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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.

The question is, united how? I hope the comparisons to the Russian Revolution aren't followed to their conclusion, where the dissident right winds up putting a Stalin type in power, believing it to be their salvation.

It's my sincere hope we get a Sulla instead, if that only buys us a generation or two before we get a Caesar instead. I mean, read this and try not to get excited.

In total control of Rome and most of Italy, Sulla instituted a series of proscriptions (a program of executing those whom he perceived as enemies of the state and confiscating their property).

Proscribing or outlawing every one of those whom he perceived to have acted against the best interests of the Republic while he was in the East, Sulla ordered some 1,500 nobles (i.e., senators and equites) executed, although it is estimated that as many as 9,000 people were killed.[40] The purge went on for several months. Possibly to protect himself from future political retribution, Sulla had the sons and grandsons of the proscribed banned from running for political office, a restriction not removed for over 30 years.

Near the end of 81 BC, Sulla, true to his traditionalist sentiments, resigned his dictatorship, disbanded his legions and re-established normal consular government.

All that aside, it's hard to argue with his thesis. The America I knew as a child is utterly dead and destroyed. There is no saving it. The only hope to avoid the boot of people who hate me on my neck, and my descendant's neck, for all time is fedposts

try not to get excited

Can you explain why you think a massive political purge via execution of a ruler’s personal enemies would be something exciting?

Sulla is one of the most cursed figures in Roman history for a reason.

A new broom sweeps clean. I don’t want people executed, but I think a revolution that disempowers current elites cannot help but be a good thing as our current elites have no interest in solving real problems, instead, they’re busy arguing over fake problems and using said fake problems to expand the military state and social control over the population to absurd heights.

Just a random list, but these are some of the big problems not addressed: AI and technological unemployment, street crimes, spree shootings, income inequality, infrastructure, a shitty K-12 education system, college costs, pollution and global warming, and media/social media unitary censorship.

What we’re doing instead: micromanaging whether or not a state can ban porn-adjacent books from elementary school classrooms, trans rights, indoctrination into woke thinking, pride and race pride, and putting visibly trans people into positions of power or at least inviting them to the White House.

I don’t think anyone sane could possibly come to the conclusion that it’s better to have outdated, crumbling roads, but porn in school libraries, or street crime being less of and issue than proper pronoun etiquette, or accessible higher education being lower on the list than making sure that the White House has a resident military trans woman and invites more trans women to the White House.

IT’s anarcho-tyranny. We can’t or won’t solve real problems, so we’re busy remaking culture at gun point to be things that most people are ambivalent about if they don’t oppose it outright.

micromanaging whether or not a state can ban porn-adjacent books from elementary school classrooms

It cuts both ways, though. Assuming you're talking about Florida, I could easily argue that the state is spending too much effort micromanaging schools and waging a quixotic war on Disney for having the gall to publicly criticize that micromanagement, all the while the state has a murder rate higher than "woke" states like New York and California. If the elites are in control and can do whatever they want then the opposition is defined by what they're actually opposing, and choosing to oppose bullshit about trans people seems to be pretty low on the priority list apart from its value as culture war fodder.

I mean they are too. Nobody’s completely innocent here. The larger issue here is that the needs of the people won’t be met as long as the elites — in both parties— are more concerned about symbolic cultural issues than they are about meat and potatoes issues like a functioning school system, streets you can safely walk down at night, train tracks that don’t cause derailments, or subways and mass transit that aren’t mobile homeless hotels.

And I think removing the old guard (hopefully peacefully) will at least put the new guys on notice that they better get to work fixing things for average Americans need fixed. At this point, I’d much rather public schools be explicitly Christianized and Nationalist but teach kids how to read and write and do math at a level needed for 21st century living than have a woke school that produces functional illiteracy and innumeracy. I’d rather the flag be changed to some nationalist thing with an eagle and see a il dulce photograph in every building i& it meant not being afraid of street violence or spree shootings. Going down the list, honestly I don’t care about anything other than solving the real problems. If it takes a Sulla or Caesar or Mussolini to put American civilization back on track, then fine.