site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Canadian Truckers Won. Everything.

by Kulak

I keep encountering this misconception from people who don't follow Canadian politics...

That somehow the Trucker convoy was defeated.

The Freedom Convoy was the most wildly immediately successful protest in Canadian history, maybe WORLD history.

People remember Trudeau's crackdown, old ladies having their skulls cracked with batons, Disabled indigenous grandmothers trampled by police horses, Bank accounts frozen and public employees investigated for mere donations...

And there's a big reason people remember this... It was dramatic, and the media and the regime certainly wanted you to think resistance was futile...

What people don't remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest.

First off there was the massive political shift that happened as the convoy was occurring:

Jason Kenny, the pro-lockdown Premiere of Alberta (Canada's most conservative province) was forced to announce his resignation, and Alberta immediately lifted all it's lockdown impositions.

Erin O'Toole the pro-lockdown leader of the Conservative Party was likewise forced to resign, his temporary replacement Candice Bergen (not to be mistaken with the actress) being a longtime rival opposed to lockdowns, and his main rival who replaced her after intra-party elections was Pierre Poilievre, the Politician after Maxime Bernier who was quickest to embrace the Truckers and their cry for freedom.

As the convoy was ongoing Trudeau invoked the Emergencies act (the Act which replaced the War Meassures Act for invoking Martial Law)... Now these grant the government almost unlimited powers, famously the War Meassures Act was invoked by Trudeau's Father to detain Quebeckers and raid hundreds of homes without warrants during the FLQ separatist crisis of 1972...the catch is that while the follow on Emergencies act can be invoked by a Prime Minister parlaiment has to sign off on the act's continued use within one week.

Well skulls were cracked, accounts frozen, and as the week passed things came down to the deadline... On the very last night... Trudeau managed to get sign-off (without the conservative opposition) from the House of Commons, but it had to go to the Upper House, the Canadian Senate.

NOW. The Canadian Senate is a shameful institution.

It's like the British House of Lords but without the nobility.

A senate seat is a lifetime appointment, by the prime minister... and that's it. Little to no review, no democratic input, and this is supposed to be equivalent or superior to our elected House of Commons...

Naturally the go-to use of the Senate is as a spoils system for cronies. Do some shameful favour for a prime minister, raise a lot of money for the party, be politically connected to a provincial gov the PM wants to buy off... Get a Senate seat.

One of the longest-standing political agreements in Canada is how badly the Senate needs to be abolished... but can't be because Quebec is nominally overrepresented in the Senate, and abolishing it would cause a constitutional crisis.

So mostly the Senate keeps it's head down and tries to avoid the news... because it will never be sympathetic.

So this nursing home for cronies, criminals, fall guys, and connected activists past...people who's names haven't been spoken aloud since 1996... an institution that was last in the news 10 years ago for an expense scandal whose essence was "Wait we're paying these leeches expenses!?"... that body was called upon to sign off on the emergencies act...

And all these self-important losers smelled blood in the water.

Did they have some principled stand on civil liberties grounds? Absolutely NOT.

They had a principled objection that they weren't being treated as more important!

Sure they'd consider signing off on Trudeau's abuses, but they wanted an ongoing senate committee to continuously review the abuses, with cabinet level briefings for the committee members, regular pressers, inclusion on the forming of policy... Juicy Juicy INFLUENCE.

The exact thing these shameful roaches had been denied ever since their real political careers flamed out in '92 and they'd been forced to become lost souls in the senate.

The speeches these delusional 70-year-old nobodies gave...MY GOD barely coherent gibberish from geriatrics convinced they were great statesmen... convinced their wisdom might now be included in great volumes of Canadian oratory next to Laurier, Macdonald, and Pearson...

With mere hours left to the deadline, no passage in sight, and the nightmare of dealing with these people before him ... Trudeau voluntarily withdrew the act.

In the preceding week his Finance minister Crystia Freeland had given press statements and interviews to the effect that they planned to hunt down everyone who donated to the convoy, and create an expansive new system of financial control... with hints this would extend not only to the protesters, but all the unvaccinated...none of this would happen.

Instead Trudeau weekly tried to claim victory... There were no protestors in Ottawa or on bridges! But in the week that followed lockdown measures were quickly and quietly pulled back. Alberta had already rescinded their measures, and other provinces were following suit. By June almost all domestic restrictions were gone the regime desperately afraid that if the Protesters were able to shut down the capital and cross-border trade in minus 20 to minus 40 degree weather...what might they do in the Summer? Canada Day (July 1) was approached with fear.

