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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Almost from a marketing position it just doesn’t feel like it’s defensible especially in the current environment.

You end up with some autists like me. Largely male probably well above average quantitively. Then some working class coalition. But I don’t see how Vivek’s position is going to work on midtwits. The 5-30% of the IQ spectrum. The people who fill the bureaucracy and PMC. Kendi’s arguments will fill that as the positions crumble under accusations of bigotry etc. Which then means your best political outcome is a Trump trying to do things with everyone below his direct appointees opposed. You won’t get anything done and lose. And the people then recruiting for you and getting votes end up being Alex Jones types. Which Hannania complains the GOP is stupid but then he won’t sell what he wants. So you end with a slider/Thiel coalition with Alex Jones voters.

It feels like asking for a ceasefire. And hoping the left gets bored with their current thing. It’s failing to make the arguments you actual believe which is where I get this unstable feeling. Now I can’t figure out how to sell that so figured I’m not that smart but no one is doing it.

I guess the best possibility for what I call a “ceasefire” would be to get a Desantis type who can dismantle some institutional advantages while playing for time.

But I don’t see how Vivek’s position is going to work on midtwits.

Why not? I think the counter that I find pretty compelling is also compelling to "midtwits", regardless of what the think the underlying cause of differences is. When a dark brown guy like Vivek, or a first-generation Asian-American, or a dude named Carlos says, "I'm doing well and I don't think racism substantially impacted me", I really do think this is close to a killshot on the argument that black Americans struggle because of oppression. The Kendi-style arguments or Hannah Nicole-Jones resorts to deeper history require more time and cultural buy-in to explain than just looking at Vivek and saying, "well, that is kinda fishy that we're a racist country, but these browns dudes move here and do great".

America has more successful immigrants of color than ever before. Has the argument that America is a racist country been refuted? I don't think so. If anything, we've just imported a bunch of Saira Raos to tell us how racist we are.

There are a few probably unfixable problems here: One, other groups being successful doesn't make black Americans successful. They can easily claim that the new arrivals discriminate against them just as much as white Americans (sometime moreso; it never occurred to white Americans to monopolize the business of black haircare products like it did to the Koreans), that new immigrants didn't suffer slavery or Jim Crow or whatever, and this can't be refuted.

Two, as alluded to above, there's nothing to stop the new immigrants from claiming that they, too, are victims of racism. It doesn't matter if they are in fact "privileged" in every objective measure relative to the average white American. There's status to be had in victimhood and if anything high-IQ immigrants will just be smarter at it than the locals.