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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.
I am truly beside myself, like you, these days. And every smarmy "You just need to touch grass" remark sends me further over the edge. Because the insinuation is that I'm only this fucking destitute because I'm extremely online. When the reality could not more manifestly be the opposite.
I'm trying to raise a daughter in a world that already hates her. I have a school system that wants to tell her she's evil (I'm sorry, privileged, not like there is much meaningful difference). It wants to promulgate "queer theory" at the earliest age they can get away with. I live in a state where the school system will secretly transition children, no matter who is elected. The increasingly blue state legislature keeps creeping closer and closer to just defacto taking custody of children who's parent's won't "affirm" their identity. Which isn't to say they don't do it anyways already. The paranoia I have whenever I'm forced to expose my child to these systems is off the charts. You cannot tell me it's not justified.
I often reflect how I could possibly explain to my child all the freedom we used to have. How easy air travel used to be. Or how fun it was to wait in the terminal to greet family as they stepped off the plane. How there didn't used to be security guards and metal detectors at theatres. How there weren't transients destroying every public work constantly. And literally nobody was murdered more often than not, under any circumstances, in the town I grew up in. I went back and checked the old FBI statistics, because I had one of those "Did I just not notice as a kid, or what?" moments, and it turns out, wouldn't you know, there was actually infinitesimal amounts of murder back then after all. That I had free reign to bike 10 miles to town, maybe 12 years old, along a busy parkway with zero reason to believe anything could possibly happen to me. And I find myself especially at a loss to explain what happened to all that.
No, touching grass is not the answer. Unless it's in a prone position at a shooting range.
Obviously this is location dependent, but the homicide rate per decade: in 1960 was about 5.1 per 100,000, it peaked at 9.8 in 1974, at 10.22 in 1980, 9.8 in 1991, then 5.8 in 2006 and 6.8 in 2020 and 2021.
So when I was a kid the US was much more dangerous than it is today, and despite peaks and troughs it stayed pretty high from the end of the 1960's to the tail end of the 90's. Your particular town may have seen an increase of course, but overall even including 2020 and 21, the last 20 years have been much safer than any time since the mid 1960's.
Indeed the homicide rate didn't fall below that 6.8 figure any year between 1968 and 1998. We had 30 years of higher (or equal) than 2020 and 2021 homicide rates in a row in the golden era of letting your kids out go out alone. The lowest homicide rate since 1960 was in 2014 for example.
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I was with you on most of this, but have to draw the line here. While different locales will vary, it remains true that there just isn't very much random crime. The standards for safety and the paranoia that something bad will happen is the main thing that has changed. My city doesn't have much crime in the first place, but the few murders that do happen are almost exclusively interpersonal, often even within family. There is really no good reason for 12 year olds to not be allowed to basically bike around town happily, as they please.
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I don't liking making old arguments that didn't stick the last time I made them, but progressivism, trans 'ideology', being 'anti-white', all spread much more potently over the internet or through peers and popular media than through teachers. When you say that schools tell kids they're privileged or that they secretly transition kids, this gives off an extremely strong impression that the school's physical custody of or social power over the children is a significant force in actually causing the children to be trans. I am really confident this isn't true, just by observing the trans people (including kids) around me, and talking to trans adults and "might've decided to transition if my life had gone another way" types. The problem isn't that The State is using it's power to oppress you, the actual problem is that a lot of smart people are, without any particular malice or plotting, coming to severely incorrect conclusions and spreading them to others.
This does suck, but I think it's minor.
This is less minor. Not civilization-destroying, but not minor either. I don't think this one is inevitable though. I don't know much about eg the "sf dems for change" and the recent win in SF, but that seems very positive for fixing the worst excesses within the progressive framework.
Speaking of moving the conversation forward, if you know you're repeating an old argument, and you know it didn't stick the last time, can you try addressing some of the counter arguments when bringing it up again?
The problem with your argument is that without the support of the education and healthcare systems "children being trans" wouldn't mean much more than "children being emo". That's without touching on the fact that the Internet itself is far from a neutral meme melting-pot, and has several thumbs on the scale built into it, including by the state. The problem isn't people coming to the wrong conclusion. People come to these conclusions, because our institutions deliberately stifle debate, and put propaganda on a pedestal.
