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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33040 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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The deadline set by the Covid Origin Act of 2023 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619/text) to release names, symptoms, hospital visits, and roles of WIV researchers who had Covid-like symptoms in fall 2019 has come and gone. A Google News search for "Covid Origin Act" results in a single article released over the weekend:

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/covid-was-not-developed-as-a-bioweapon-dni-finds/

This source is not mainstream. It suggests that the legally mandated report has been released, but puts a spin on the results of the report (Covid not likely an intentional bioweapon) without revealing the full text. Most importantly, it doesn't name any of the names that the Act required. So I went to the website of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence. Crickets. Twitter? There has been a post, but it is about Juneteenth.

Edit: I suppose it is possible that the DNI has made their mandated report to Congress, and that no congresspeople have leaked it yet. In which case one would expect articles in a few hours to days?

As an aside, when I mentioned I was excited about this disclosure to a deeply Blue family member, they suggested I've shifted right. I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.

The CIA has impressive capabilities, but intelligence on the ground in China is extremely limited after the very damaging leak in 2013 when China disappeared pretty much all their assets. (Foreign Policy article)

Since then, the West has had very little human intelligence in China. It’s a big contrast to Russia where the US and especially UK have cultivated senior sources very successfully, or to Iran, where the same is true. While the CIA can certainly identify information about who worked for the WIV in 2019 (this information was public anyway, researchers at the WIV were part of a global community of researchers doing GoF work including at similar labs in the US, Europe etc), it’s less likely that they have the ability to answer most of these questions. If the leak of Covid was some kind of secret bioweapons project only somewhat related to the public facing work done by the WIV, the CIA might well not know about it. I think most private analysts are of the opinion that Western intelligence knows very little about the inner workings of the CCP or PLA.

It’s also unclear that the CIA ever invested many resources into identifying the origins of Covid. There wouldn’t be any valuable intelligence data to leverage, and the decision to confront China geopolitically was made before and has very little to do with the pandemic. More honestly, the US can or can not accuse China of being behind it, and China can deny it, with or without any evidence. That someone in Langley knows “the truth” doesn’t make much difference. It’s not going to help the US compete with China and, as I said above, US labs are doing the same kind of research.

The statute requires only that the report be submitted to Congress, so it is hardly surprising that it has not been posted to the DNI website.

Note also that quite often when a statutory deadline falls on a Sunday or federal holiday, the deadline is extended to the next business day. I don't know if that is the default rule, but if so, the actual deadline is tomorrow.

I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.

I think this was simply cemented by May 2020, but it is pretty interesting how that worked out. Circa January 2020, it seemed like a pretty open conversation, but once we entered the full "trust the science" phase of things and "the science" was that it was zoonotic, asking follow-up questions became a distinctly right-coded thing to do. At some point, it even became "racist", which thoroughly closed this off as official badthink.

As I remember it it was after Trump mentioned it. At that point it stopped being a point of legitimate query and started being a matter of acknowledging Trump's query as legitimate. It became tribal. Once Trump was out of the picture it began losing that valence and started becoming legitimate again.

OP's family member "suggested that they've shifted right". Right-coded is still assessing the subject in tribal terms but it's an attenuation from being Trump-coded. And I'm not sure it's grossly off target. Is OP excited about the report because he has a material interest in whether covid came from a lab, an academic interest in "the science", or because he has a political axe to grind? He may well be a pure intellectual, but his family member can have justifiable reasons for assuming otherwise. How many people were excited about virology before covid made it cool and the Trump era made it tribal.

I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.

The Left committed early to the "bat soup" theory and declared anybody who doubts it racist, and instituted a censorship blockade of any opposition (or even critical discussion) to this. While they were forced to roll it back a little because dissent went high and wide enough in scientific circles that it wasn't possible any more to block, the initial commitment still weights heavily on the topic, and was not acknowledged as wrong even at "mistakes were made" level, and this colors every critique of this position as attacking the Party Line.

I was always surprised and a little confused that the "bat soup" theory was labelled the non-racist theory.

It sounds weird to me too, how "they are dirty people that eat weird disgusting shit and live in anti-sanitary conditions, and that's where the diseases come from" is non-racist, but "they conducted a high-risk high-technology cutting edge research in collaboration with US government and made a mistake" is racist. But then, very little that the wokes say makes sense to me, so that's just one more thing...

While I agree it's not the mainstream narrative, I have definitely seen pushback on the framing of Chinese "wet markets" being the source of pandemics being racist with the clarification that

  1. "Wet market" is defined by Wikipedia as being the Singapore government invented term for what in the US we would call a farmer's market or public market. By using the Asian term for it that we don't use, it artificially sounds more distant and exotic. And ignores the actually important part: live animal markets without proper health and safety protocols, letting us pretend we don't need to ask whether our handling of live animals carries pandemic risk.

  2. Related, there's no particular reason to think that there's anything special about China here other than China being really big so an outbreak at a completely random market across the world has a good chance of being in China. That said, the specific animals and local viruses in the local ecosystem may also have more pandemic potential in that region (coronaviruses seem to come from bats in Asia... but maybe that's just where we've been looking for them post-SARS)... although currently scientists are keeping an eye on H5N1 avian flu and live animal sales of chickens happen everywhere and sound a lot less exotic to a US audience.

Monitoring live animal sales everywhere (and which probably extends to keeping up with surveillance of pandemic-potiential viruses in wild animals), and making sure they're conducted safely is a massive, expensive project. Which means there's a massive demand for thought-stopping narratives for why we don't need to do it.

"Wet market" is defined by Wikipedia as being the Singapore government invented term for what in the US we would call a farmer's market or public market. By using the Asian term for it that we don't use, it artificially sounds more distant and exotic. And ignores the actually important part: live animal markets without proper health and safety protocols, letting us pretend we don't need to ask whether our handling of live animals carries pandemic risk.

It doesn't just sound distant and exotic, it sounds impossible to maintain hygiene in. "So this is our wet market, it's like a farmer's market except there are live animals and bits of dead animals everywhere, all crammed in together and all of it is wet, perpetually wet." No wonder a new disease appeared, I'm surprised the whole place didn't come to life in a lightning storm and terrorise Tokyo!

Although re Western handling of animals, that is regulated as shit. In Australia, even in rural areas, you can buy chickens and ducks without government intervention and that's about it. You can't buy them from a farmer's market though, live animal sales are not allowed in the same market as open produce stalls. It's a bit more lax in the US, especially in rural areas, but they still try to maintain livestock census and if say we had a spontaneous outbreak of BSE it wouldn't take them long (within the day) to track it to the source.

So it's not live animal tracking they want to distract from.

"So this is our wet market, it's like a farmer's market except there are live animals and bits of dead animals everywhere, all crammed in together and all of it is wet, perpetually wet."

I think you're missing my point. According to that Wikipedia article, "wet market" doesn't mean anything different from "farmer's market"; it's just the term used for the concept in that region. So you get the message of "the stupid foreigners have this weird exotic type of market that's a bad idea" instead of "China has laxer health and safety regulations on their farmers markets; they should enforce regulations more like the ones in the US/Australia." (and, related, a reminder that those regulations in the US/etc. are doing something useful).

I have been to farmer's markets in the US and in Europe, and at precisely none have I seen live or dead wild animals for sale. No one breeds bats (I think, maybe in China) so the market was selling wild animals - dead I presume, which is pretty weird.

The eating of weird wild animals is as traditional as Chinese medicine. During the Great Leap Forward, Mao invented both:

it is said that the Chinese started ‘eating anything that moves’ after the great famine of 1958. The Chinese government allowed people to even poach wild animals and eat them.

China banned bushmeat in 2020, so obviously, they agree with me, and you are the only one left defending the indefensible. Don't buy roadkill from a roadside stall.

In early 2020, soon after the breakout of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the Chinese government swiftly outlawed the consumption and trade of bushmeat on 24th February. The decision was hailed as "the symbol of an era without bushmeat" by the Chinese media.

Yeah man, sorry I wasn't clear - that's what people think when they hear wet market, it's like a farmer's market but they think "it's like a farmer's market except revolting". And you say "not really, hygiene standards are laxer but they are at Western farmer's markets too" and they say "but there's exotic meat and live animals for sale" and you say "yeah but it's from local butchers and farmers selling their goods, like markets in the sixties and seventies before we got such stringent standards", but in their heads they still imagine people wandering around grabbing livers out of buckets and putting them in baskets next to fish heads they got from another bucket and bat brains from the bargain bin. Or they think there's a flower stall, and then a stall selling cannolis, and then a store selling lettuces, and then a fucking nightmare of blood and flesh, and then a guy selling avocados...

