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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Reactionaries like this man, by his own words, are people who lost their faith in God and worshiped the devil. The analogy is quite the apt one: they did NOT stop believing in the creed of their peers and shrugged along, they worked and work along to actively support the opposite of whatever is the norm among their own people.

This isn't unique to uniquely online rightists, of course. The beating heart of radical SocJus advocates is the body of people who couldn't be happier to get the hell away from red tribe America; they do everything the opposite way they were raised because they hate the communities they were born into. These people, too, prove the old adage that reversed stupidity isn't intelligence, insofar a way of life that works for so many people is 'stupid'.

The difference, of course, is that people who want to get the hell out of the red tribe can and do go blue. It suits them fine, they adapt well, it isn't really an issue, it's a worn-out trope at this point. People like the blogger in the OP have nowhere to go: very few of them indeed live relatively normal red tribers' lives, instead preferring to be nostalgic over a past that never was or continuing to live in a culture they actively despise.

tl;dr: learn to weld lmao

You sing the song of loyalty. But it is loyalty to traitors. Which is no loyalty at all.

Reaction isn't reversed progressivism.

The reactionaries we have in 2023 AD are absolutely failed progressivists, no matter what lofty ideals and past figures they worship. If any of their idols met these guys, they would despise them, and rightly so.

Society goes in waves. We are at Rome in 410 right now, and the archetype of our age is Andrew Tate or the vandals. Great men don't come yet, they will come once the Tates of the world are done partying. Charlemagne, Buddha, Mohamed came out of mobs of essentially bandits and installed order. For them to come about we need desert raiders, Gothic warlords, and Indian city states warring with each other. What we need is conquistador and viking spirit in order to create the vigor and virility that can later turn society to the right.

It wouldn't surprise me if the most virile force in Russia comming forward will come from the Wagner group despite it mainly consisting of the dredges of society.

We are at Rome in 410 right now

If we're doing Rome analogies, I find the Crisis of the Third Century to be more apt.

The warrior emperors did not really have a great time in the Dominate era of Rome. Emperor Aurelian took back the seceding provinces in the 270s, sure, but then he was assassinated by the political system he left festering, and Rome was right back into crisis. If you're really intent on sticking to the 5th century, Emperor Majorian was another one of these types. He did basically the same thing as Aurelian in the 450s, and then got assassinated by one of those Gothic warlords you were pining for. So be careful what you wish for.

What truly saves a declining empire is not the great warrior and his army, it's the great reformer who cleans his room. The empire was lucky that Diocletian saved the empire with his pen after Aurelian failed with his sword. Nobody like that came after Majorian.

Citing a handful of historical examples we've all heard of before is a poor substitute for an actual argument.

Order isn't going to be brought about by politicians or people reading books and getting inspired. The actual vigor and virility required to bring about actual change will take extreme circumstance. The more extreme circumstances listed above can drive people toward the maximum of the potential while instilling a strong sense of duty, honour, and group oriented values.

Order? We have order. We may even have too much of it. I'm just not seeing it.

It seems more like anarcho-tyranny, ie

Anarcho-Tyranny is a concept where the state permits or encourages chaos in limited form, either out of laziness or malice, through selective interpretation of the legal code. The state is ruthlessly tyrannical in the enforcement of some minor codes while willfully ignorant of those that promote a sense of security. Thomas Fleming describes anarcho-tyranny as "law without order: a constant busybodying about behavior that does not at all derive from a shared moral consensus."

Society can be very disordered and keep trudging on, with people being kept in check via fear of being destroyed by social media mobs and or the police state/military should one go against a protected group.

we have order

Banks are stable. Politics civil. People are rarely rioting. Much less getting mugged. And when they are law abiding citizens intervene, to the approbation of the strong institutions that form our social order.

One's place in society is clear, and so is the path to get there.

Everyone essentially believes the same things, and they yield to the appropriate authorities for those few cases where they don't.

We have order.

I agree of course, but this is absolutely and necessarily compatible with my point. Not to mention exactly what those past figures would and did predict.

Reaction isn't reversed progressivism.

@HlynkaCG would disagree.

And would draw significant flak for it.

There is a defensible argument. Reaction, progressivism, anarchy—radical politics are predicated on a disdain for the status quo. It’s the assessment of said status quo which differs. You don’t get to reaction by reversing progressivism, but you can get there by applying the same operations to a different worldview.

The theory falls apart when one tries to compare policy. NRx and woke policies are only superficially similar because the initial conditions are so different.

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