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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27711 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Take 2.

I posted and deleted this because I don't want to get banned, but if I can't talk about the things I want to talk about then I don't see much point in caring about the account, anyway. Still, I'll try to be subdued.

The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.

I'm posting the reactions on twitter, because there are dozens of two-sentence sentiments that I share. I'll quote a couple, for posterity, and you can get the gist of the other side from the WP article.

Columbia Bugle

Disgusting. Why not give the Lee statue to a museum? Because people might enjoy visiting it, or one day decide to restore it. This is a reminder that the Left wont stop after displacing historic American heroes. They want to deface, destroy and replace them with their own ridiculous idols.

Jack Posobiec

Columbus is next. Followed by Teddy. Then Jefferson. Then George Washington

Jack again

Glenn Youngkin let them do this. His AG too

Never forget it. These squishes aren't built for this fight

Maarblek

people with no heroes and no accomplishments doing the only thing they know: crying to the courts to allow them to turn beautiful things that other people made into garbage

BlueandGray1864

"We'll put them in museums", it was always a lie. The destruction of historical artifacts has begun. Shame on anyone who supports this.

God Bless Robert E. Lee

Spencer Klavan

“How delightful it was to smash to pieces those arrogant faces, to raise our swords against them, to cut them ferociously with our axes, as if blood and pain would follow our blows”

Pliny on the destruction of Domitian's statues. The relish and vindictiveness in this process isn't an accident: it's a symbol and an effigy, an expression of violent hatred.

That last one is really quite striking, given this line from the WP article:

It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one.

Really, you should read the article, too. In it, I saw the genocide of my race, and it scares the hell out of me. I suppose this must be how the Jews feel.

So, is it justice? Is it vengeance? Should it be celebrated? Should it be destroyed?

And does the symbolism of liquidating the statue of a white man apply to the declining white population in America? Is the deliberate melting down of this statue a parallel to the deliberate replacement of the American race?

ETA: One more tweet from this morning, just a few hours ago:

GigaThaad

Literally my ancestor. We carry the Lee name as a first/middle in my family

While I didn't need a directly insulting gesture to tell me that my kind is hated and many seek our extinction (the implicit cues were strong enough) I appreciate this image making it absolutely clear.

Elon Musk

They absolutely want your extinction

Musk, as a white man born in South Africa, should know what it looks like when your native country changes and now wants you and yours dead and gone.

which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners

I'm trying to be charitable here, so can you explain what you mean by liquidated? The phrasing here seems to imply you think Americans are being deliberately killed/destroyed/geocide-ed in order to make room for foreigners or immigrants and I'm just not aware of any evidence of that. If you're referring to falling birth rates, well, it isn't the foreigners' fault that Americans aren't having enough unprotected sex.

EDIT: Typo

seems to imply you think Americans are being deliberately killed/destroyed/geocide-ed in order to make room for foreigners or immigrants and I'm just not aware of any evidence of that

You haven't been watching demographic ratios, fertility rates, or any of the other things that could count? Demographics

If you're referring to falling birth rates, well, it isn't the foreigner's fault that Americans' aren't having enough unprotected sex.

No, I suppose it's not their fault, but they're the ones I want kicked out of my country, so they're the ones who will suffer for it regardless. So it goes.

Have you read or heard of Left Behind in Rosedale? It's not intended to be, but it's a very good chronicle of the ethnic cleansing of whites in the post-civil rights act America. That's not birth rates, it's rape and murder and racially motivated predation of primarily older whites by younger black men.

If you're unaware, it's because you're not paying attention to the kind of people who have been telling you about it.

No, I suppose it's not their fault, but they're the ones I want kicked out of my country, so they're the ones who will suffer for it regardless. So it goes.

Given some of the statements you've made in this discussion, the US is very clearly not "your country". It's a cliche, but being part of the US is defined by ideals, not descent---this is taught in elementary school civics. You clearly do not fit these ideals.

I hate to dogpile this, but to echo the other replies with a twist, I would say that your statement would be true if this was still the 90's/early-to-mid 2000's. 90's civics with their colorblind idealism, however, are dead and rotting.

When kids turn 18 we don't check if they agree with our ideals and send them to Canada if they don't. Immigrants might have a background check to make sure they weren't in ISIS but beyond that they don't have to actually agree to any ideals.

And even if we did, what specific ideals do you have in mind? I can't think anything broadly popular enough that they could be used as a litmus test. Maybe you could get away with some very generic ones like "democracy is good" as long as you don't ask too many questions about what that entails.

When kids turn 18 we don't check if they agree with our ideals and send them to Canada if they don't

Kicking someone out from where they grew up is a pretty extreme action. They will however be thought of as "unamerican" and deal with serious social consequences if those contrary ideals become widely known---the same way someone might be ostracized within but not exiled from of a stereotypical close-knit small town.

The difference in the US is that this ostracism doesn't happen based on just descent.

It's a cliche, but being part of the US is defined by ideals, not descent

Well that's rather beside the point, since they don't represent the ideals of America either.

being part of the US is defined by ideals, not descent---this is taught in elementary school civics

Yeah, since 1960. It is not original, it's a deliberate propaganda effort, one that I've chosen to reject. I do not believe that America is a nation of ideals, or of immigrants. I think those are lies meant to manipulate me and people like me, and they've mostly worked very well. However, they are lies that I reject.

However, they are lies that I reject

It's what the majority of people in the country agree upon. What does it even mean to call something like this a lie? That it's different from what it used to be in the past? The culture that dominates now is superior practically and morally for reasons that have been written about a lot here.

It's what the majority of people in the country agree upon.

And what is that?

Prior to 2015 same-sex marriage was illegal on the federal level, after that it was legal. Did same-sex marriage supporters become Americans in 2015 after decades of "America not being their country" and did same-sex marriage opponents stop being American after 2015?

Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2022, did believers in federally-protected abortion stop being American while Roe opponents suddenly gained a new-found American identity?

I'm not talking about tense culture-war issues---I'm talking about more basic and universal points like the egalitarianism in "judge people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin", the idea that ambition is good, some notion of the idea behind meritocracy (even though the actual word might be corrupted) etc. Regardless of extreme voices amplified on the internet, 80-90% of Americans would strongly agree with these ideals, even if they might hide it behind some torturous word games (e.g. most advocates of something like affirmative action do so because they think that it's the best way to actually achieve colorblind egalitarianism).

@freemcflurry

e.g. most advocates of something like affirmative action do so because they think that it's the best way to actually achieve colorblind egalitarianism

You're confusing propaganda from 60 years ago with the current, explicit aims of the movement. Color blindness hasn't been even a nominal goal for years now, that's been rejected and replaced by "equity". Affirmative action is official government policy, it isn't something that only extreme voices amplified by the internet believe. Just a few years ago white people were sent to the back of the line for vaccines in some states, that's not something you do if you believe that people shouldn't be judged by their skin color.

When the government, all of academia, a supermajority of the media and roughly fifty percent of the population explicitly rejects an ideal then it just doesn't make sense to say that ideal is central to being American. Maybe it used to be in the past (though I don't think so) or maybe you think we should aspire to make that one of our ideals but in the real world in 2023 it just isn't.

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