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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?
I have spent a lot of time arguing with CPAR, and I assure you he is in fact here to discuss the culture war in good faith, and is not here to run a scam.
You are freewheeling. You have bitten off too large a chunk of the culture war to be chewed and swallowed, and you are metaphorically choking on it. What that looks like is a moment of crisis, where one is seized by the certainty that the present situation is absolutely intolerable, and that Something Must Be Done. I have experienced this myself, a number of times.
The Motte is not intended, nor is it fit, to Do Something. It does not exist to coordinate action, only discussion. The good the Motte has done is to allow people very different from each other to converse. That's it. It is not going to help your friend relying on expired baby food, nor is it going to deliver solutions to the problems you list in your OP. It never promised to, and was never intended to.
The horrors you are seeing are not new. Large segments of human experience have always been "intolerable", and despite this, have been tolerated by previous generations. Your great grandparents lived through a global economic collapse and trench warfare. The present situation is not even that bad, historically speaking, and we have so, so much further to fall.
The culture war is not going to stop soon. The part that has been going for a decade is only one battle; the actual war has been going at least since the 60s, and arguably since the 1600s. It is probably going to continue to impinge on your life and awareness in unpleasant ways for the rest of your life; if we are all very lucky, our children might potentially live to see the other side of it. You should attempt to make peace with that fact, because if you do not it is entirely possible that the culture war will drive you insane.
None of the above is an argument for quietism or surrender. There are many useful actions to take, many useful things to be done, many choices to be made, many strategies to pursue. It is, in fact, possible to Do Something, but it helps to have a clear idea of what one is trying to accomplish and what the actual effects of a given action are likely to be. Lashing out is not advisable, and is likely to be counterproductive. What the Motte can help with, for those with the patience to use it correctly, is to learn better about the realities of the situation, which makes productive action easier. I appreciate that this is not a satisfying answer, in an emotional sense. The truth rarely is.
I see absolutely no evidence to support any of this. Indeed, all I ever see people hold forth as possibilities are "plans" based on pure wishful thinking and optimism bias (and sometimes religious faith), none of which, at least to my perception, can possibly work.
And you were right to, and you shouldn't have let people dissuade you from it.
If you want to get involved in something where you have a decent chance of scoring a win, I'd recommend the trans issue. There are actual structures there within which people can work to push things forward.
If you want a global all-encompassing win, like the progressives have, than you're going to be pretty unhappy for a long time.
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