This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Proud Boy sentences being quite severe is on my mind today. 22 years for Tarrio who was not there on Jan 6. He does have text saying it was them who did it. A few others got in the high teens sentences who were there.
I will admit I respect the Proud Boys and agree with a lot of their statements. I do believe the 2020 election was stolen. The lack of a secret ballot thru mass mail-in voting violates every principle of Democracy. Without violating the secret ballot Trump would have easily won in my opinion. The Proud Boys official position from memory was a desire for a new election following Democratic principles. Seems fair to me. So I feel they are directionally correct even if they took things too far.
The right won’t get equal treatment in the court. It seems like the key courts are in cities that are going to have unsympathetic juries and judges. If you flip these courts to rural areas then my guess antifa types are getting 20 years and Proud Boys 2 years. In rural areas they would have judges very sympathetic that the election wasn’t proper and their anger was justified in the same way BLM protestors get courts sympathetic that America is a racists nation.
I think the left is making a mistake with these massive sentences. If they gave them a couple years I would feel it was fair as they went too far. But now I want them pardoned. If Trump pardons them as he should then it’s a slap in the face of the court decision. Delegitimizes the court to have the court decide these are really bad people deserving long sentences for overturning Democracy but then have the next guy release them. It feels very third worldish to me. With other lawfare attempts it seems as though any future POTUS should do mass pardons. I’m not sure how balance of powers can survive this.
The punishment for Proud Boys seems to have some connection to the debates and Biden declaring them “white supremacists” and Trump telling them to “stand by and stand down” (which felt coded). It made it important these guys got long sentences to confirm that they are the bad guys because then a court confirmed what they told you. Same thing with Floyd officers and long sentences which confirmed that they were bad murderous cops. A jury convicted therefore we know it’s true.
It’s another example of punishment for exercising your right to a jury trial.
I agree with Garrett Jones books “10% Less Democracy” and America would be better with less activision and less voting. But America looks more and more like a third word spoils system. Win you get the spoils, lose you go to jail. Which makes elections far more important.
Links aren’t important just sometimes people asks for articles.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1172530436/proud-boys-jan-6-sedition-trial-verdict
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20—%20Former%20Proud,for%20the%20U.S.%20Capitol%20attack.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
https://reason.com/2023/09/06/with-22-year-sentence-ex-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-pays-hefty-trial-penalty/
Edit: Focus on the punishments and any results from the severity. I used a certain frame to put it in their view. We don’t need to discuss election legitimacy again.
22 years is a lot.
One would hope, for the sake of the 'right wing', that these events force right wing activists to smarten up and push the 'right wing' base towards more radicalism, distrust and pessimism towards the state.
But I think in reality this will just be seen as a failed circus act. Which people will want to quickly forget so the memory won't spoil the next circus troop coming to town.
Do that and you're asking to be buried under the jail like these guys. The message is "comply, because if you don't none of the boxes (soap, ballot, jury, cartridge) will save you; they are all in your enemies' hands.
Of all the boxes, the last one still hasn't been tried.
What the American right should take from analyzing this rationally is that no amount of legal or illegal remedy will ever be enough, submit to the reality that good government as they conceive of it requires at minimum a coup, and start plotting effectively.
If the punishment for dissent is the same as insurrection, there is no downside to the latter. And the powers that be know this which is why they immediately started purging the military.
No wistful demonstrations, no standing back and standing by. If any goals are ever to be met, then clearly one needs to start stockpiling weapons, making close connections, weeding out informants, subverting the military and planning for a violent confrontation.
It's either that or run your community away to another country that will protect you. But clearly, as demonstrated here, you will not get what you want by peaceful protest, votes or judicial review. Dissent is terrorism.
Your ammobox is still defined in its compliance to the state and discounts the success of prior defectors to the state.
The Amish pay no income tax. Why are they allowed to avoid the dues of the social contract so enforced on us, and how do we achieve that?
More options
Context Copy link
Get thee behind me, fedposter.
That strategy is stupid. Giving up on society and becoming an outlaw has to be one of the worst possible outcomes for your life. Dying in a ditch in Idaho buys you nothing. It buys your family nothing. It’s a waste of time and effort, and it’s only by rejecting such masturbatory romanticism that we as a species have ever accomplished anything.
At least if you emigrate, you can pretend to be doing something more productive than taking a giant, steaming shit on the commons.
Emigration is a perfectly valid strategy, worked for Jews, worked for Russians, worked for a lot of people. I say as much.
But it is just cutting your losses at that point. It means giving up on the idea that a red america will ever exist again, and becoming a client minority on your own terms rather than your enemy's. Preferable, but still a defeat.
