s are sitting there trying to tell people about the statistically correct FBI stats, correcting people who exaggerated them, and so forth, always being meticulous in data because they are mostly autistic and neurotic and analytical men. They have no skill in propaganda generation, by and large, and don’t even realize that they are supposed to do it.)

Side note: the fact that this isn’t a fair fight is lost on many DRs, who surprisingly cling to a lost moral code of actually trying to tell the truth.

I don't think this is a good characterisation of the DR position here. They aren't clinging to a moral code of trying to tell the truth - they perceive telling the truth as one of the weapons that are actually available to them. They can't rely on speaking power to truth as the MR/ML can, and their ideas actually have to stand on their own without the backing of the mainstream. "That person is lying to you for their own personal gain - here's the actual truth they don't want you to know" is a powerful opener for propaganda, especially when the person saying it is actually correct.

DRs have next to no real organizational capacity. They are more of an idea generator than a startup hub.

Technically true but I want to provide a bit more context. The reason that the DR has next to no real organizational capacity is that any DR organization which forms is immediately infiltrated, crushed and prosecuted by existing power structures. In many countries, forming a DR group is explicitly illegal, and in the vast majority of others it will get you immediately added to governmental watchlists.

DR’s are sitting there trying to tell people about the statistically correct FBI stats, correcting people who exaggerated them, and so forth, always being meticulous in data because they are mostly autistic and neurotic and analytical men. They have no skill in propaganda generation, by and large, and don’t even realize that they are supposed to do it.

This is the exact opposite of reality. The DR is the most effective propaganda outlet in the modern world - their memes and culture have completely colonised the gaming spaces occupied by the youth, their ideas shape popular conversations and their memes are so ubiquitous that they have in many cases become indistinguishable from regular internet culture. They can create ideas like the OK hand signal and milk being white supremacist dogwhistles and have the legacy media take them entirely seriously and broadcast their claims. They created "It's ok to be white", a scheme which caused a lot of nastier people on the left to drop the mask in a way that got a lot of normal people noticing. They don't just know that they're supposed to do it - they obsess over creating memes, "meming" things and repeatedly testing their ideas and messaging amongst themselves for maximum virality, creating entire internet subcultures devoted to spreading their ideas. They played such a large role in the election of Trump that a lot of forces on the left and MR immediately started attacking the major tech companies in order to do everything they could to make that collaboration less successful and less powerful - to say nothing of instances like the prosecution of Douglas Mackey.

They don't just know that they're supposed to do it

Or in other words, they're counting coup- Kiwifarms vs. Keffals and co. is how I'd expect that to look.

creating entire internet subcultures devoted to spreading their ideas

If it looks like a liberal and quacks like a liberal it's... probably a liberal. They're disproportionately dissident anyway when in a political situation that doesn't favor them- it's probably an evolutionary strategy to be sufficiently indispensable that the progressive-traditionalists can't fire them. These people just tend to create things because it's, for lack of a better word, in them to create; hacker culture used to be like this and, when you look at what the forefront is (used to be tech in general, but it's more limited to ML now), still very much is.

Once you figure out that traditionalists and progressives are just fighting over the temporary allegiances of these people- remember that, while the left can't meme, neither can the right (without the liberals)- political dynamics make more sense. It's just a pendulum; when dominated by traditionalists, play progressive, when dominated by progressives, play traditionalist.

The DR isn’t really a thing though outside of the ideas it sneaks into the mainstream. Unless Moldbug has a special forces dimes square project that I’m unaware of, there’s not much else it can/is willing to do to have any real influence.

This isn’t exactly what winning looks like. But it’s at least not loosing.

I think the more pertinent question is should we want to?

What do the woke-contrarians/dissident-right bring have to offer that's worth the risk of lowering our memetic defenses to bring them in?

What do the woke-contrarians/dissident-right bring have to offer that's worth the risk of lowering our memetic defenses to bring them in?

It's like you're saying "The gates will hold!" when the enemy is already breaching the keep. What memetic defenses do you speak of? It's clear that white people have no memetic defenses against the organized group behavior of others. That's the entire point.

The DR provides an evolutionarily-proven strategy for establishing memetic defenses.

evolutionarily-proven

White Identitarianism seems to have failed in all prior cases.

An answer to the woke that's not "Let's keep retreating and maybe eventually they'll be satisfied".

There are other answers that do the same though.

I haven't seen one. Actual equality under the law doesn't work; the woke side will always win by demonstrating blacks are worse off and playing on sense of justice and sympathy to demand preferential treatment.