Which means there's a massive demand for thought-stopping narratives for why we don't need to do it.

I don't think that in American society and American public discourse the question of "whether we need better regulation of live animal markets" even exists, let alone has any prominent placement. Thus, I do not think there's any discernable demand to skew any existing discourse (such as one about Covid origins) to one or other side of the question. I'm sure there are people for whom these questions are of supreme importance, but they do not have any way to influence the Covid discourse in any form.

Related, there's no particular reason to think that there's anything special about China here other than China being really big so an outbreak at a completely random market across the world has a good chance of being in China.

Statistical arguments have never worked as "get out of literally Hitler free" card when it concerns racism accusations. If drawing attention to China or Chinese wet markets as source of infection were declared racist, then it'd be racist regardless of any statistical justification you could provide.

I don't think that in American society and American public discourse the question of "whether we need better regulation of live animal markets" even exists, let alone has any prominent placement.

Not markets specifically. But I do certainly hear people talk about the disease potential of cramming animals too close together and overusing antibiotics. Which was in the news recently due to the avian flu outbreak spiking egg prices, which has the potential to lead to an avian flu pandemic. To be fair, part of why egg prices went up is because the US was aggressive about culling birds suspected to be infected.

I'm not proposing some active conspiracy, just the natural tendency (along the lines of fundamental attribution error) to think of problems as only able to happen to other people.

If drawing attention to China or Chinese wet markets as source of infection were declared racist, then it'd be racist regardless of any statistical justification you could provide.

I think you're agreeing with me.

@cjet79 as well,

I'm not really sympathetic to the impulse but one of those theories implies that there are poor and exotic acting people in a foreign country which engenders perhaps sympathy and the other one implies something like civilizational threat and may engender fear or anger. They think hey, we have some peculiar livestock practices of our own that may end up creating bugs, I can totally defend Chinese people for this where as "they have labs that are intentionally producing pathogens that killed my grandfather" is the kind of sentiment they fear may inspire hatred or at least greater culpability.

It should also be noted that the people against the lab leak don't refer to it as "bat soup" or denigrate what to us are weird diets.

Maybe it is just different cultural stigmas.

To me, saying that some people or culture eat unclean or diseased food is a big insult. Its a mix of implying they are closer to animals/scavengers, implying they are too stupid to properly clean/prepare their food, and weird in a negative way that they choose to eat gross things.

If some disease started in the US because a minority had unique food preferences. I can't imagine a scenario where people are not called racist for suggesting that 'hey, maybe this minority shouldn't eat weird foods that cause disease'.

Meanwhile the location of a lab doesn't seem to matter a whole lot to me. If it happened in the US would we blame the state where the lab-leak happened? If the research was technically allowed anywhere in the US, I don't think we would. However, if the State specifically allowed shadier research practices then other states, I think we would rightfully blame that state. Like when an oil spill happens in a state that is very pro-oil drilling, there is a bit of a sense that "hey you caused this shit".

Overall I understand why the Chinese government would be happy to promote a Zoonotic origin story. I just don't get why the US government would care to go along with that story. (which is a point in favor of the Zoonotic origin story)

I will attempt to steelman this distinction.

Zoonotic/'bat soup' hypothesis: "Chinese people are, at the deepest level, no different from us. If we had wet markets selling live bats/pangolins/&c., we would be at the same risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks; if they didn't, they wouldn't."

Lab-leak hypothesis: "The Chinese were doing the same kind of research we were. Are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with advanced technology?"

If one has these reactions, 'bat soup' seems less racist than 'lab leak', in the same way that Rudyard Kipling might seems seem less racist than Alexander Stephens.

It's whether these reactions make any sense that is in question. Why does making a slip in complicated research result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with advanced technology?" but pointing at the widespread popularity of wet markets does not result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with distributing food?". The latter is literally invoking a racist stereotype against Asians.

Why does making a slip in complicated research result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with advanced technology?" but pointing at the widespread popularity of wet markets does not result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with distributing food?".

Because the latter can be explained as being from differing rates of adoption of universal culture (see comments below on western farmers' markets), whereas the former places the issue in one of the aspects of universal culture which the Chinese have already adopted.

This might raise uncomfortable questions regarding whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture.

The latter is literally invoking a racist stereotype against Asians.

The former also links to racist tropes in that the 'lab leak' hypothesis is adjacent to, and often conflated with, a 'deliberate bio-weapon' hypothesis, which pattern-matches to the history of 'yellow peril' rhetoric involving underhanded tactics by Asians.

However, given a slightly different fall of the dice, I could see the 'wet market' hypothesis being the one denounced as racist, and all the (pre-Musk)* bluechecks endorsing the 'lab accident' hypothesis.

(*Or could Mr Musk's purchase of Twitter also be butterflied away...?)

Because the latter can be explained as being from differing rates of adoption of universal culture (see comments below on western farmers' markets), whereas the former places the issue in one of the aspects of universal culture which the Chinese have already adopted.

This might raise uncomfortable questions regarding whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture.

I'm not seeing it. You can just as easily say the former shows they haven't adopted "universal culture" fully yet, or that it was an honest mistake that could have happened anywhere (and did! someone had a list of pan-/epidemics originating from a lab leak), while the latter raises uncomfortable questions about whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture ("they can't even do something basic as running a food market in hygienic conditions").

The former also links to racist tropes in that the 'lab leak' hypothesis is adjacent to, and often conflated with, a 'deliberate bio-weapon' hypothesis, which pattern-matches to the history of 'yellow peril' rhetoric involving underhanded tactics by Asians.

Yeah, but it only makes sense if you conflate it with the bio-weapon hypothesis. Without it the whole idea falls apart.

I think it's closer to:

Zoonotic: It's no one's fault really. (since there isn't actually a human origin, just a transfer to humans)

Lab-leak: People were creating dangerous viruses, and accidentally released one.

The latter seems to lay more blame.

Still doesn't hold for me. In one situation you are implying that their culture eats unclean and diseased animals. To me, there are a few very common major insults for other races/cultures:

  1. Denigrating their intelligence.

  2. Saying they are prone to violence.

  3. Saying they are dirty and unclean.

I guess the lab leak denigrates their intelligence a little bit. But the eating diseased creatures is clearly an example of calling them dirty and unclean.

And a nitpick on the lab-leak. They were specifically doing research that the US does not allow. Gain of function research was banned in the US, and was being carried out in other countries by US researchers to get around these restrictions.

It looks as though that article has since been taken down, or at least the link doesn't work for me. I think it was almost inevitable that the lab leak or other non-natural origin theory for covid would become right-coded because it strikes at several key aspects of modern liberal orthodoxy: believing in the credibility and good intentions of technocratic experts, believing in "science," assuming the best of non-western foreigners for fear of being labeled racist, and more fundamentally the conceit that modern technological advances and research are the solution to our problems rather than a potential cause of them.

It would be one thing if covid turned out to be a nothingburger, and back in early January 2020 when we didn't expect it to spread worldwide it was more or less the consensus among biological researchers I knew that it was a lab leak, but given where it ended up it's simply a bridge too far nowadays for many of them to admit that the system could have failed so catastrophically (although as far as I can tell many of them still privately believe it; they just either think the public couldn't handle the truth or they are afraid of speaking out). Considering that even the 1977 Russian Flu has not been conclusively accepted as a lab leak by the general public I doubt we will ever get closure on this issue.

My expectations for bio-security for gain of function research go like this:

Use two small remote islands: Research Island and Quarantine Island. Researchers parachute into Research Island. At the end of their six month tour of duty they sail to Quarantine Island. After a month, a plane lands on Quarantine Island to collect them.

In reality Biosafety level four, the top level, is still situated in a building in a city. It seems odd that we site nuclear power stations in remote locations, or at least, outside cities, yet the much more dangerous, create-a-lethal-plague technology, is conveniently sited so that researchers can go to the theater or the food market after work. Is there a consensus among biological researchers about this?