Every once in a while, you express confusion about people not realizing you're "far-right" even though you have explicitly declared yourself to be such, and reactions like this would be one of the (but far from the only) reasons why this happens. Reacting to "my country used to be safe and high-trust and it's not anymore" with "this sucks but it's minor" will, at best, get you pegged as a Hlynkaesque alt-right progressive.
I agree that the healthcare system is in a direct sense harming every trans kid (and adult) who transitions*! That said, (based on contestable personal inferences) most children who transition as kids (distinct from most children who identify as trans as kids) would've transitioned as adults anyway in the current social environment. I don't think the education system is doing anything at all similarly impactful. Even in the case of the healthcare system, they're doing it with the consent of parents in almost all cases, and it all basically reduces back down to 'it's happening because everyone involved believes in the trans stuff and people want to transition', not 'institutions are forcing themselves on unwilling people'. The only way to stop the healthcare system from doing that is to win on the main issue.
I think saying 'education and healthcare systems' isn't right, because it's just healthcare.
Responding to more points OP made:
"The state taking your children away to transition them" ... just doesn't happen that often, and every case of that I remember was something more like 'a custody battle where one parent wanted the kid to transition and the other didn't' and 'the child was trans but the state claimed the reason for taking the child away was abuse and a severe eating disorder'.
I'd like for you to justify this more? I don't see any plausible mechanism here. Trans stuff spreads exactly as quickly among kids in private discord groupchats or on 4chan, places where I don't think the thumb is particularly likely, as it does on reddit or tiktok.
I do not think this makes sense. America was much more violent in the past than it is today, even if it's also lower trust today. Flying being annoying is an attempt to compensate specifically for violence, not lower trust generally. So it's much more an example of a pointless, poorly executed regulation than it is of violence getting worse.
Well, if contestable personal inferences are a valid argument, than based on mine you're wrong. From what I've seen kids that decide to transition do so due to a mix of autism and puberty blues. Chances are that if you get through puberty, "dysphoria" turns out to not be such big deal after all. That's pretty much what past research was showing.
"""Consent""". Yeah they argument-from-authority the parents until they sign the paper, and most of them think the guy in the lab-coat knows better.
I know, you keep asserting it, but it's hard to respond to it, if you don't bring anything beyond the assertion. I, and I think others, brought it up before, it's about legitimacy. We all went through some goofy phase during our adolescence, and a big part of growing out of it was most adults being bemused with our antics. If my parents were freaking out about my acting out, but my school was yass-queening me all the way, I can guarantee I'd never adjust.
So what? Should we bring back Primae Noctis, because it just won't happen that often? I'm over that whole numbers argument.
There's at least one recent case where they took the kid from both parents, and the "abuse" was misgendering, and another one when the kid ended up sex trafficked twice while in state custody.
Out of the 2 I might give you 4chan, because truth be told, I don't know much about what's going on there. Private Discord groupchats rely on there being an ecosystem where like-minded people can meet, if you places when one sort group gathers, but not the other, you're still placing thumbs on the scale.
It's fine if you disagree, it just doesn't sound like a particularly right-wing thing to say, let alone "far-right". As to the fact of the matter - which America? The big cities, or OP's home town, and all the towns that acted as a refuge for crime for a couple decades? I don't even have a dog in this fight, but I heard this conversation enough times that I know what the right-wing response is. Someone who is "far-right" should be at least familiar with it as well, even if you ultimately disagree with the argument.
I should've said "medically transitioned" not "transitioned", those are often used differently, and that was a mistake. Medical transition is a lot more of a commitment than wearing the other gender's clothes. I know a lot of people who "realized" they were trans as teens, and didn't transition until much later.
Medical transition filters for the most committed.
I think in the typical case the child's opinions are a more significant driver, and the parent is themselves bought into it. I agree that in some cases the doctor persuades a reluctant parent. But, still, the problem in general is that everyone believes this stuff. The parents believe it and the doctors believe it and so does everyone else.
If you are a parent, you can just say 'no you aren't getting your breasts cut off until 18' and that's that. Even for hormones, in the US I don't think kids can get them without parental consent. (Apparently they can for hormones in canada though ... lol) In the US the risk is more them ordering hormones online from ukraine or something, which does happen.