There's a great deal more that conservatives could try doing before they resort to "actually, we need to think about ourselves as White people". They seem reluctant to stoop to the tactics of their enemies, but if they did, I don't think it's obvious they would still lose.

"Actually, we need to think about ourselves as White people" IS stooping to the tactics of their enemies.

Right, I should clarify. When I say tactics, I mean that which is roughly agnostic of ideology. Conservatives could, for example, ban that which they dislike without changing what they believe. For example, the New College thing in Florida where they put aligned people on the board of a progressive college. There has been long discussion about the "Long March on the Institutions", this is just a more blatant version of that.

Building race-aligned coalitions is also tactics. The New College thing is going nowhere anyway; the left knows all about the long march and they're not going to let it happen to them.

More comments

Reading this instantly made me think of Clausewitz: either you believe your position to be an advancing one or you're banking on future provenance alone. The presumption is that the faltering side seeks to bring in new allies.

Who's faltering though? From the perspective of the mainstream right its the left that's on the backfoot. For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control, winning on abortion, winning on school choice/religious freedom. Our claims about the covid lockdowns and the perfidity of the technocratic class are in the process of being vidicated. And while the battles over immigration and the trans issue continue they but remain undecided.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed, thier credibility eliminated. They dont know what to make of a world where claims of superior intelligence and education are met with a disdain rather than deference

Contrary to users like @SecureSignals and @The_Nybbler I do not see the progressive movement's rising aggression and shrillness as evidence of strength, just the opposite infact, i see it as a product of evaporative cooling. They were supposed to have already won, and the fact that not only have they not won but that they are slowly getting pushed back on several fronts is making the "true believers" among them desperate.

For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control

LOL. In red states, you've got constitutional carry; that at least is real. In blue states there used to be "no carry" or "may issue".... and now there's carry permits that have so many carveouts that you can't actually carry, and anyway there's a super-long backlog to apply. Not to mention in blue states there are still permits to purchase which are hard to get. Some "right to keep and bear arms"! On the Federal level there are still import bans, machine guns remain banned, suppressors remain difficult to obtain legally, there's the new bump stock ban, the new pistol brace ban, there remains the ban on interstate transfer of firearms. There's red flag laws passed at state levels (and including red states) and encouraged by the Biden administration. There's bans which can be triggered by an ex parte restraining order, bans which apply to "domestic violence misdemeanors" (ex post facto of course), etc.

That's not winning. That's a mixed result. It only looks like winning because of the rout in so many other areas.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed, thier credibility eliminated.

Not so. COVID proved otherwise. People may say they don't trust the media or whoever, but they'll fall right in line with whatever the gatekeepers say anyway.

Who's faltering though? From the perspective of the mainstream right its the left that's on the backfoot.

I want you to be right. I can even see a few fronts where the tide seems to be turning, but I think you're going a bit far with your triumphalism. They only seem on the backfoot relative to the speed at which they've been making gains.

For the last 8 - 10 years we have been winning on gun control

I'll defer to your expertise, but is it actually easier to get a gun than it was 8-10 years ago?

winning on abortion

Granted.

winning on school choice/religious freedom.

Teachers/students at religious schools are being fired/suspended for not following tenets of progressive ideology that directly contradict their religion. If you suggested that 10 years ago people would call that slippery slope, or an uncharitable strawman.

Our claims about the damage of covid lockdows and the perfidity of the technocrats class have been vidicated.

Yes, but no one but you/us cares.

Meanwhile the battles over immigration and the trans issue are continue but remain from decided.

Funny, the trans issue is where I see the tide turning.

When rationalists complain about the "crisis in sense making" what they're really noticing is that the ability of progressive gate keepers in academia and the media to project power has been crushed

We just got out of a worldwide lockdown they decided to impose. It's possible they won't be able to do something like that again soon, but a reprieve from the greatest show of force that I can remember is not what I'd call getting crushed.

thier credibility eliminated.

"Eliminated" might be too strong a word, but mostly granted. Even the Klaus Schwab Gang is whinging about it.

They were supposed to have already won, and the fact that not only have they not won but that they are slowly getting pushed back on several fronts is making them desperate.

There's truth to that. In fact, people like SecureSignals, The_Nybbler, and me might have our characters tested soon. I have a feeling that, if you're right, the powers that be might put away Wokeness and start pandering to people like us again, and we'll have to show if we learned anything from all this.

What do you actually hope to get from a right that embraces white identity? I understand that DR often think mainstream conservatives just dont take anti-white progressives seriously enough, but if e.g. Rufo just maximally succeded, what do you think would be missing?

What do you actually hope to get from a right that embraces white identity?