The main issue here is cost. No funding agency would ever agree to build a BSL-4 facility on a remote island when the cost of upgrading a lab at an existing research institution is so much lower unless there was sufficient public and internal pressure to do so. The only options for gain of function research that have been widely discussed are either no restrictions or a complete moratorium like the one between 2014 and 2017 in the US, and pretty much all debate among biologists is between those two positions alone.

As an aside, when I mentioned I was excited about this disclosure to a deeply Blue family member, they suggested I've shifted right.

This is revolting to me. I could see myself telling a family member "Hey, it's cool you're interested in that, but note that people may perceive that as a Party X aligned topic." I couldn't see myself going "hey, being interested in that makes you party X aligned." To a family member? Do I trust them that little?

The world is full of contradictions and ambiguities. Sometimes one catches your interest and you go off to investigate it. It makes me sick that this good, healthy, praiseworthy act is apparently inseparable from political affiliation.

I wouldn’t take it so seriously. Not unless rationaleist is getting uninvited to family dinners.

There’s a whole realm of “lol, you sound just like your father” and other passive ways to comment on political valence.

Does this answer any of your questions?

(From here and here)

Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.

I think honestly progressives are, on a global scale, not really as popular as they think they are and never have been. Anyone who’s read any sacred texts from an Abrahamic religion would have known that homosexuality is not allowed. This isn’t a surprise.

I think the point of connection between Muslims and Christian fascists (if we’re to use that term) or even Orthodox Judaism is that unlike the liberals and progressives and secular groups they take the religion seriously which really is the bone of contention in the USA where the progressive ideology is trying to overtake religion and create an essentially pagan religion in which various deities and religions are really all the same, and where what matters isn’t your gods but adherence to the cultus progressiva. And really, this is exactly the crisis that Rome faced with Jews in the last century BC and the first century AD. They refused the cultus, rejected the imposition of pagan ideas and symbols and mores. The Abrahamics especially the conservative ones have chosen their god over the imperial cultus progressivas and are greeted with hatred or at least disgust by the thought leadership.

cultus progressiva

That would be either cultus progressivus(progressive cult/devotion) or cultus progressivi(devotion to/cult of progress), depending on exactly what phrasing you’re going for. And Latin ‘cultus’ does not mean ‘cult, the creepy isolated weirdos’ it means ‘cult, the literal term referring to a religious devotion or sect’.

That’s kind of what I’m going for, as the nearly required acceptance of and celebration of LGBT do take on the tone of religion. It’s no longer enough to let others do as they please, you have to participate.

Well, it could also be declined, although that would be unusual in English, I believe.

Though apparently less unusual in Hamtramck.

I mean we knew this was going to happen eventually. Realistically Muslims aren’t going to demographically replace whites in the US(although a few tiny towns somewhere might happen), and conservative whites know that.

I recall that back in the New Atheist days some commentators would draw flak for pointing out that conservative Christians and Muslims agree on many social issues and could in theory form a united front against modern progressivism if they could overcome their differences. While in the US any alliances will at best be temporary and strategic, in Europe the demographic balance is more even and I could even see right-wing nationalists being assimilated by Islam rather than the other way around.

It's been a project of some European far rights for a while. Usually for reasons of a common antisemitism I will admit, but not always.

Some draw from Niezsche's appreciation for Islam, some from a common Abrahamic tradition. But these are all fringe movements without a united narrative.

I think a common sort of postmodern traditionalism could form a political coalition on these grounds, but the moment isn't ripe for it yet because people still think immigration can be curtailed and the largest excesses of wokism haven't hit as hard as America.

They actually didn't "ban Pride flags"; they banned flags of any race, religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation being flown on government property. If anything, the conservative Muslims of Hamtramck are taking a stand for classical liberalism by only allowing the stars-and-stripes on government buildings (and presumably the flags of the city and state). I don't think this would have been controversial even 10 years, and certainly not 20 years ago. The only totalizing religion at work here is homosexuality - the old refrain of "but how does it affect you?" rings very hollow when the faithful are demanding public displays of obeisance.

Not only is it public obedience, but it’s public obedience that is inherently interesting for children, as they have a natural interest in colorful things and unique identity marks that give social reinforcement. It is certainly making some percentage points of the children gay, the only question is what percent.

So, you think displaying a rainbow flag causes some pct of boys to grow up to get an erection when seeing a naked guy, and to fail to get an erection when seeing a naked woman?

To steelman his point, I'd say it would be a lot more like identifying as 'queer', or some other nebulous label that doesn't actually equate to a change in sexuality.

I think perhaps that is stretching steelmanning a bit far. That is not usually what people mean by "becoming gay." Especially those who worry about kids "becoming gay."

I don't think it's the flags, small kids aren't going to know what that is all about. It's the teachers pushing it in school and yes I do mean pushing it. Like this loser.

That seems like a very odd example of anyone pushing anything. It is 15 seconds long, and in it's entirety the guy says, "In school I was bullied for being gay, even by my teachers. So I became a teacher. Guess who my favorite students are [rainbow flag]." I am pretty good at steelmanning, but I am struggling to understand how someone would consider that pushing homosexuality, nor why anyone would describe him as a "loser."

nor why anyone would describe him as a "loser."

"Once upon a time, I was discriminated against. I now practice that discrimination against others and am proud to be doing so."

Rejoicing in intentionally being part of the problem rather than part of the solution leads me to believe that person is a substandard human being. It's not much more complex than that.

Where does he say he is discriminating against others?

I don't discriminate against black students, it's just that the white ones are my favorite!

More comments

It's pretty obviously true, there's a marginal bisexual boy who if market forces make being gay difficult might just marry a woman and never really think about men that hard; who finds out it's an opportunity be can take and sexual market forces lead him to be mainly gay.

The utilitarian question being, is that percentage more or less than the marginal really really gay guy who marries a woman and they're both miserable due to lack of awareness of alternatives.

But that is a claim about behavior. The original claim was about sexual arousal. in your hypothetical, the bisexual boy is bisexual before being exposed to the flag.

I don't think they can entirely be separated. The brain is the largest sex organ. Disgust reactions to many things are taught, as are arousal reactions, and can vary completely based on culture.

Aren’t there something like 2x as many self reported bisexuals as exclusive homosexuals even among those who engage in same sex behavior?

I have no idea, and our general understanding of bisexuality strikes me as primarily misunderstanding sexual market forces.

I’m positive that in the formative years where their sexualities and preferences and philias develop (remember it’s not unusual for people to have fetishes they trace to childhood), that these things are causing some percentage of boys to become gay:

  • Having special days where you show only the positive role models of gays, no evil members, and no positive straight members, which artificially increases gay positive valence

  • Having a colorful flag for gays and no colors and no flag for straight people. For children, color = objectively better. Color is an objective “attractive marker”

  • Giving special esteem, attention, and “interesting points” to gays

I note that this is very different from your original claim, which was specifically about the rainbow flag. But regardless, the things you list are going to change what causes them to become sexually aroused, and what doesn't? That seems quite unlikely.

I’m expanding on my comment because you asked a question, and in any case the rainbow flag is a symbol of the whole LGBT enterprise. The question is whether childhood experiences and culture can influence sexuality. There’s evidence that it does:

  • gays are more likely to have been molested in childhood

  • boys like the bachi bazi culture in Afghanistan, who are picked regardless of orientation in childhood, grow up to be gay: According to Khan et al. (2009, p. 24), bacha bereesh appear to predominately “grow up to follow a sexually active pattern as receptive males, self-identifying with their femininity and receptive role” as a “third gender” within a trinary gender system of man/woman/non-man

  • it’s common knowledge that childhood experiences can result in lifelong philias, whether this be the appearance of a mate or a sexual activity

So, IMO, it is established that childhood sexual experiences mold adult orientation. The remaining question is whether reinforcement of sexuality in childhood molds adult orientation. This needs to be studied, but I am positive that it does to some degree, because that makes sense based on what we know about reinforcement.

I’m expanding on my comment because you asked a question

Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.

There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.

No, see:

as they have a natural interest in colorful things and unique identity marks that give social reinforcement

Re:

There is a huge difference

But therein lies the rub. It’s not a huge difference at all. It’s a little difference. The difference between being molested by a gay man physically, and being put through a gauntlet of pro-homosexuality propaganda, is not actually different from the standpoint of “how reinforcement works psychologically”. If I watch Alizee’s performance of J’en ai marre as a boy I may become hopelessly infatuated with dancing French brunettes, for no other reason than an association was placed in my mind. This happens all the time: associations predicated on reinforcement.

