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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33041 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I think they’ll ultimately win. It’s just that really they’re still in the foundation stage of the movement. Almost any real political upheaval is a generations-long process of first creating a philosophy and ethos and then unify around that philosophy and work to implement it. But if you’d have judged the communist movement by what it was in 1870 when it was first taking shape, you wouldn’t have predicted the Russian revolution. The tumultuous nature of the current generation of reactionaries doesn’t mean much because I believe it will eventually settle on an ethos that will be United enough to win real power.

It seems to me that it's the fraction of angry young men you have on your side that matters more than the absolute number. If your side has all the kids, then you will have disproportionate power regardless of how many octogenarians hate your guts.

Angry young men is a bit ambiguous, though, and I'm not sure the "angry young men" of today are comparable to those of the past. Before, the rabble were employed as productive labor in critical economic activities and had broader real-life social connections with one another. Now, at best they're criminals, and at worst they're living in their parents' basements addicted to porn and video games. The past cohort was a much more fertile ground for revolutionary impulses and organizations to develop.

I also suspect that due to selection effects (or lack thereof) for the last several generations the average quality of young men qua young men is simply lower.

People also go on about testosterone but didn't Scott write something questioning that?

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