It's simple- look at the political and cultural power other ethnic groups enjoy by organizing along ethnic lines and fiercely advocating for their group. That's what I want. Why? Because it's necessary, and without it you just lose. You only really need to open your eyes to see all that power that comes with organizing around ethnic and racial identity, it shouldn't be a mystery so to why I would want white people to embrace that. It's very powerful, I don't want a state of affairs where this behavior is taboo for white people but encouraged for people who are hostile to white people.

It may be powerful, but is it a power which results in a stronger, healthier, and better nation?

I personally much prefer a nation which organizes along a shared ethic, not ethnic line.

It's very powerful, I don't want a state of affairs where this behavior is taboo for the labor class but encouraged for people who are hostile to the labor class.

Yes, I absolutely think this power ends up ruining any nation over time. The selfishness of the Labor class might be bad news, but at least that selfishness is productive; the selfishness of the Capital class is zero-sum and is only ever destructive.

Traditionally, it's only kept in check by sufficiently powerful cultural competitors (who need the average man to defend them lest they be led away in chains), but those competitors no longer exist. And there's scarce few ways to break out of it compared to 100 years ago given significant economic opportunities have allowed to be enclosed by capital.

Racial animus in the US is downstream of class animus (capital vs. labor). This is why the capital class needs racial animus running interference.

I personally much prefer a nation which organizes along a shared ethic, not ethnic line.

The two may not be separable, at least not sustainably so. Large multiethnic states in history were run autocratically and left cultural enclaves alone within reason. Enforcing and maintaining an ethical union over diverse peoples, as the late Roman or Russians discovered, is a divisive and purge-filled affair that possibly leads to your state shattering into a million little pieces. Some believed liberalism was the master-ethic to would coordinate a state with multiple ethnicities. And yet it's only really worked in quite homogenous countries, with the possible, interesting exception of India. You introduce liberalism to country with tribes, and democracy become a mechanism for tribal looting.

Visible ethnic diversity in the USA has been increasing. What do we see? Reparations and DEI (looting) and an increasing number of people fracturing ideologically. How's our ethical union going?

Either (a) Hispanics and Asians dissolve with the American "whites" like Italians and Germans did with the WASPs, forming a spliced ethnicity where no one really knows what tribe they belong to — "I'm 50% English, 30% French, 15% Irish, 5% German" — or (b) the whole thing is going to segfault.

I think the response from people who agree with SecureSignals would be that you have to work with the situation you have. Using the same tactics as your opponent is defect-defect, but better than defect-cooperate where you cooperate.

It's simple- look at the political and cultural power other ethnic groups enjoy by organizing along ethnic lines and fiercely advocating for their group.

I think in the modern context this success is almost entirely down to the authorities humoring them. US blacks are not such a threat that the government has to make all these concessions to them, they could absolutely turn it off if they wanted to. China does that sort of thing all the time. The "concessions" are things the elites already wanted to do. I mean, a lot of those organisations doing the "fierce advocacy" arent even run by black people. Their ethnic power is a kayfabe for progressives.

You have it backwards- progressivism is a kayfabe for ethnic power, and always has been, from the moment it emerged from Universities. That's what the DR is conscious of. You are describing a sort of bio-leninism that is also consistent with that conclusion where, sure, blacks could be disenfranchised at the drop of a hat if that were desired. But it isn't. What is desired is their allegiance with a façade of "inclusion and equity" that masks what is in actuality ethnic hostility.

When the ADL puts enormous pressure at the highest levels of power to "Stop Hate", is that progressivism masquerading as ethnic power, or is it ethnic power masquerading as progressive morality?

When the ADL puts enormous pressure at the highest levels of power to "Stop Hate", is that progressivism masquerading as ethnic power, or is it ethnic power masquerading as progressive morality?

But I think you will agree that the ADL didnt get its power from "fierce advocacy". The advocacy and the being-persuaded-by-it are fake. My point is that "doing identity politics" suggests a pretty specific plan of action: You want to be very loud about how your group is treated badly, maybe have an organisation dedicated to that, make an ethnic voting block, etc. But those parts are kayfabe, they dont actually make you win. Now, maybe you mean something else by it, but if so its pretty prone to misunderstandings, because I still cant tell what it would be after rereading your comments with the assumption that its there.

It's not just up to Conservatives, or even the "dissident right".

If the country supports legal discrimination against a group, it has no choice but to organize politically along that group line.

The politics don't matter, the issues don't matter, all that matters is who gets to denigrate who, and the who getting denigrated has to band together and become single-issue voters to be able to survive. So long as the left is the anti-white party, the right will have to be by default the "white party". Surely those who talk so much about "structures" should be able to see the obvious conflict.