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Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.

There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.

Five years ago, before this topic was as heavily discussed in the culture, I took my then-14yo daughter to a concert. Each of the two opening acts and the main act did a "gay" song that involved the waving of rainbow flags, and the 25,000 14 year olds in the arena went apeshit each time. The energy in that place during the rainbow parades was off the chart.

Kids are very susceptible to fads (I myself wore a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt in junior high having no idea of its connotations...) and peer pressure. Whether or not the Rainbow flag actually turns kids gay is separate from the idea that this kind of mass celebration reinforces ideas of what is "good," and there probably isn't a wide distance between a kid feeling encouraged to try gay over their innate disgust tendencies, and then forming intimate bonds following experimental gay contact, especially if it's a first sexual experience. If you close your eyes and try real hard to think about how rainbow flags make you special, a mouth is just a mouth, as David Rabe wrote. And maybe there's no looking back after that point.

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So, you think displaying a rainbow flag causes some pct of boys to grow up to get an election when seeing a naked guy

If that’s what it’s going to take in order to finally introduce the Vote Of No Confidence into the American political tradition, then by God, the young hetero men of this country are just going to have to grin and bear it. Show me as many naked guys as you must if it means we can get this new election started early.

To what degree it is currently de rigueur to accept as self-evident that homosexuality is innate is unclear to me, but if we believe Lady Gaga (and why wouldn't we?) it is. On the other side we have voices suggesting gayness, like sexual paraphilia (and I sometimes wonder if this term is even used any more or is seen as 'intolerant,') is a product of formative experiences in childhood (I've read for example Camille Paglia making this claim.) I am so far not compelled by the arguments of either side, particularly as often neither side makes arguments beyond that that their conclusions are obvious and to question them is at best silly (see the wry cartoons of a person beibg asked "When did you realize you were straight?") and at worst evidence of some serious character flaw/maliciousness in the questioner.

In my thinking here both views are now hopelessly mired (at least in the US) in politics, and while I am not as dogmatic as some in insisiting that social science is all garbage, I also have eyes to see, and yes, much of it (and much of psychology) to me seems to intellectually bear rotten fruit.

Having thumbed all that out, I think personally that even if we are to passively accept that a fetish might indeed be born of and from childhood circumstances, one would have to assume such circumstances were at least in some may imaginatively sensual--insert any evocative image from your own childhood as illustration. Even then, though, we are assuming, playing with self-report and reconstruction of motive, without the kind of empirical verification one might demand in other circumstances. But let'w say we accept it anyway. It still seems a jump, as ＠Gdanning suggests, that pride flags and a general ethos of gayness will produce spontaneously in boys a desire to fellate members of their peeergroup. It might make these same boys less traditionally masculine, sure (though I have my doubts how much influence Miss Bardwell pinning Pride flags on bulletin boards or organizing Pride summits or whatever will have on the realities of the locker room). It might make them more accepting of gayness as a norm, which is arguably very much a good thing.

There seems, in your post, to be a kind of knee-jerk reaction happening--I mean my knee jerks as much as the next person and it's true I am not really exposed to this kind of Pridemania where I am. But suggesting that it all is going to cause an uptick in gayness I believe requires a bit more rigor than you seem to be applying.

Ancient Greek and Rome had perhaps 90% of men engaging in sex with young men. This seems high to me, but I must accept that there have been substantial genetic changes in humanity since that time or 90% of men would engage in homosexual acts if society told them it was normal.

There were extensive incursions of Germanic tribes that did not routinely engage in homosexual sodomy, but gene analysis does not support enough of a change to suggest that the behavioral difference is genetic. At least, that is my understanding.

Ovid was out of step with Roman society, and Juvenal, Martial, Stabo, and Lucian, in suggesting that sex with women was superior. It seems that most Roman men, perhaps almost all, preferred to have sex with teen boys rather than women.

It seems that Roman homosexuality came from Greek influence in the second century BC. I think this strongly suggests that homosexuality can be culturally nurtured. I wonder what the upper limit it. In Ancient Rome and Greece it seemed remarkably high. I wonder if there is a more modern society where more than 50% of men engage in gay sex? Perhaps Arab societies?

I find this weird, but I suppose it is just as strange as realizing that I would be a pious Muslim or enjoy eating fermented herring should I have been born in different circumstances.

This brings up the question of whether the homosexual acts of any given man make that man 'gay' or are just men sticking it in holes, in particular if he is having sexy times with his wife/wives/concubines in addition to his catamite or whoever. One of Paglia's points is that the decadence signalled by a societal preoccupation with non-heterosexual sex (in particular transgenderism) heralds that same society's imminent collapse. All very interesting but Paglia, brilliant as she is in my mind, is still outside her wheelhouse on such matters. Still this speaks to your point about an upper limit.

This brings up the question of whether the homosexual acts of any given man make that man 'gay' or are just men sticking it in holes,

Perhaps I am guilty of having a missing mood, or other people are, but my understanding is that most men in Western society would not enjoy having anal sex with a teen boy. I think gay men are sometimes confused by this, and presume that every one would actually enjoy that, but just have hangups that make them feel guilty about doing it.

I think (some) gay men could better understand this if they compared it to having sex with mature women. I know lots of gay men who would shudder at the thought of that, but might be able to screw a sufficiently thin young girl. Some straight men are not lying about not being turned on, and actually being turned off, by male bodies. That said, the Roman numbers might suggest that this group of straight men is a very small sexual minority.

men sticking it in holes, in particular if he is having sexy times with his wife/wives/concubines in addition to his catamite or whoever.

If you can afford a sex slave, and choose a male one, you might just be a little gay.

Oh I agree. But recall that scene in Portnoy's Complaint about thr kid so horny (for lack of a better term) that he gratified himself with the raw liver he had been sent to collect for the dinner. And I would suggest innumerable couch cushions, discarded socks, and, to use the vulgar term, pocket pussies (I will spare you the oddly mainstream acceptance these have in Japan...and you are free to not click that link) to say nothing of unsuspecting sheep and calves in more farming cultures could all, had they but a voice to cry out with, attest to the lack of self-discipline when it comes to the male sex drive. We won't even discuss smaller, more delicate-looking incarcerated males.

Don't get me wrong. I have never, in memory, had a gay inclination. But it's a crazy world.

I suspect part of homosexual behaviour among men are simply power plays - speaking to your oblique prison rape reference. Is that necessarily an urge born of lust for someone's body... or the desire to degrade them in a show of social domination? The same argument could conceivably be made in terms of the "mentor-youth" relationships in the ancient world. Perhaps it was a way for older men to assert dominance over younger and unruly pupils, or for eager pupils to submit in totality to their masters. Disentangling sex from psychology isn't always straightforward.

Nevertheless, we have more permissive attitudes than ever towards homosexuals in the West and it doesn't appear that most men find it gratifying, given how the overwhelming majority still pursue and bed women. This makes me question claims that homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece and Rome. Perhaps homosexuals have a tendency to wildly inflate the amount of men who have such inclinations, whether in the past or in the contemporary age.

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Ancient Greek and Rome had perhaps 90% of men engaging in sex with young men.

X

More specifically, keeping an adolescent femboy slave was a high status aristocratic thing, but the Roman elite seemed to think it a little strange to actually prefer screwing him over women. The emperor Hadrian, among others, faced mockery for actually preferring his young male lover.

Now in Greece things are more complicated, but the broader picture is still one where this was an elite pursuit- specifically a standard elite induction ritual was to enter into a relationship with an older man as a teen. This is documented from both Athens and Sparta, and the elite male practitioners generally deny that the purpose was sexual gratification and claim that penetrative sex with them was taboo- although they engage in a suspiciously large amount of aesthetic appreciation for nude adolescent males. Athens is better documented than Sparta(which in turn is better documented than other city states), and denial of having engaged in sexual acts with one’s mentor as a youth happens with a frequency there that suggests it happened but wasn’t universal.

Additionally, the gender ratios of infanticide victims outside of ancient brothels skews very male(whereas infanticide in the ancient world more generally skewed female due to preference for sons), indicating that the brothel visiting public(which would have been a very large percentage of the population; visiting brothels was the standard unmarried male sexual behavior and not stigmatized) preferred women, not adolescent boys.