By August I travelled to the US for a wedding... Unvaccinated. The greater barrier being the risk the US would refuse me entry than that Canada would hastle me. The US border guard didn't ask.

And on the way back the Canadian border guard, obviously over with this stuff, told me "Now because you're unvaccinated you do technically have to quarantine, and they could possibly call, and if you say you haven't been quarantining they might do something..." I received one email from public health and immediately deleted it. There was no enforcement.

I travelled again in October, and was not even asked uponreturn.

The last measures had been withdrawn.

The Greatest barrier to travel was US border restrictions and requirements... which technically only ended in May this year.

WITHIN 1 month the trucker convoy had effected a hostile overthrow of the Governments of Alberta and the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, from pro to anti- lockdown, and crushed the moderate wing of the conservative movement.

At Multiple points Trudeau was nearly forced out by his own party and his government was humiliated with most of it's perceived power destroyed, it now exists as a rump failing to pass gun control bills (IN CANADA!) against moderate opposition.

Within 2-4 months all domestic restrictions were gone and within 8 months even the pantomime of international restrictions didn't exist, Canada had fewer covid restrictions than the US.

COMPLETE CONSENSUS had be totally destroyed such that in less than a year the national consensus was the polar opposite.

And all the actual action took place in 1 month, on the coldest days of the year, with a movement who's key members had to drive 4000-5000km (~3000 miles) along treacherous northern roads being greeted roadside by supporters who stood out in minus 40 to give them coffee food and support.

This was at once the most logistically challenging protest in human history involving the volunteering of tens of millions of dollars of equipment, weeks of time, tens of thousands of people, across a continent...

And it might just have been the most successful individual protest in human history. The most successful violent revolutions have not achieved such total reversals in culture and policy across so many levels of government, in such few short months.

THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON THE REGIME WANTS YOU TO THINK OF IT AS A FAILURE.

The same reason things like Brexit, the Yellow Vests in France, or Jan 6th, or the Dutch Farmers protest freaked out the elite so much.

The greatest possible threat to them is that the mass of the Suburban and rural Middle-class: Flyover country, the Petite Bourgeoise, the small business owners, the farmers, the truckers, the Kulaks... The greatest possible threat to the regime is that this mass will realize its incredible power both in coordination, logistics, and initiative... And that it will overthrow the governing class of Bureaucrats, Regulators, Lawyers, DEI Administrators, and leaches who've gotten rich surviving of their tax cattle who actually work and produce things.

They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can't let people see what it was:

A premonition of the great Class War to come.

Good synopsis and I think you're correct.

But there are two types of "winning", and the truckers only got one of them. It's true that they achieved their policy goals - and how! But they didn't personally win. The truckers aren't being ushered into the halls of power in the manner of Lech Walesa or Aung San Suu Kyi. No, they they are still reviled by the elite. There will be no statues on Parliament hill of a brave trucker, CB in hand, fighting for freedom. And I doubt they'll ever be given the credit they deserve. Truckers, and people like them, don't write history.

They swapped out a lockdown friendly premiere for one of their own and took over the second largest political party installing their earliest biggest supporter as its head...

Future victories are vastly easier now than they were in Dec 2021. Hell they;re one of the major factions of Canadian life.

Moldbug has this psychological block that many right wing comsmopolitans have where because his tribe of people his family, the people he grew up around, will always be ravenous leftists, he doesn't think kulak redneck victories are meaningful, it just makes everyone he knows hate them more...

Ya Moldbug didn't make any progress within his tribe and they'll only double down on their hatred of people that think like him... but that doesn't matter to the wider right! Their goal isn't to persuade or influence the cosmopolitan tribe its to cripple it and slowly destroy it.

Moldbug should feel the walls closing in... that's what happens when a tribe you can't defect from starts losing.

Future victories are vastly easier now than they were in Dec 2021. Hell they;re one of the major factions of Canadian life.

No. Not only are future victories not easier, future battles likely won't even be attempted because those who would fight them remember what happened the last time.

What happened last time is the Canadian economy lost millions, with billions in trade being stalled out due to cross border blockades. This hit the government where it hurts, and showed that it doesn’t take much, just a few trucks to do major damage. That means something.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats