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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Counter take. When you're taking flak, you're over the target.

Maybe the reason nazi-adjacent homosexuals like Cole and Yiannopoulos as well as various other figures on the alt-right are annoyed with the Boomercons and Barstool-types for latching on to the Epstien and Groomer stuff is that Boomercons and Barstool-types have correctly identified a vulnerability in the prog-left. One in which interests of the alt-right as sexually liberal blue-tribers are more closely aligned with the LGBTQ+ crowd than they are the mainstream right.

As others have noted, there is a distinctly predatory scent that these people seem to give off, and it's interesting that both the woke left and alt-right seem fixed on discrediting anyone who deigns to point it out.

Maybe the reason nazi-adjacent homosexuals like Cole and Yiannopoulos as well as various other figures on the alt-right

I don't recognize the name Cole, but didn't Milo originally step in shit because he spoke publicly about his first gay consensual relationship being when he was like 9?

I thought Milo got in trouble for describing his above local age of consent, but under 18 gay relationship with a Catholic priest.

This is at least closer to accurate, but still not right. Milo was involved in an extended discussion; the cancel squad clipped two separate comments out of context and slapped them together. The first was a bit of dark humor thanking the Catholic priest who taught him how to perform oral sex at a young age (about 13, IIRC), and the second was discussing in sincerely positive terms his relationship with an older man (not a priest) when he was 17ish. The edited version conflated both the tone and topic of two quite separated statements, and framed Milo as an advocate of child molestation.

Milo's comments are open to criticism (and should be criticized, IMO), but the deliberate misrepresentation behind this particular bit of character assassination was vile.

A new low for you, truly. Are you going to offer any evidence or analysis to refute any of Cole’s claims? Hell, do you have any evidence to substantiate your accusation of Cole (a Jew) as “Nazi-adjacent” or “homosexual”? Or will this be yet another comment where you just lazily wave in a certain direction to add another epicycle to your tortured take on Horseshoe Theory?

What claims would those be? That people worrying about the trans stuff today are equivalent to those who were worried about satanists sacrificing babies?

Fine here's my analysis. The thing that sets more recent instances of organized sexual abuse like Rotherdam, Epstiens Island, or trans-activists advocating the permanent disfigurement of children (often against wishes of one or both parents) is that unlike the Satanic panic of the 80s there is ample physical and video evidence that this actually happening. In short, it's not "paranoia" if somone's actually out to get you, and the people telling you to relax and ignore the red-flags are not acting in your interests.

Likewise Cole coming from a Jewish background, doesn't preclude him from being nazi-adjacent, or from being a 60 year-old confirmed bachelor who seems weirdly preoccupied with teenage boys.

As for my allegedly "tortured" take horseshoe on theory, at least I have something that seems to cleave our current political realities at the joints

The thing that sets more recent instances of organized sexual abuse like Rotherdam, Epstiens Island, or trans-activists advocating the permanent disfigurement of children

You’re suggesting that the Rotherham grooming gangs - a cartel of Pakistani Muslims who have no relationship to the academic/medical complex whatsoever - is the same phenomenon as “trans-affirming healthcare”? Please explain the link. How are these two things connected, other than that they both resulted in bad things happening to children?

Again, Hlynka, nobody here is arguing that doing trans stuff to children is good, and certainly nobody here is arguing that it’s not happening. The argument is about whether or not it’s child molestation, and if not, why is it happening? Cole’s argument, which I basically agree with, is that the creepy gay men with a thing for little boys represent a tiny sliver of the people actually doing the day-to-day work of sustaining the trans-ing of kids. The vast majority of these people are women, who are doing what they do because of reasons that have nothing at all to do with being sexually attracted to kids. It is just simply not credible to accuse some mousy 23-year-old female elementary school teacher of wanting to rape little kids. The “groomer” discourse is laser-focused on a small and distracting side issue. That’s the argument. David Cole is not a friend to “the LGBTQ movement”, and he wants to see it defeated by actually good and true arguments.

No I'm suggesting that woke sexually libertine academic types running interference for rape gangs is the same phenomenon as woke sexually libertine academic types running interference for other flavors child molestation including that perpetrated by trans-activists.

As @hydroacetylene observes: concerns about grooming are at least directionally correct, and a lot of these schools(like loudoun county) have chosen respecting trans ideology over protecting kids when the choice was stark and real, not merely theoretical.

Accordingly, as both a conservative and a parent, hearing yet another woke sexually libertine academic type playing silly definitional games while asking me to please stop talking about groomers reads as yet more interference running.

There are best practices for institutions working with kids to prevent child sexual abuse, and the 23 year old mousy female elementary school teacher is violating all of them and advocating that they be changed to benefit progressive pets.

If the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts of America was loosening its child protection standards to enable children to be more exposed to priests/scoutmasters, this would ring obvious alarm bells- and by those two organizations’ stated standards, exposure to priests/scoutmasters is more important for child development than exposure to drag queens is by progressive standards. Public schools also have a higher rate of child sexual abuse than at least the Catholic Church did(although possibly not a higher rate than the BSA at its worst). Yet anyone making the obvious criticism- this will lead to more child abuse- gets accused of transphobia.

I don’t think most of the people advocating for this stuff are personally grooming kids. But concerns about grooming are at least directionally correct, and a lot of these schools(like loudoun county) have chosen respecting trans ideology over protecting kids when the choice was stark and real, not merely theoretical. ‘Groomer’ might be a stretcher, but it’s not an outright lie.

It is just simply not credible to accuse some mousy 23-year-old female elementary school teacher of wanting to rape little kids.

Well, probably not (but we don't know because we aren't mindreaders, and the content of her actions is not different than if she wanted to rape them). Still, she is breaking down their sexual norms without knowledge or consent of the parents of the kids, and probably encouraging them to do and imbibe things that are inappropriate for their (or often any) age. All of which makes them particularly vulnerable to any "real" groomer that stumbles upon that broken down kid. Oh, and by the way, she will find it hard to bring herself (if she even can) condemn her successor because that other evil human is probably part of her favored subset of humans.

If the mousey elementary teacher is advocating for porn and sex instructions to be available to children in the school library, talking to kids about how great being gay/trans/etc is compared to being straight/cis, talking to kids about sex and asking them to hide it from their parents, and inviting in the group that seems to consist of creepy gay men wanting to flaunt themselves in front of kids, should they be considered as groomers even if they aren't the ones who actively want to molest the kids?

Can you provide evidence that there is a epidemic of teachers logging onto PornHub and trying to show it it kids?

More and more there's a clear trend of "vibes" as legitimate source of political motivation.

I'm confused by the implication that there was ever a time that "vibes" were not a legitimate source of political motivation.

I'll echo Pongalh here and say that I think there at least used to be a pretense of relying on hard evidence. For example, the first wave of environmentalism in the 1970's wasn't merely about vibes, there were things people could point to as proof that we had enshittified America The Beautiful and needed to start cleaning up after ourselves.

In the 70s, the "serious people" were insisting we shouldn't believe the stats or our lying eyes and that progressivism wasn't driving crime in the cities, nor single motherhood.

People seem to be abandoning the ideal of not relying on that. It's an anti-intellectual move.

"Where's your evidence?"

"I don't know, they're just like, ugh."