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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Hannania, Iowa State Fair, and Vivek. Vivek’s response to LGBTQ made the rounds on twitter mostly with positive support on how it can be handled.

https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1690890371398836224?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

Vivek says a lot of words but if I had to summarize it’s basically libertarianism for adults - you can do what you want - but no pride for kids and restrictions on female sports and bathroom usage.

I use to share these type of opinions and perhaps I still do. But I no longer find these as stable positions. It comes down to well why don’t you want pride in schools? It’s because I believe in social contagion (and the broad right) that pride is bad and I don’t want the next generation of children to be more gay and transexual. Basically I don’t want grooming for those lifestyles. I think the left knows this. And won’t settle for the right thinking pride is bad. And then it’s well your a homophobe/transphobe. Masks off yea I am. That is why I don’t want pride in school because I think it’s bad for people.

Of course I think the same problem exists with Hannania’s new position on race. Treat everyone the same. Be tough on crime. Do I think being colorblind will be accepted by the left when it ends up with whites always on top and blacks on the bottom with a lot of black men in prison? No.

I feel like we have discussed these issues a lot. Even a mod thru in a post on why can’t we just be colorblind (perhaps bad summary from memory). I think it’s interesting seeing the third leading GOP candidate making similar arguments. And in all honesty my guess is Vivek’s position is likely the preferred position of mosts on the Motte. None of the pride everywhere but adults can do as they please. The race issues I think perhaps we could get back to the old equilibrium of ignoring disparate outcomes and just treating blacks as if they are white. But I doubt it. The Pride issues I think are harder because not wanting children exposed more directly says we think it’s bad and don’t want our children taught this stuff. The positions I’m laying out are likely the preferred position of most of the GOP establishment. I think Desantis would even accept these positions if offered. I don’t expect the left to offer these compromises because they are true believers that disparate outcomes are proof of racism or because a lot of supporters find the moral superiority of getting to call red tribe “your a racists/transphobe” etc enjoyable so no reason to stop.

While I think these positions are unstable I’m not sure the right could move the country to the stable positions. Which would be widespread knowledge that a great deal of disparate outcome is from hbd and on pride matters getting the country to agree that lgbtq lifestyles are not desirable (which was the world pre-2008). As it is the current positions seem unstable to me and easily attacked by the left and to a great extent makes the right look like hypocrites afraid to say the quiet part out loud.

Also, might be a good place for anyone to posts anything they found interesting at the Iowa State Fair.

Of course I think the same problem exists with Hannania’s new position on race. Treat everyone the same. Be tough on crime. Do I think being colorblind will be accepted by the left when it ends up with whites always on top and blacks on the bottom with a lot of black men in prison? No.

Thank you for the chance to vent on this: I just listened to him talk with Rufo on this and they sounded - frankly - delusional.

The things that they and others cite - AA is unpopular with the general public - just don't seem to matter that much. Because...the public hasn't had to live with the outcomes Hanania predicts in living memory (when they did, they could easily blame it on racism).

When I see normies and progressives agree with SCOTUS' AA decision the idea is always "good, do it by class". But that's cause normies aren't HBDers like Hanania. What does he think is going to happen when we get #OscarSoWhite every couple of years at some major college or you see huge jail sentences for black people?

Most likely outcome: exactly what we're seeing now. People like Kendi are looking a step ahead, like Hanania and unlike normies they know "lol, class" isn't a solution right now, which is why they've forced the dilemma of "either it's society or you're saying our kids are broken". As you say: most people, even Republicans, don't want to bite the bullet here. If they do, they do similar moves to "I'm not against gays but.." like "well, it's the culture...", which not only gets called racist but still suggests AA.

I don't even know what I'd do if it came to my vote, and I think just being here and being so open to his takes marks me out as pretty atypical.

The only charitable explanation I have is that Hanania doesn't actually think you can reason people into separating race from everything (at least not those with a lot to lose). The plan would be to simply not sound super-racist (Hoste-like, one might say) so you can build enough of a mixed coalition with minorities with success in America like Vivek that you can tell blacks and their most devoted prog allies to suck it up without causing another Racial Reckoning. But even that sounds dubious.

While I think these positions are unstable I’m not sure the right could move the country to the stable positions.

I doubt it. Because the consensus has been broken and leftists , deliberately or not, act in ways that break up groups that might stand against the new status quo (e.g. more and more people identifying as some sort of alphabet person). Even if the Right could muster up the courage to maintain a substantive exclusionary position I don't know that it matters.

It's like racial homogeneity: easy to keep. Once it's gone it's much harder to argue for.

a mixed coalition with minorities with success in America like Vivek that you can tell blacks and their most devoted prog allies to suck it up without causing another Racial Reckoning

The obvious solution is to import 5 million cream of the crop Nigerians who proceed to take their rightful place at the top of society. Then "black people" as a whole in the US will be doing well and you can tell the low end ADOSs to take a hike since if contemporary racism was the issue then how come blacks are now doing pretty well in top positions?

Are you going to force these elite Nigerians to live in places that most black Americans actually live and intermarry with them? If not, ADOS black Americans will remain a distinctive group, and thanks to disproportionately living in Southern and Midwestern swing states they will remain politically powerful above what their numbers would suggest.

Why would they need to do any of that? The ADOS can just remain a distinctive group that's mired in generational poverty, misery and crime - but this will actually fix the problem because they won't be able to say that the reason why is racism. "Racism" defeated, and life gets worse for everyone (except maybe the elite Nigerians) - sure, that's a terrible outcome, but it isn't really that different from the outcomes of a lot of antiracist proposals.

That's going to be tough to pull off as long as so many black Americans live in swing states (A bunch of Nigerians moving to coastal cities and doing well isn't going to change the electoral map all that much.). It can be (and has been done) with American Indians because there's not a lot of them, and Appalachian whites can mostly be ignored because they live in a handful of deep red states, but black Americans are too numerous, too strategically located (and institutionally embedded) to just ignore, and too convenient a cudgel for white liberals to wield toward white conservatives to pass up.

Maybe the Democratic Party radically changes its marketing strategy and the electoral map changes in the future such that Southern and Midwestern swing states aren't so important, but for now the Democrats are the party of Biden, and they're presently re-engineering the primary calendar to make black Southerners more important, not less.