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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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I agree that his white trash manner is extra inflammatory to the PMC, but I thinking you're only 80% of the way to explaining their hatred. The final bit is that people like him aren't supposed to win. They're supposed to lose, they're relics of a backwards evil bygone era. If people like him win, it could undo all the salami-slicing, Nudges™, and demoralization works that has been wrought upon the plebs. They'll stop seeing the Glorious Technocratic Bugpod Future as an inevitability and maybe even stop feeling powerless, and then maybe they'll even finally try to do something about it all. And so Trump can't be allowed to get away with it, he has to be dealt with like Winston, and the old Party Members -- not martyred, but degraded, hounded, dragged through the mud, abused until he's a shell of his former self, so that everyone else can see that this is what happens to people who oppose Progress, even very rich well connected people who get elected to the most powerful office in the world. Any wealthy conservative considering a future presidential run will now be keenly aware of what happens if he should step outside the controlled opposition pen and will doubtless think twice.

Edit: Re-reading this, it sounds like I'm accusing my outgroup of being part of a vast conspiracy and bent on ruthlessly crushing an enemy for defying their power, but I'm not. Rather they're unwittingly part of an SSC-style prospiracy. The people who feel this way don't consciously think they're channeling O'Brien, they think they're Standing Up for Democratic Norms or whatever rationalization works for them.

Glorious Technocratic Bugpod Future

Re-reading this, it sounds like I'm accusing my outgroup of being part of a vast conspiracy

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Memes about eating bugs and living in pods sound unhinged to normies and non-alt-rightists in the same way and for the same reason that Handmaid's Tale memes sound unhinged to normies and non-wokists - it is a call to resist a non-existent conspiracy.

Re. bugs, I move in circles where people would eat a bug in exchange for a Davos invite, and I haven't met anyone who regularly eats insects, or who lobbies for other people to eat insects. I am aware there was once a WEF panel on the advantages of insect protein, but as of the current year, the "meat is animal cruelty and climate change" crowd are pushing fake-meat products like Beyond Burgers.

Re. pods, it isn't even obvious what this means - there was a long thread on this forum discussing the confusion where it eventually became clear that "living in the pod" meant that WEF elites wanted non-elites to live in much less square footage than American suburbanites would consider acceptable. There are two problems with this one - the first is that if it took a 10+ post forum thread to explain it to a sympathetic audience on this forum, then normies who hear "I will not live in the pod" are just going to be confused. The second is that, although "non-elites should live in something smaller than the cookie-cutter 3000 sq ft suburban McMansion favoured by middle-class Texans" is indeed an idea held by most WEF attendees, the smaller homes they are promoting do not fall within the ordinary English meaning of the word "pod".

If you look at the Tiny House Movement, only one of the pictures on that wiki page is podlike. The Berkeley shared houses where the so-called "Rationalists" have weird sex while reading overlong Harry Potter fanfics are not pods. A 700 sq ft apartment in a converted industrial building is not a pod. A 1500 sq ft New Urbanist rowhouse is definitely not a pod.

I'm not really sure what your point is other than that "Glorious Technocratic Bugpod Future" is a somewhat uncharitable phrasing, which I will concede. Would you prefer "Glorious Technocratic Soyshack Future" instead? I don't want to eat bugs or fake meat, I don't want to live in a pod or in whatever square footage that globalists deem adequate for plebians like me. We can argue over whether the Planet Health Diet must necessarily include insect protein, or where the precise line between "studio" and "pod" lies, but that doesn't seem very productive.

it is a call to resist a non-existent conspiracy

You literally cited the WEF in response to both points, so I think "non-existent" doesn't hold water. And the WEF is not some isolated crackpot think tank, they have many influential members and connections. Do I think that we're all going to be rounded up in FEMA camps next year where we will be forced to live in shipping containers and eat crickets for breakfast lunch and dinner? No. But do I think tha a subset of global elites wants to drastically downgrade my standard of living and my dietary health and, worse yet, feel themselves morally compelled to and fully justified in doing so? Yes, because they say so themselves.

I'm not really sure what your point is

You noticed that your post triggered your own "this is an unhinged conspiracy theory" buttons - I was trying to point out why discussion of bugs and pods triggers those buttons. I only mentioned the WEF because I have spent enough time on this forum to know that the bugpod meme originated with anti-WEF conspiracy theorists.

The socially conservative right in American really does want to roll back certain feminist achievements (notably abortion), and feminists are behaving rationally when they organise against this, but talking about handmaids sounds unhinged.

The establishment left really do want to change the world in ways which mean people eat somewhat less animal meat, and somewhat more people live in dense urban places (which usually implies a consumption bundle including less square feet of housing per person), and the Red Tribe right are behaving rationally when they organise against this, but talking about bugs and pods sounds unhinged, for the reasons I gave in the previous post.

Would you prefer "Glorious Technocratic Soyshack Future" instead?

Part of the point of this forum is that we write like we are having a productive debate (even if we are not) and not like we are having an unhinged vent (even if we are). In the context of your post, "ProgressTM" or "The Arc of the Moral UniverseTM" or "Total Blue Tribe Victory" would have got the point across.

In the context of your post, "ProgressTM" or "The Arc of the Moral UniverseTM" or "Total Blue Tribe Victory" would have got the point across.

This is a fair point.