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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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megacucks

I know it is probably a waste of time to engage with someone who uses such terms, but I would like to suggest the possibility that real men undertake the hard work of trying to get those with power to live up to their ideals. It is children who respond by running away, be it to China or elsewhere, or who take the easy road of engaging in violence. Martin Luther King was a man; Huey Newton was a child. And, not uncoincidentally, King was highly effective, while Newton was counterproductive.

  • -12

Actually the Stern Gang and Irgun were full of people who just went directly to the easy road of engaging in violence and they got their country. They were extremely productive and former members of those gangs of violent extremists were elected to high office in the country that they won. History is actually full of examples of men who went and took the road of political violence and were richly rewarded for it, so I'm afraid you might want to retract that suggestion.

I was making a normative claim (as was OP, of course), not an empirical claim about what methods are likely to be successful.

That being said, there is apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative.

And while of course there are examples of men who were richly rewarded for using political violence, there are obviously far more examples of men who were not so richly rewarded. More importantly, I was referring to strategies for social change, not personal success.

Finally, I am skeptical that the Stern gang and Irgun can be credited with the establishment of the state of Isreal, given the Balfour Declaration, world opinion after the Holocaust, and the fact that every League of Nations mandate in the Middle East became independent at about the same time.

And I'm also making a normative claim - turning to violence is not the easy option reserved for children, but a difficult and sometimes necessary path. Violence is a tool that works in some situations and doesn't in others, and trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent is just, from my perspective, wrong. That said it took me too long to reply to this so please feel no obligation to respond.

trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent

I certainly did not say that it is the reserve of the incompetent. I merely noted that there is "apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative." I intentionally worded that as a relatively modest claim.

As for children, yes, I probably overstated the point. I should have said that it is children who respond with violence as a first resort, or that those who valorize vioIence as the only "manly" response to perceived injustice and who deride those who respond otherwise as "cucks" are children. But I continue to assert that, as a general rule, responding with violence is the easier path, in part because it is the most natural path. That, IIRC, was a central claim of Gandhi/MLK/whoever initially developed the theory of nonviolence.

The people in power are already living up to their ideals. The ideals of western civilization are that white men are racist oppressors who need to be removed from power to make way for minorities.

The people behaving like children in this situation are the ones saying "We hate you, go away" to highly trained pilots and making a shocked pikachu face when they leave.

"I don't like this institution and have determined that I will not achieve career success in it. I'm becoming a mercenary instead." That's not a "child running away".

Unelected bureaucrats don't answer to me and you. There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies. Your high minded point about "real men" is irrelevant given modern bureaucracies.

There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies

Except there have been countless instances of enormous shifts in the behaviour of the state apparatus?

Your high minded point about "real men"

I am not the one who initiated the "cuck" discourse.

Okay. Neither am I.

Did the Japanese who fought for the US change it in any way? Or did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons? Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

The high road was taken by former Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl. She left in protest to what she was ordered to do. Her replacement receives an award for doing what she was unwilling. She didn't run to China, she didn't flee, she did the maximum amount she could to draw attention to the situation without incriminating herself as an insubordinate member of the RAF. But with the world being how it is, there is no incentive for anyone with power to step away from their racist ideology that ultimately demands white displacement.

As an exact contradiction to the situation MLK found himself in, there is very little fertile ground for white victimary discourse in mainstream politics. It doesn't matter if it's white men or boys getting snubbed from education and employment, or little girls getting raped by the thousands by newly imported browns. MLK wasn't special and he didn't talk to the people. He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south. White people in the UK have no such backing. When they do organize they get ridiculed and ostracized with the full force of the media or they get outright banned and imprisoned.

So I'd ask again, what does a British male pilot owe the state that discriminates against him? Becoming MLK? Overthrowing the government and media hegemon? Or do a Mike Buchanan and speak into an empty jar for over a decade? Surely someone will listen...

did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons?

Why do you think they care about their "ethnic kinfolk"? I assume, like most Americans, they were relieved that the invasion of Japan ended up being unnecessary.

Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

Is this a joke? As if Japan did not thrive after the war.

He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south.

The Civil Rights Movement was probably the most successful social revolution in history. And it was not the doing of elites who were out to oppress white Southerners; elites would just as soon no one make waves. That is what elites do.

White people in the UK have no such backing.

No, but they are the majority, and they can organize politically, and politicians who want their votes will listen. Or have you never heard of the Moral Majority, or the Tea Party, or Ron DeSantis?.

successful social revolution in history

Successful it what sense?

It's not done much for black family formation.

was not the doing of elites

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Will you accept being "on the bottom of the progressive stack" if you'll have families?

Successful in overturning the social order that was Jim Crow, obviously.

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Have you noticed the elites on the other side? And, the NAACP was founded in 1909. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted 55 years later. That doesn't sound like society's elites were working very hard to advance NAACP's goals..

NAACP was founded in 1909

Yes and practiced lawfare and lobbying for 55 years prior to the CRA of 1964. It wasn't non-elites arguing these cases.

overturning the social order that was Jim Crow

If your criteria for success of an act of congress is that it makes illegal the behavior you don't like, I guess it's it's been a success.

You obviously don't understand what I meant by "the social order that was Jim Crow." It was not a behavior or set of behaviors. It was a social order. And the change was far more than an act of Congress. See, eg, here. As I said, it was a social revolution.

And note that "successful" does not mean "good." The Taliban were successful in overthrowing the Afghani govt in 2021. Mao was successful in defeating the Nationalists in 1949. The Yankees have repeatedly been successful in winning the World Series. None of those things were good, however. I understand that perhaps you think that the end of Jim Crow was a bad thing, because of what you claim is its effect on black families. Nevertheless, the Civil Rights Movement achieved its goal of remaking the social order in the deep South. Hence, it was a success.