In conclusion, the ancient femboy thing looks and probably was an elite signaling game and not rooted in widespread homosexual inclinations. Instead the Greek and Roman elite mostly had sex with women while showing their urbanity and sophistication by talking about wanting to sleep with teenaged boys, who in turn mostly had sex with female prostitutes and not adult men.

Additionally, the gender ratios of infanticide victims outside of ancient brothels skews very male(whereas infanticide in the ancient world more generally skewed female due to preference for sons), indicating that the brothel visiting public(which would have been a very large percentage of the population; visiting brothels was the standard unmarried male sexual behavior and not stigmatized) preferred women, not adolescent boys.

What’s the argument here? That prostitutes disproportionately killed their male children because they knew that at least the girls could grow up to become prostitutes? Seems spurious to me.

That the owners of prostitutes disproportionately killed the male children of their enslaved workers because they expected to put the female children to work in just over a decade, but anticipated lower demand for males

More specifically, keeping an adolescent femboy slave was a high status aristocratic thing

It seems that it was common in the top 10% of society. That is a lot of people. If the top 10% of society can be convinced to engage in gay sex then I think we are all rather malleable in this regard.

the Roman elite seemed to think it a little strange to actually prefer screwing him over women.

This is not the case, according to Wikipedia. In fact, the opposite is true, and it was weird to prefer women.

By the end of the Augustan period Ovid, Rome's leading literary figure, was alone among Roman figures in proposing a radically new agenda focused on love between men and women: making love with a woman is more enjoyable, he says, because unlike the forms of same-sex behavior permissible within Roman culture, the pleasure is mutual.

Several other Roman writers, however, expressed a bias in favor of males when sex or companionship with males and females were compared, including Juvenal, Lucian, Strato, and the poet Martial, who often derided women as sexual partners and celebrated the charms of pueri.

Perhaps poets were more gay than other people?

the ancient femboy thing looks and probably was an elite signaling game and not rooted in widespread homosexual inclinations.

If most people in the elite are willing to have sex with boys, then that is surprising and suggests that modern-day signaling could achieve as much.

How do we have accurate records of infanticide? That seems a rather weird place to start when we have lots of literature on the practice of concubines. Sources agree that female prostitution was more common. Perhaps this was because there were fewer other jobs for women. Perhaps the common man was less easily swayed. Who knows.

See, I have to wonder about this kind of thing. What other flag could they possibly have in mind that they wanted banned? The Nazi flag? Unlikely to be flown there. The Gadsen flag? Probably not very salient politically to Muslims.

I won't deny the possibility that this really is some "Pride is not for the government to approve or disapprove via flags" principle, but I think this ban has a good chance of having been crafted specifically with the intention to ban the Pride flag from being flown. I legitimately cannot think of another flag which many Americans know the meaning of on sight.

I legitimately cannot think of another flag which many Americans know the meaning of on sight.

Confederate, Ukrainian, BLM.

Okay, that's fair. I think my overall point stands, however - they're not particularly worried about those flags.

I’d say also China, UK, Canada as far as national flags go. Possibly Mexico.

Let's ask a different question: if it applies broadly, does it matter to you why it was passed?

It recontextualizes the event. "Muslims ban Pride flag from their city" is a tailor-made headline for those who are anti-LGBT and find it acceptable to support Muslims when, in many cases, they would have openly reviled the religion only few years ago. "Muslims ban all flags except US flag from being displayed on government buildings" gets far less traction.

Moreover, suppose other cities across the US start doing this - are we going to be talking about the wave of liberalism sweeping rural conservative towns, or are we going to talk about bigots emulating other bigots?

Death of the author at play- the actual motivations don't matter, and there could be multiple overlapping motivations anyways; what gets talked about is, as you point out, whatever gets traction and I would add satisfies the biases of the loudest people.

Why is this in any way good? I sincerely hope that people here, even if they are totally anti-LGBT, would correct the record if the more accurate interpretation is that this is an anti-Pride action. I expect I'll be disappointed, unfortunately.

Talking about bigots emulating bigots hinges on who gets to define bigots; Mottezans like to fuss a lot about progressive bigotry but that never really gets traction elsewhere. Or slightly more historically, "Democrats are the real racists" is pointing at a serious phenomenon, even moreso now than in its heyday, but never really 'worked' because the people saying it don't have the privilege of defining racist.

I think that if people here were to set aside their partisan politics, they would agree with me that it is bigotry to hate someone for that which they cannot control. The defenses of anti-LGBT sentiment I see here fall into 2 categories of justification, though I'm sure I've missed at least one:

  1. There is a controllable element to being LGBT i.e schools and media are encouraging kids to identify as gay.

  2. Pride and progressive activism are so tightly wrapped together that when someone waves the latest Pride flag, they're signaling their support of many non-related beliefs as well (more cynically, each Pride flag is being virtually planted to demonstrate areas of control)

In other words, no one is out here saying that progressive orthodoxy on the inherent nature of being LGBT+ is correct, but it is still okay to hate those people.

There is a more interesting argument to be had about the etiology of being not-straight or not-gender-conforming, but only because the people interested in discussing it tend to be less interested in describing the left as a Cordyceps.

Is "this" here meaning the flag restriction, or the death of the author "intent doesn't matter" part?

I didn't say the death of the author was good

The latter, and I'm sorry for implying you thought it was good. It seemed to me that you were trying to defend it as okay. Like, yeah, I get that it's inevitable, but it should not be tolerated here.

Would you be satisfied if someone tried to both/and it: this is almost certainly intended an anti-Pride action, but performed in a manner that is actually a healthier expression of liberalism?

I'm not certain that it is. The odds of another flag being flown on government buildings is slim. I suspect the Muslims of the city are not as upset if they see a flag for Ukraine. They might get more offended by a BLM flag, but I don't know.

Banning lots of things that won't happen anyways strikes me as irrelevant to any kind of redemption of the law itself.

It helps this position that Petes Thiel and Buttigieg get treated poorly for not toeing every line.

What are you referring to?

"here" being the Motte, yes? I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple conservatives and conservative Christians who might take that stance, though they might try to thread one of the needles like "having homosexual attraction is inherent; it's acting upon it that's disordered and bad."

I'm not certain the stance is exactly the same. My understanding of the religious conservative standpoint is that they think it's a test by God, whereas progressives are overwhelming secular in originating their arguments. But I grasp your point.

Is there anywhere anyone still has that argument? I do think it's interesting, but there's nowhere I know of it can be had where it wouldn't devolve into chaos. Maybe the schism, maybe, depending who shows up that's not one of the main regulars.

It was on the old subreddit once, brought up by naraburns, I believe.

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If anything, the conservative Muslims of Hamtramck are taking a stand for classical liberalism by only allowing the stars-and-stripes on government buildings (and presumably the flags of the city and state).

Or they are just politically savvy enough to know that this is what they can get away with.

And Eugene Volokh seems to think it applies only to flags flown on city flagpoles rather than a ban on people carrying the flag on city streets, in parks, etc (such a ban would almost certainly be unconstitutional).

If anything, the conservative Muslims of Hamtramck are taking a stand for classical liberalism by only allowing the stars-and-stripes on government buildings (and presumably the flags of the city and state).

If we went back to that everywhere, I'd accept it. No religion flags, no Pride flags, no "this is International Cat Grooming Day" flags, just the national flag on government buildings and you can fly whatever damn flag you like from your own house. Yeah, even the Confederate flag, go for it. Maybe the Nazi version of the swastika would be pushing it, keep that one indoors boys.

The 'not compulsory only it is' Rainbow Flags everywhere for June annoys me mainly because nobody else would get the same treatment. Though I am starting to laugh at the iterations of Progress Pride etc. because each new version is more crowded and uglier than the last one. I have no idea where they're going to shove the Furry Pride emblems on the design when we get to that point.

Good God, that's ugly. What happened to all that gloating that being gay/queer was so superior to boring old vanilla cishets, because queerness was fashion and glamour and creativity and art?

It's like taking drugs - sure, some drugs can inspire creative breakthroughs, if you also do a lot of creative work. But if all you do is taking drugs and looking for drugs and talk about which drugs to take - there would be no creativity coming out there. I think you need a solid foundation and maybe a little crazy to make it not boring. But if you have 100% crazy and none of the foundation - then it's just chaos.

Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.

