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I wanted to write about the WPATH leaks: the cancers and the shrinks debating over how many of a 12 year old's "multiple personalities" need to be transsexual before they should give them hormones and surgery.
I wanted to write about a woman I know who just got a $90,000 government grant for her instagram hobby farm, alongside hundreds of other fake businesses like "the Black farmers collective." Taxpayers gave her more money than her business will ever have in revenue to play upper-middle-class status games while the few remaining real farmers around her are going out of business.
I wanted to write about watching my friend once again change all the grocery store tags because prices keep skyrocketing as talking heads insist we're imagining it all and everyone's actually getting super rich.
I wanted to write about my state banning non-"cage free" eggs and claiming it won't increase prices... because they negotiated a kickback deal with the remaining suppliers to eat the cost until after the '24 election, after which they can harvest their monopoly rents and some lobby group can release an official report claiming the price increases were unrelated.
I wanted to write about how my state house just banned natural gas hookups and enabled pressuring companies to drop service to existing customers.
I wanted to write about the people chanting "glory to the martyrs by any means necessary" while insisting nobody could possibly suspect them of supporting Hamas, with every leftist somehow getting an identical memo about how to provide cover for them.
But what's the point? Seriously, why even talk about this just to get gaslit by the people who are celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?
You could spend your entire life writing tens of thousands of words explaining and analyzing this insanity, and all it does it give the perpetrators the satisfaction of gloating about getting away with it.
What are we even doing here? Are we just going to keep doing it forever as the country goes completely insane?
Why? What possible good will it do? Is this whole place just a safety release valve to stop any pressure building up against the overton window slamming left faster than the eye can see?
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good? Can anyone point to an example of it doing any good in the past? Has culture war discussion on the motte ever actually led to anyone solving culture war problems? The closest thing I can come up with are TracingWoodgrain's exposés, which while incredible have hardly moved the needle on public awareness.
Virtually all the energy expended here seems to be vented straight into the void, almost like it's deliberately set up to do so, keeping people arguing in circles until it's too late to do anything about it. And it's been going on for over a decade! When will it stop?
Edit:
I hope this example might get across what I mean. A few weeks ago I wasted time finding out about "multiplicity" (the new social contagion of kids who spend too much time on discord deciding they're all "plural systems" of different personalities). Did a bunch of research, got on a bunch of discords that use the "pluralkit" plugin, found examples of psychologists taking it seriously, started writing a post.
It turned out Gattsuru was already talking about it last year like it was just a normal thing that normies will learn to accept soon.
Yesterday we found out a bunch of WPATH associates all treat it like a legitimate and uncontroversial diagnosis that lots of their "trans kids" mysteriously have. It hardly made a splash in the news. Pretty soon people will be mocking anyone who cares about it.
I realized that any discussion I started on the motte would be pointless. It would just run the same circle of "noticing, denial, minimization, celebration, resigned acceptance" that literally all culture war events go through here.
What good would bringing it to anyone's attention do? Even the most bizarre event that would have been considered unimaginably stupid until the second it happens will just be rationalized away like it's no big deal.
Consider that in writing mindkilled screeds about how terrible everything is, you're probably part of the problem. Maybe engage in a bit of self-reflection. Consider compromise. Read the aspirational text at the top of the culture war thread. Do something that makes you happy. Touch grass?
More realistically, Trump gets elected, Republicans suddenly stop caring about deficit spending and cut taxes and voila - all of your problems are magically solved. Instead of crying about how bad everything is you'll be crowing about the liberal snowflakes losing their minds over Orange Man Bad and TDS.
I used to. When the people like you were diluted by those who were well-meaning, who wanted to have actual conversations and maybe learn a thing or two from someone with a different perspective.
How about this? If you can manage to write a measured and polite post about any of the topics above, I'll respond in kind. If the though of trying to do that is so abhorrent, then maybe this isn't the place for you.
This, right here, is exactly the thing I was talking about.
My friend is feeding his new daughter on the free expired baby food he gets from his grocery store job, while this instagram play-farmer writes grants for more money than he makes in a year. And you think I need to "touch grass" if that bothers me, and that I'll suddenly stop caring if Trump is elected for some reason?
I don't believe your motivation for engaging is to discuss the culture war. I think you're waging it by manipulating people into passive acceptance.
How would you feel about writing a post about the WPATH leaks and letting other people respond to it, rather than the other way round? Would you be willing to try?
Ah. Was I 'gaslighting you while celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?' Slamming the Overton window leftwards on you? Or something else you edited out of your post?
I don't think my post was particularly celebratory, nor do I think I made any comment on the object level issues you raised in your post. But whatever, the one leftish leaning person who bothered to reply to your post managed to perfectly demonstrate all the problems you were complaining about. Bravo.
Alright. Forget about the black person who got taxpayer money for a moment (we can go back to it later if you like). Imagine that I'm an actual human being and I want to help your friend and people like them - what should I do? What set of policies do you think would be most helpful to your friend? Was he significantly better off when he was stocking shelves five or ten years ago? And do you think grocery store workers had it better in 1990, 2005, or 2020ish?
Hello, pot. Kettle here. You're black.
But then, give me some advice. How could I reply to your post in a way that wouldn't be 1) denying these are problems or 2) manipulating people into passive acceptance, short of agreeing with you on every point and accepting that leftists are evil? I'd invite you to sketch out a very brief outline of what such a post might look like such that you think you could have a productive conversation.
This place is right-wing twitter (insert "always has been" meme) but verbose and you're not allowed to call stuff gay or retarded. Accept that and you'll have more fun.
EDIT: Come on guys, you know it's true. Don't shoot the messenger.
You have upset the hive mind and will be downvoted accordingly.
When Trace split off I kinda thought he was being a pansy. But now I kind of get it. I’m pretty right-wing these days on a lot of issues, and get upvoted when I express such sentiments. But defending the left at all from unfair accusations or criticizing the right at all tends to bring a lot of downvotes.
I think we are a bit right of a sweet spot to avoid a groupthink spiral.
The linked photo is my thought on so much of what gets posted here. Twitter does it mostly from the left, others do it more from the right, but it's never all that useful.
/images/17101734210792935.webp
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This is exactly what culture war "discussion" is. Snide little manipulative tactics, rhetoric meant to goad, bully, and insinuate.
We've been doing this for ten god damn years as things get crazier and crazier, but the methods always stay the same.
Why do you do it? How long will you keep doing it? Will you ever stop? Will you someday say "oh, the revolution has gotten to my stop and I want off," or is the only real goal to keep pushing and hurting and winning endlessly?
Contrary to what Trump claimed, nobody ever really gets tired of winning.
I don't think that Trump "claimed" that. Here's what he said.
I think it's pretty obvious that the first part's a joke.
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Bro, if you think that Chrisprattalpharaptr is some kind of leftist demon who just wants to keep hurting people endlessly, you're probably psychologically as far gone into irrational wild overreaction mode as leftists who think that everybody to the right of Joe Biden is a literal fascist who wants to put trans people in death camps.
I've been reading his posts from the 2020 riots on reddit. Let's just say I firmly disagree with you.
Please link some.
ChrisPratt wasn't the most bloodthirsty during the riots, but it's always made his paeans against accellerationism fall a little flat when he said :
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They're not going to get tired of winning any more than you're going to start enjoying losing.
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