I don't think all is lost for Americans to the degree that such a surrender is necessary. Europe is very much done but the Americans still have a great deal of rightward sympathy in their military, are very disproportionally armed, have salient legal rights that any government overreach would have difficultly navigating without issue and plenty of advantageous geography to hide in. If the ammo box is not to work there, where else?
There's no place to go.
Nick Land and the white men the RAF spit out seem happy in China. Many go for the Arab world and the Emirates which retain strong traditions and a designated proper place for outsiders of the book. Ukraine used to be a popular destination before the war. And South East Asia has entire economic loops built on western expatriates. But if more grandiose are your aspirations, you can go to Africa and stake your claim to whatever you are competent at and maybe get the high reward for high risk. Or wait for things to clear up in Ukraine and help reconstruction.
There are plenty of places to go. Much of the world isn't so bigoted as to detest competent white christian men of good character for the high crime of existing. You will not be home, and you will be an outsider, but negotiating the settlement of a minority community when you have useful skills and a work ethic is something as old as the world.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yup.
Despite having gone through the very heart of the cathedral in my formative years I consider myself more resistant to the indoctrination than my parents are/were, than most of my peers are and than any part of my education. Whatever mutation of genes and memes created me, I believe it has to be nurtured, alerting the system to my presence will only cause an overwhelming immune response that is all but guaranteed to wipe me out. So I will attempt to nurture and grow this mutation, by genes or memes.
Going out in a blaze of glory is a winning scenario for the state. Your family line will be either eradicated or severely diminished. Your manifesto (or as they will call it "your hateful screed") will not be spread. The movies they will write about you will depict you as a desperate, ignorant loser.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You can't. The right knows this, too. State capacity today is large enough to make Stalin's ghost (or Honecker's) blush. Overthrowing the government of the United States by force of arms is impossible, and their ability to prevent subversion is unparalleled (largely because it's run by those who subverted it).
It's certainly difficult, but since the alternative is a slower but certain annihilation, you don't really have a choice.
I think you overestimate the strength of the regime because of your penchant for pessimism however. There are weaknesses.
There's two ways Red Tribe can go. One is annihilation via essentially forced assimiliation. The other is annihilation by annihilation. The best way they can resist is basically the Afghanistan way -- make areas ungovernable and uncontrollable until the government puts a concentration of force in that area. This leads to annihilation. The Afghans were able to hold out against the USs little pinky for 20 years. The Feds aren't going to get tired of trying to control the US, and they will have vastly more resources to do so. And Red doesn't have the culture to hold out, eating poorly, freezing, and screwing goats as their women defect to the winning side.
On the other side, world's first superpower turning into Syria (or Russia 1917-1921 ) would be event shattering the whole world.
Collapse of world's reserve currency alone would have global apocalyptic consequences.
It is not granted that what remains of FedGov would in this situation have resources to subjugate whole interior of North American continent.
There is enormous number of fictional works depicting Second American Civil War, but they tend to gloss over such details (because this would make immensely grim and depressing read).
It wouldn't look like a civil war. It would look like large fairly-lawless areas; much like the inner cities during the crack epidemic, only not urban so less noticeable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Do you really think that the US military is going to be capable of wiping out an actual "right wing taliban" in the heartland? US anti insurgency tactics are pathetically bad (how's Afghanistan doing? Iraq? Vietnam?) and they're going to be even less effective in the parts of the US where the most competent soldiers actually come from. How many Trump voters do you think are still in the military? At the same time, I don't think you realise how little resilience there is in domestic US infrastructure. The US military couldn't wipe out the Taliban after two decades of occupation, and you think they're going to be able to do the same back home when their infrastructure is substantially more vulnerable and the population they're wiping out is the single largest supplier of effective troops? An actual domestic insurgency, if it was justified by the Feds/deep state nakedly seizing power, would not actually be stoppable by the Feds in any way that matters.
Yes, but even if they don't, they don't have to. Like I said, the US proved it could hold though not pacify Afghanistan more or less with its little finger for decades. The Feds merely need to do the same to any ungovernable areas of the US until the people die off.
They'll still have most of what was once Red on their side, because they're the Legitimate Government and that matters.
More options
Context Copy link
At best this is a trade. The military's logistical pipelines become an order of magnitude less complex, the terrain they're fighting in becomes less rugged and more familiar, and if they're eradicating freedom fighters they'll still have 50% of the population (bootlicking soy boys) out to rat on whoever shows up at a convenience store with a Gadsden flag patch.
Don't get me wrong, I think an armed resistance in the US would do better than many people think, but I think some of the optimism here is unwarranted.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link