I can think of no better term to encapsulate this phenomenon than the paradox of tolerance. Anyone who knows even a little bit about Islam can tell you that moslems aren't exactly friendly with gays, i.e. they are intolerant of the LGBT crowd. So what happens when you tolerate people who are intolerant of gays? You end up with the intolerance of gays, exactly as predicted.

Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

And liberals mistake this for some sort of solidarity, when in reality, it's ludicrous to expect people with a vastly different culture and a vastly different set of values to ally with you. The only justification I've seen for why they would want to "join" them was that they were a minority in the same vein as blacks, trans people, etc. which is simply not how it works and has never worked that way.

I can think of no better term to encapsulate this phenomenon than the paradox of tolerance. Anyone who knows even a little bit about Islam can tell you that moslems aren't exactly friendly with gays, i.e. they are intolerant of the LGBT crowd. So what happens when you tolerate people who are intolerant of gays? You end up with the intolerance of gays, exactly as predicted.

Not this interpretation of the paradox of tolerance again!

For reference, the original Popperian paradox is more limited and much less explicitly progressively coded, and describes tolerance of people and ideas that refuse to be discussed.

The issue with the common misinterpretation is that it’s not much of a paradox at all.

Interesting, and not something I've considered before. Is there an article or blog post that I can link to the next time someone brings up the progressive misinterpretation of the paradox of tolerance?

Just the Wikipedia page on the paradox of tolerance suffices, which features a direct quote from Popper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

It's fairly clear that Popper's original formulation of the paradox of tolerance was in large part about being intolerant of people who are themselves intolerant to open, rational debate and who are ready to win arguments using force. You cannot have things like free speech if you aren't willing to suppress people who would take it from others.

Now it has been warped into "Tolerant people accept all [attributes]. So people who express opinions which aren't accepting of all [attributes] need to be suppressed by any means necessary". And it should be noted that what constitutes "not accepting" under the progressive formulation of the term covers an absolutely massive scope. Belief in aggregate group differences that create differential outcomes, disbelief in progressive narratives of intergenerational guilt, and even opposition to actual race and sex discrimination promoted by the woke coalition are all categorised on a scale of intolerant to Literally Denying People's Right To Exist. At this point it covers practically every instance where someone disagrees with progressive talking points.

The hilarious part is that in Popper's original formulation of the paradox, the very people quoting him would be the "intolerant". They misuse Popper's paradox of tolerance to justify silencing the speech of their outgroup, and don't see how this makes them exactly the type of "intolerant" people Popper was talking about in his paradox.

At the risk of being this guy, here’s Jessica Taylor’s explanation.

Everyone else has given pretty good explanations of this. I’ll just quote an old comment of mine:

And yet, consider that the 'tolerance of tolerance paradox' went from being an obscure philosophical musing to an almost globally enforced rule of the internet in less than a decade.

I hate that that's an actual, real, example, and that it's an even better example of progressive "meme magic" than you seem to have laid out.

Consider the initial, Popperian formulation of the Paradox of Tolerance:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ... But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. ...

This is a milquetoast, classically liberal statement; tolerance in this sense is to literally tolerate other people, no matter how contrary to good taste (or hateful, or fascist, or communist...) they are. It is to tolerate dissent.

This has been morphed to something like:

A tolerant society welcomes all #ATTRIBUTES. Intolerant individuals do not welcome certain #ATTRIBUTES, and thus spoil the society. Therefore intolerant individuals must not be tolerated.

It does not take any more than a cursory reading to appreciate that Popperian tolerance(1) and progressive tolerance(2) are essentially different words, and that the progressive version of the "paradox" in fact has no paradox in it, merely a word game where tolerance(2) is implicitly equated with tolerance(1).

(Consider:

A tolerant(2) society welcomes all #ATTRIBUTES. Intolerant(2) individuals do not welcome certain #ATTRIBUTES, and thus spoil the society. Therefore intolerant(2) individuals must not be tolerated(1).

If I did not make it clear.)

That the nonsensical lack-of-paradox "paradox" is now the mainstream interpretation is at once disheartening and also an excellent example of successful progressive "meme power" in the Dawkinsean sense of the word.

If you’re still confused, I’d add as an addendum that not all $ATTRIBUTES are reconcilable; as such, you’re really only putting a pretty name and trying to self-justify the privileging of certain things above others.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

Is that bizarre? For every story about Muslim voters breaking from the Democratic coalition on LGBT issues there's going to be dozens with (overwhelmingly white) conservative Christians as the antagonist. Like, if I were a Democratic strategist and I had to choose between centering conservative Christians and centering conservative Muslims in messaging, I'd be an absolute idiot to prioritize the latter. Or even give them much bandwidth at all. While minority voters are somewhat more conservative that white progressives (though significantly less so than white conservatives), social conservatism doesn't usually drive their politics.

I'd be an absolute idiot to prioritize the latter.

That certainly depends on if you need to punish heretics or defeat pagans more. If you need to prevent internal defections from the in-group, focusing on the latter makes perfect sense. If, on the other-hand, you need to circle the wagons to not be completely overwhelmed by the out-group, well, a lot can certainly be overlooked in an emergency.

social conservatism doesn't usually drive their politics.

Which is going to bite you in the backside when you're bedecking the White House in the Progress Pride flag and have your transgender guests flashing their boobs on the lawn. Yeah, they vote for you because the local representative is from their ethnic clade and makes sure that the right people in the community get paid off, but they don't share your values no matter how many Muslima superheroines with two mommies you make movies about, and when you expect them to fall in line with the progressive minority you're courting, they may react very differently.

And yet, letting American memes (and the prosperity that they seem to breed) naturally & nonviolently melting-pot away the newcomers' less endearing traits seems to have a pretty good track record. You still end up with a disproportionately immigrant underclass, but that's also part of the plan, isn't it? 'Immigrants get the job (that natives dont want to do) done?'

letting American memes (and the prosperity that they seem to breed) naturally & nonviolently melting-pot away the newcomers' less endearing traits seems to have a pretty good track record

It does have a good track record, which is presumably why it's been decried as racist in recent years, and can no longer be suggested as a viable outcome.

That worked when there was the belief in the melting pot, and that the name of Irish/German/Indian/whomever could be folded into the common name of American.

But now it's all identity politics, and adopting the values of the wider culture is white supremacy, doncha know?

Fascinating that wokeness inspires such multi-partisan revulsion that it can create "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"-style coalitions like this.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more... but also no less.

Non-unique, comrade. We are social animals, and that means jockeying for any advantage, even from a weird political coalition.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

I don't think this is why Muslims typically vote left. It seems to me that neither immigration policy or welfare policy are major motivators for the Muslims I've talked with.

The two big reasons why they tend to vote left is 1. they are frequently vehemently anti-Israel and 2. they don't like the overt hostility that gets directed their way from the right.

A GOP that managed to shut up about muslims, ran hard against LGBT stuff, and promised to cut aid to Israel would win the Muslim vote easily IMO.

It's pretty much entirely 2. Muslims were a republican demographic before the GWOT and the GOP doesn't, deep in its bones, care about Islam when not actually at war with it. Besides, it's not like democrats are anything less than ultra-pro-Israel.

Muslims were a somewhat Republican demographic before 2001 because there were very few of them and they were a largely well educated upper-middle class demographic, which used to be more Republican. Asians voted 42% for Bush in 2000 according to polling I just googled, in general before the WOT affluent minorities were more Republican since the culture war in the 1990s re. immigration was about illegal migration from Mexico, not skilled work visas.

The profile of American Muslims has changed substantially since 9/11 due to further large-scale immigration from Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Muslim parts of West and East Africa and the rest of MENA, making Muslim Americans more diverse in terms of wealth and background, and in any case affluent minorities in general (eg. East Asians, Indians) have turned against the GOP. After Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ proposal, even though it can be justified on grounds that aren’t strictly hostile or Islam as a religion, they’re unlikely to return to the Republicans any time soon.

Also, Muslims’ anti-Israel beliefs are different to anti-Israel reactionaries (who are in any case a tiny minority of conservatives). Conservative isolationists want the US to defund Israel and then leave the Middle East. This would not actually have much impact on the Palestinian situation (and might actually make things worse for them, it’s not as if Israel would collapse). By contrast, progressive and Muslim anti-Israel activists want more overt condemnation of the treatment of Palestinians, possible sanctions on Israel (eg. BDS) and so on. They want big state, big foreign policy, big intervention, just in the other direction.

