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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Newsom basically calling for a boycot of Target.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/did-governor-newsom-spark-target-boycott-among-liberals

So he’s not too happy that red tribe has learned how to cancel something. I think we are approaching a day where you have to declare your allegiance. Red or blue.

I usually don’t like Balaji and think he’s a smarter hack who knows how to grift, but I think he’s right in this thread

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1659094966671425536?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

And Scott had a thread about how pride is just like every other cities holiday posted recently. I can’t find it.

America seems to be in a religious war between two cultures now. A couple years ago red tribe didn’t know how to wield power. Desantis has done that highlighted by his war on Disney and grassroots red tribe found their first success with Budweiser. Twitter going Musks was an obvious red tribe move. Jan 6 and Trump overall was a movement that hadn’t found their real leaders who could use power.

I don’t think religion is that strong anymore on the right. I say this because there is a lot of tolerance for Trump being not a Christian. He bangs hookers. So red tribe has an internal sub-war between their traditional alpha male and their good Christian Desantis.

I do like Scott’s metaphor of this being a time like when Christianity took over the Roman Empire. No one believed in the old pagan gods anymore. And I think blue tribe would have won this but they made two crucial mistakes:

  1. The movement doesn’t have a great place for males. Who have always dominated every society.

  2. The trans movement has a lot of vibes of backward religions. Getting kids to cut themselves up and change their bodies has a lot of vibes of practices we long since banished.

And Scott had a thread about how pride is just like every other cities holiday posted recently. I can’t find it.

Gay Rites are Civil Rites.

The movement doesn’t have a great place for males. Who have always dominated every society.

I don't think that's totally true, but I do think the place it holds is incompatible with what Red Tribers would consider desirable.

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Men are doing pretty bad in blue-dominated society dating-wise, but economically they seem to be doing okay. I've seen it thrown around that the female majority in universities is actually the economic equilibrium in a society where half the population goes to college. Men are physically stronger and so have the option of choosing a blue-collar of manual-labor career. Women pretty much have to do intellectual labor (or marry a rich husband) to be successful. That requires a college degree.

Men are physically stronger and so have the option of choosing a blue-collar of manual-labor career. Women pretty much have to do intellectual labor (or marry a rich husband) to be successful. That requires a college degree.

This is an argument I've seen before, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Group X has the option of choosing low-status low-pay work, which group Y hasn't, and so Y is condemned to going through the hustle of high-status high-pay work.

Consider the following:

Peasants are physically much stronger and enduring than aristocrats, so they have the option of manually toiling the fields. Aristocrats cannot do that, so they pretty much have to learn Latin, go to university and become a bishop or someone who lord's over peasants.

This seems to me to have exactly the same structure as an argument, but it's completely ludicrous. Am I missing something here?

Peasants and aristocrats do not differ much at base biological level(and when they do it is in favor of the latter), women and men do. Still, in the modern service economy there are enough low paying low status jobs that don't require physical prowess nor degree. Most often women constitute majority in them.

I probably didn't choose my example wisely. The issue I was trying to get at is the following: you have a group Y whose outcomes seem objectively better than another group X's, but still, this is presented as an advantage for X.

The flipped version is likely prostitution. Men who are down on their luck can't sell themselves. Woman who are down on their luck can (to some extant). This is an extra option for women, but it's generally not an appealing one, so isn't seen as an advantage for women.

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