The theory here is ... that by banning nazis discord increases the number of trans kids? It's not wrong, but. More seriously, the size of the effect there is just going to be very small. Discord doesn't ban that many topics, and for small groupchats they struggle to actually ban any of the banned topics, including the ones everyone including you agree are bad (malware, cp, grooming). It's not really plausible that that measurably increases the frequency of trans. And 4chan is still a strong example, a whole lot of trans stuff there. The trans culture there certainly has a different character than the more popular trans cultures, but it doesn't seem to be less popular as a % of people there.
This is certainly the most plausible version of the argument so far. That's definitely a nonzero effect. It's just ... the effect doesn't seem so large. Like, the school allows the child to use their chosen new name instead of not. Maybe it assigns them a counselor they meet with a few times. I think this is a much smaller effect than the approval of their online and real-life peer group, and the large procession of celebrities, influencers, etc they see on tiktok or in media being trans accepting. I don't think it justifies the focus on schools as places that are harming kids with trans.
I don't even mean black violence, there was significantly more political violence from white people in the past too, which is the right class for airport security. It's just kind of a non sequitur. I would agree that crime, or even black crime, is not the same kind of dismissible minor issue. I just don't think airport security is particularly related to black crime.
Don't worry, that's how I understood you meant it.
No it doesn't. Your kid comes to you and says "dad, I think I'm trans", you say "oh shit, I don't know anything about it, better go to the doctor", your family doctor says "oh shit, I don't know anything about it, better refer to a specialist", and the "specialist" is someone like Michelle Forcier who thinks puberty blockers are a magical pause button. The kid doesn't even know what they're committing to, the parents trust the person in the lab coat, and the person in the lab coat is nuts / completely ideologically captured. If there's a filter in this process, I'm not seeing it.
The child's opinion is probably why they ended up in front of a doctor, but most of the time parents don't know what the hell is going on, and defer to authority. Often against what their instincts are telling them.
Yeah, except you have to be terminally online to know what's going on, and have balls of steel to go against every authority figure in your way. Most people have neither.
You're the one saying that trans kids come from Discord, I gotta work within the constraints you set.
I also don't know so much about Discord, but I'm much less inclined to concede that one. We even talked about this before, the Distributist had not 1, but 3 of his Discord servers banned. Don't tell me he's a grroming, malware-spreading, cp gooning Nazi.
The small groupchats are irrelevant to the argument. Once you ban the big places, you disrupt people congregating on the platform.
This might work under your "medical transition filters for the most committed" assumption, but I dispute it. Like I said, without reinforcement from serious institutions there's no reason to believe this would be anything more than an emo phase, it had peers, influencers and celebrities backing it too.
I don't want to get into esoteric arguments about Saudi's whiteness, but surely it was 9/11 that was the relevant event here? I doubt OP was wistfull for the days you could escort someone directly onto a plane like Humphrey Bogart. In any case OP also specifically brought up "How there didn't used to be security guards and metal detectors at theatres. (...) And literally nobody was murdered more often than not, under any circumstances, in the town I grew up in.", so plain old fashioned violence fits perfectly well into that (which I was referring to geographically, not racially, BTW).
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Does your locale have any meaningful degree of school choice?
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It's pretty crazy that there's metal detectors at theatres in Virginia. Even in deepest San Francisco you don't have to pass TSA to go to the movies.
Horseshoe theory. In safe places you don't need metal detectors. In ultra-progressive places you don't have them because they might catch the wrong people.
i.e. the people it's objectively meant to catch
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Metal detectors show up when Something Has to be Done. Their absence from SF theaters doesn’t mean they’ve been evaluated and found problematic, but that they were never considered at all.
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All those things truly suck and I agree that touching grass isn't going to fix them. I just want to push back against the "everything is falling, we are doomed" mindset. There were probably many people in the 1988 Soviet Union who felt the same way about having to recite communist bullshit in order to get any kind of decent job, and were depressed about raising their kids in a system so pervaded by corruption and irrational dogma. A few years later, the Soviet system collapsed. And it wasn't even so much because the people rose up in some glorious violent revolution, it was probably more because a bunch of people wanted blue jeans and rock and roll and meanwhile the Soviet elite decided that things needed to change both for their own personal benefit and because the existing system wasn't working very well. It is very hard to predict the future. Of course the Soviet Union was replaced by a system that became just as oppressive, but again I don't think there was anything necessarily inevitable about that.