The stats probably understate Muslim (and East and South Asian) income numbers because so many are students. The vast majority of Muslims near me are still in that middle-upper middle class demographic.

It's a funny reverse from my Euro family to my American family, "I don't get why Americans/Europeans are upset about Mexican/Muslim immigration, all the Mexicans/Muslims I know are smart professionals and small business owners, much more like 'us' than the Muslims/Mexicans WE have to deal with. I'd love to trade our immigrants for your immigrants."

There aren’t very many Mexicans in most of Europe at all. There are many Latin Americans (Brazilians in Portugal, Argentinians and Colombians and some Mexicans in Spain) in Iberia, but because of ancestral citizenship and visa costs they tend to precisely be the wealthier Iberian types. The average Brazilian who emigrates to Portugal is effectively Portuguese, they’re not indigenous amerindians from the Amazon or Afro-Brazilians from the poor north.

A Spaniard telling you Mexican immigrants seem to be nice is really just talking about his own countrymen, even if their ancestors spent 300 fruitless years in the New World before coming home.

There are many Latin Americans (Brazilians in Portugal)

There are a lot of Brazilians in Ireland too. The 2016 census showed 15,000 or so and now it's at 40,000.

Like the Polish before them (and unlike asylum seekers) there really isn't that much anti-migrant sentiment against them, though they do suffer a lot at the hands of Dublin's feral youths.

I doubt this. The fact is that the modern right's coalition does not cater to city folks and muslims aggregate in cities.

Don't you have cause and effect mixed up there? The modern right repels muslims and that is part of why they struggle in cities.

Not at all.

Muslim immigrants congregate in cities for the same reason almost all immigrants congregate in cities: They desire to soak up the spillover prosperity generated by the more productive persons in the city. It is very hard to live in a rural area and charge $40/hr to prune the hedges of a Google C-suite character. If you were to live in a rural area, that is a $7/hr job. You get the higher wage by accepting living conditions natives don't, such as 5 to a studio and the like.

What does that have to do with anything? I'm not disputing that Muslims live in cities, or arguing about why.

Living in cities has both causes and effects and attractors.

If Muslims had to settle in places that need them, they wouldnt immigrate.

I still fail to see your point.

Modern low skill immigrants go to places where they replace American workers for a slightly reduced wage, resulting in a zero sum game, as now those are just unemployed welfare receiving Americans. They do not (speaking in large % terms here) go found new cities in remote regions to exploit new resources.

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Sounds like the place which is willing to pay $40/hr for some hedge pruning needs people to do hedge pruning a lot more than the place which is only willing to pay $7/hr.

True, but the question we are asking is who gets that $40/hr not whether it is a filled job.

need

What do you mean by that? There’s a couple things getting conflated in this thread. Need them, economically, to fill unpleasant jobs? Politically, to win a socially conservative coalition?

If I am not mistaken, there is a bit of a miscommunication going on. When you said:

The modern right repels muslims and that is part of why they struggle in cities.

I understood "they" to refer to the Right. I believe that anti_dan understood it to refer to Muslims.

Also, in European contexts, a large portion of (Muslim) immigrants simply don't vote at all. If one checks a map showcasing voting rates in different electoral areas, frequently immigrant suburbs have very low rates. Of course a large portion of immigrants don't have citizenship in the first place, though in some places residency is enough to vote in local elections.

I'd wager that the ones who do vote will tend to be on the more integrated end of scale.

Doesn't seem accurate for the UK.

Nor for France: at least in 2022, there was a clear Muslim vote in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his party.

Muslims also disproportionately had many of the other predictors of support for Melenchon.

I could see it, but I’m not sure that shutting up is enough. Playing to the Christian fundamentalist crowd has been a vote part of the GOP platform for a while. Cutting out all mention of Islam or the Middle East, but still pushing for a generic Christianity in public spaces, would still be rather alienating.

This does make me wonder—how much of early 2000s evangelism was driven by the War on Terror? Teach the Controversy was developed in 2002, but appears to have its roots in late 80s court cases. No idea if it was deployed against a perceived Islamic influence. McReary v. ACLU was brought before 9/11. The complementary case, Van Orden v. Perry, involved a long-standing monument. I guess the war could have stirred up atheist sentiment, but judging by these court cases, it doesn’t appear to have galvanized evangelists.

This is the exact kind of "gotcha" politics that I can't stand regardless of which side does it. What's the conservative takeaway supposed to be here? That we should restrict Muslim immigration because it's a threat to the LGBT agenda? Or that we should encourage more Muslims to come because they're natural social conservatives?

Neither. This is simply enjoying the enemy experience a breakdown of their self contradictory system. Team red opposes muslim migration for various reasons, despite the fact that those migrants may help own the libs occasionally.

Team Red also brings up religious freedom in every conceivable context, usually to get an exemption from a generally applicable law. I don't necessarily disagree with this, but it's an odd position to take for a group that then specifically opposes migration based on religion.

The takeaway is more for liberals as far as I can tell. That there is a real cost to embracing a far group to short term own the outgroup.

Seems to me that conservatives should (and won't) take this lesson. Someone pointed out here in the past that it is okay for conservatives and TERFS to unite on the trans issue, because their beliefs are so radically different in every other aspect that there is no danger of cross-contamination (my words, not theirs. I can't remember who said it and where it was said, so I'm just writing the way I remember it).

Conservatives should learn from this that any ally whose only connection to you is that you have the same enemy is not an ally at all.

The # of TERFs is so low and the alliances I've seen are much fewer. But that is true.

"TERF" doesn't mean "TERF", it means "otherwise standard feminist who doesn't agree with the trans". They don't actually have to be radical feminists.

Sure. I still think they are currently a negligible sum of people. Women with heterodox value sets are very rare.

Why are they wrong? Are you suggesting that working with TERFs would give them enough power that it would be worse than not getting the benefits of working with TERFs?

Yes. I can see conservatives rallying behind an otherwise unsuitable candidate because they're against calling a trans woman a woman. And then being surprised when that candidate votes against their interests in everything else.

Working with TERFs is fine because radical feminism is an ultra-niche ideology that is in itself in decline, has limited institutional power, and advises things that will never attract most women like political lesbianism, separatism in general and so on. “TERF” in general is also used to describe a lot of libfems and even center-right women who are gender critical, so the number of actual TERFs is even smaller than you might think.

“TERF” in general is also used to describe a lot of libfems and even center-right women who are gender critical, so the number of actual TERFs is even smaller than you might think.

I was including this group when I wrote "TERFs", so the group is larger.

Steel-manning here, because I mostly agree with you, but theoretically any sort of "told you so" can potentially be used to

1: Convince the other side that you know what you're talking about and they should listen to you on other topics

2: Convince the other side that they're wrong on this particular issue and should change their stance in order to stop digging themselves deeper into the hole.

3: Convince third parties that the other side is wrong and stupid and they should join you instead of the other side.

1 pretty much never happens in politics ever. It rarely even happens in local personal interactions, although it sometimes does. 2 can sometimes happen, and that seems like the most feasible route here. Mass immigration and demographic replacement is bad, now the left has more of a reason to agree that it's bad, even if for completely different reasons than the right, and maybe pointing this out will make them more amenable to coming together to solve the issue. 3 seems plausible. Each person has a reason or a set of reasons why they're on the side they're on, and how wholeheartedly they're on that side. I'm center-right specifically because every time one side does some insane nonsense I try to distance myself from them, and both sides do it frequently but I perceive the left as doing more damage with their crazy schemes so I distance myself more. Although most people don't treat things the same way I do, I think there is some of this effect, especially in younger and more undecided people. Even if pointing out the insane hypocracies on the left is unlikely to change the minds of people who are firmly on that side, anyone on the fence can see that and, if they agree, be more likely to become right, or at least a more intelligent left that doesn't replicate that flaw.

What's the conservative takeaway supposed to be here?

That the people crying online about the fascists were looking in the wrong direction. This is what theocracy looks like, if you want to take it that way.

It really isn't. They didn't ban the flag as such, they banned it on government buildings.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property...The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views

If anything, it's just good old fashioned secularism and color-blindness.

The Left has won more thoroughly than I thought if even the woke-skeptical Motte is just buying into their narrative that banning their religious iconography counts as theocracy.

They didn't ban the flag as such, they banned it on government buildings.

Which makes it the same type of ban as Florida's "book bans", which didn't actually ban any books, merely removed them from certain government buildings.

