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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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When you take your own 'culture' for granted it might seem like others are 'distorting' the meaning of words. When in reality you were always a fish swimming in water.

The dialectic of 'white' left-right politics is over. The battle lines drawn around slight ingroup neurodivergence or the slightly different financial incentives of two neighboring municipalities that expresses itself as mild disagreement over questions like taxation and where to place the bridge are outdated. We are in the throes of a total redefinition of 'western' politics.

It's no longer a few teams fighting in the same sports league. We are now fighting between leagues over who gets funding. It's no use complaining that the basketball players are using their hands, those guys simply don't see European 'football' rules as applying to them. In fact, they see them as restrictive. And why shouldn't they? Why on earth should a basketball player accept a ruleset that takes away all their advantages? You can argue that your 'feet only' sport is the best or whatever, but that's obviously self serving even if you very dearly believe it to be true or even if it is by some objective metric true.

A real lie example of this where I live is trans people. If you belong to this group, in my very 'western' country, you can argue for special privileges for your group. These don't apply to anyone else. You are not seen as a political party or anything of the sort, that would otherwise exist in the 'normal' western political dialectic, no. Instead you are seen through the lens of 'victimary discourse'. And because you have a lot of marketing behind your victimary narrative, people cave in to your demands of receiving preferential treatment at the doctors.

The same is true for immigrants or any non-white. They exist as themselves. They advocate for themselves. They form group coalitions, they weave an animating myth of victimhood and grievance against white people and then they try their darndest to funnel everyone behind their cause. This dialectic isn't born out of circumstance or the natural curve of history. This is a pathological mode of group bias.

There is no onus on one group to adopt the language tradition of another. If it doesn't suit your group, don't use the language. Find something else. The outgroup is always evil, no need to call them good.