Incidentally I think something similar is likely to happen in the US in the coming decades. Currently a gerontocracy is ruling over a social structure that is increasingly stagnant, degenerate and dysfunctional. This is likely to remain the case for one or two decades, and was also happening in the Soviet Union before 1985. Eventually someone not old and senile but merely middle-aged will come into power as the situation becomes desperate, and will promise to enact comprehensive reforms. Which, in the end, will collapse the entire edifice unto itself.
Every once in a while my mother says how Biden reminds her of the old Soviet leaders, and is flabbergasted how a country of 300 million cannot pick someone younger to lead it.
This, of course, assumes that it is that "300 million" who do the picking…
You have to forgive my boomer mother her boomer pretense. I think she's pretty sharp relative to the average anyway.
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I feel like this is self-defeating reasoning. Concerns of "Everything is falling, we are doomed" are not solved by "wait for societal collapse", they're validated. If the outcomes are "let the current spiral continue into societal collapse" or "wait for societal collapse to end the spiral", you're basically making an argument for accelerationism, but would that actually solve anything? I don't know how closely the institutional structures of Lysenkoism map onto our social structures but could a collapse actually affect our modern, decentralized online Lysenkoism?
Am I making sense?
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Counterpoint, North Korea still exist. More over, given their respective fertility rates, North Korea will likely win in a few more decades. Sure, they are both below replacement, but North only slightly so, and South is in full blown population collapse.
Win? With what? I'd like to see their antiquated air defenses deal with stealth fighters and drone swarms. Just having enough artillery shells stockpiled to level Seoul is far from sufficient to win.
They would get utterly stomped in a few decades, as opposed to being utterly stomped today. The only hope they have is reform and catch up, which isn't on the cards, or China lending a hand, and that's also extremely unlikely. Population, while far from irrelevant in war, matters far less when two powers aren't peers.
I imagine it will happen the same way as Europe. An increasingly aged South Korean population will become desperate for the children they refused to have to care for them. North Korea doesn't need to march across the border with rifles. They'll only need relatively able bodied workers able to wipe a geriatric's ass. And completely displace the political order of the society that adopts them, but you know...details.
I...don't think it'll happen that way. North Koreans practically aren't allowed to leave North Korea to begin with, the dictator semi-recently announced that the DPRK no longer seeks to reunify with the South, but to destroy it instead, and even so, I imagine any subversive tactics would themselves be subverted by the overwhelming power of culture in South Korean society (and, you know, actually having food).
No, should North Korea ever decide to conquer the South once and for all, it will be by the sword and no other method.
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I'm lowkey rooting for the Philippines to take over all of Asia in that method. They've got the only country still going strong in having children (thanks, Catholicism) and export a lot of nurses to foreign countries. For now they're still a small minority but in a hundred years...?
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North Korea started with strong cohesion and locked everything down early and very hard. That is not the situation our present structure enjoys.
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The most infuriating thing to be told to "touch grass" by people whose fake email jobs seem to let them do nothing but sneer at people online. I spend almost all my time just trying to stay afloat, and don't really even have time to be doing this. I found out about that grant while driving from one job to another, noticing the obscene spending she was doing with no visible income and googling her on my phone.
There are so many things I see every day that someone needs to talk about, but I don't have time and the people who do usually seem to be actively hostile to anyone noticing it. Some evenings I come home and write a few hundred or a thousand words just trying to get across how horribly fucked things are, and then delete it after coming on here and seeing that people had already discussed it in the usual way: "this is happening", "no it isn't, and also it's good", repeat until everyone forgets about it.
Well I don't know about others, but I'm not hostile about anyone noticing it, I just think that an "everything is broken, everything is getting worse" perspective is irrational. Some things are getting worse, some things are getting better. There are many reasons for optimism if you just look for them. And we are, in the US, currently very distant from a top-tier shithole situation like living in Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or North Korea.
Like what?
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It sounds like you're not even rebutting Tyre's claims? He didn't say everything is broken or getting worse.
I agree that the modern West isn't currently as bad as Pol Pot's Cambodia. But the point is that something like that is always a possibility, and there are reasons to believe we might eventually head in that direction.
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