That we should allow immigration in quality and quantity in such way that we will be able to thoroughly assimilate them.

Dosage makes the poison.

Take 2 Tylenol, you’ll feel better and negative symptoms will subside.

Take 4 Tylenol, and negative symptoms will be eliminated but you’ll strain your liver.

Take 40 Tylenol and you’re fucked.

Perhaps that there is a cost to the vaunted “diversity” mantra even in terms prog would agree with. And thus if diversity doesn’t always lead to outcomes considered good, that means there can be too much diversity.

Now whether I consider this outcome of “diversity” is good is irrelevant. I think there are pros and cons of diversity. But exposing the social desirability bias lie that diversity is necessarily positive is useful.

Conservatives should restrict mainstream Muslim immigration because (1) mainstream Islam is impossible to reform, (2) mainstream Islam believes that music is sinful, (3) there is no proven longterm assimilation of mainstream Muslims, (4) Muslim nations oppress Christians and so why on earth would we allow any to migrate to predominately Christian lands. Of course, this has nothing to do with LGBT stuff, but it’s vastly more important, isn’t it? Imagine a religion that would gladly burn every trace of Bach and Mozart. I would gladly burn any trace of that religion!

Because even with all the issues, they're better than the alternative!

The alternative is that we demand native birth rates to increase, or, you know, East Asians and Hindus and Igbos

I don't know what's been your experience with demanding things, but mind's not so great. If the elites want to do something, they will, even with massive populist sentiment opposing it.

Well, yes I'm enjoying the immediate hit of Schadenfreude (what, did you really think you could use white liberal guilt tactics on non-white people? did you think the finger-wagging about the horrible Christian fundamentalists would have a straw's worth of meaning to people who aren't Christian?)

But the wider implications aren't that rosy. On certain issues, the enemy of my enemy may be my friend, but that does not mean we have compatible values in the long run.

The future of American demographics has little to do with Muslims, Africans, Asians etc. It has everything to do with Central American migration.

The European situation and American situation with mass immigration are quite different. In Europe, the signs of mass immigration become more immediate flashpoints: regular terrorism both small and large scale, radicalization, various local-but-also-not phenomena, like the Kurdish, Turkish and Lebanese crime families in Germany, the radicalized banlieues in Belgium and France, the grooming gangs in the UK and Netherlands, the Mocro Mafia in the Dutch port cities, gun crime skyrocketing in Sweden etc.

In America, the endless stream of Central American migration is less ‘obvious’. Guatemalans and Salvadorans don’t have a religion deeply foreign to American shores, they dress largely the same as the rest of the white, black and native American underclass. They speak a different language, but this largely disappears by the second to third generation. The problems of mass immigration (crime, lower trust, lower productivity, general Brazilification) take longer to recognize, many members of the public don’t even think consciously about them at all.

This is probably why anti-immigrant movements find more fertile ground in Europe than in the US, even if they don’t succeed there either.

The general dialectic surrounding immigration into the US is almost always a sleight of hand argument that goes: 'At least they're not as bad as the blacks.' Usually accomplished by creating a category called 'Americans' and comparing it to a category called 'Immigrants'.

In a pound for pound comparison, there is nothing viscerally worse about arabs compared to Mexicans. The most notable thing with regards to foreigners is not the dress or religion. It's the color of their skin and the shape of their face. People notice their neighborhoods becoming less white. To that end most muslims in Europe that are out and about dress western. It's really only the women who make a statement with a headscarf and more modest dress. The more orthodox muslims don't exist to most people since they generally live in very muslim areas to begin with and are mostly out and about when the Europeans are at work.

The real reason America isn't throwing a bigger fit is that America has had the worst 'immigrant' group of any western country nagging and gnawing their way through a functioning society. I mean, just compare the alleged 'No Go Zones' of Sweden with any sufficiently black inner city in the US. There's simply no shock to the system possible.

The most notable thing with regards to foreigners is not the dress or religion. It's the color of their skin and the shape of their face. People notice their neighborhoods becoming less white.

The most notable thing, by far, is their language, assuming it isn't English or it's some obviously-foreign version of it. Next is likely behavior. Physical appearance is no better than third, unless we're talking pygmies or something.

but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.

Any examples / articles / links?

Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.

Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations

hmm... Muslims are still a reliable democratic voting bloc , with 70 percent voting for Biden in 2020 https://www.arabnews.com/node/1758536/world

Many blacks are culturally conservative but reliable democratic voters nonetheless. And for that, the alliance will not be broken even if there is disagreement among some on certain social issues.

I suspect the discontinuity between local and national is down to demographic weight. What percentage are moslems of America's population? A couple of percent? Given those odds, it stands to reason that they would do what they've traditionally done: vote for the white leftists who will give you money and your uncle back home a better chance at escaping his third world hellhole.

What this local election shows is revealed preference when unencumbered by demographic constraints; when making pragmatic alliances are no longer as crucial.

The topic of Muslim conservatism has been talked about to death for years now, and I keep posing the same query: am I to be elated that this intersectionality grift keeps collapsing like a house of sand? Should I care if, amidst a home invasion, one burglar beats down another? Both men wish to fleece me of my belongings, any "shared interests" I might have with the former is a fleeting one, if anything. Not a 1:1 comparison, of course, (and no, I'm not calling migrants "robbers") but this "gotcha" stuff is only good enough as a meme generator for "cringe lib gets owned compilation #314". Reactionary politics cannot tilt the vogue in my favour.

take a page out of America's right-wing playbook

Again, what is the American right's playbook? I see this brouhaha about how "The Right is now the counterculture" but virtually all hardcore leftists believe they're still the counterculture and do all the countercultural work in the media, entertainment, etc. Sadly, I think rightists are taking the wrong conclusion, that like some law of historical thermodynamics, these views and policies will change.

Let me put less abstractly.

Two groups break into your house and want to steal your daughter. One wants to mutilate and sterilize her, the other wants convert her and marry her off so she has lots of grandbabies.

In a perfect world, I'd love to not be forced into those options. To leave the abstract, I'd love if a conservative moral authority had it in them to say loudly, and proudly, and with their hands on the levers of power (and the monopoly on violence) "Nobody is going to mutilate and sterilize your kids, or convert them to a foreign religion and forcefully breed them".

Alas, I don't live in that world.

In this extreme example, I choose grandchildren. Even if they may wind up believing funny things.

Edit: On a side note, while at one point I used to be horrified as Islam's perspective on women and "western decadence", my native culture seems to have done everything in it's power over the last 8 years to prove Islam right. So I guess there is that too. I'm not rushing to convert. But San Francisco has proven there are worse things than an Islamic Theocracy.

The North American right's material position is vastly different from the European... All the Muslims in north America made it through a traditional immigration system and largely are middle class with a few nere-do-well sons that occassionally join gangs... nothing like what Europe faces with its massive underclass of islamic disfunction.

Likewise the Anglosphere has a large meaningful right wing counter culture whereas europe doesn't.

Insitutional left wing media is monstrosity with a skinsuit of legacy brand drawn over it... No Canadians give a damn about the CBC, Disney and hollywood aren't driving culture or building new brands, etc. Basically all the new culture is being developed by individual creators or being imported from various international sources like anime, or Eastern European video games... etc. In addition to the already thriving Country cultureand the paralell red tribe culture that already existed.

As far as I can tell NONE of that has a parallels in Europe or even Quebec. I was in Quebec recently and it was like being time warped back to 2012... none of the big cultural shifts have penetrated.

Every ethnic group in Europe is still in the Thralls of their regional state backed media becuase they'll actually produce shows in their language or mutual not understandable dialect, in the Case of the UK...

North American anglo-culture is just vastly more online, nebulous hard to tact down, and its legacy media has aged and died far faster.

A career in Media or Entertainment in North America right now is akin to being an Auto-worker in the 80s waiting for your plant to shut... and everyone knows it. Basically every Hollywood movie over the past several months has bombed, and most of the studios are looking at layoffs...Everyone under 50 knows working for a magazine or a newspaper is basically a Career kiss of death at this point, and everyone's desperately trying to make the jump to the post insitutional influencer economy.

And as far as I can tell basically everywhere outside North America is 5-10 years atleast behind it on the trend.

...

What should Europeans take from the North American right's Handbook? Probably very little.

Even you internet is heavily regulated and institutionally controlled and gate-kept in a way ours isn't


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