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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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And there is no (peaceful, legal) mechanism to replace that personnel.

There exist legal means to replace a lot of them that do not inherently involve bloodshed. It's just that making such an attempt probably means they revolt.

There exist legal means to replace a lot of them that do not inherently involve bloodshed.

I don't see them. I mean sure, on paper maybe, but none under the legal rules as actually practiced and enforced. Care to expand upon this?

Perhaps I might have used the wrong word when I said "legal"; I meant "with control of the legislature and without getting struck down by the courts as unconstitutional". Note also that I said "a lot", not "all".

This is trivial in Westminster systems like most of the Anglosphere has, so I won't belabor that point, and I don't know too much about the continental systems so I won't address that. As for the USA:

Replace civil service and public-school teachers: Repeal the Pendleton Act, and summarily fire all the ones who have made SJ-affiliated social media posts in the five preceding years (which is most of them). This leaves the problem of how to prevent that sort getting back in once they're aware that declaring allegiance to SJ in public is not such a good idea. Hiring rules that ignore qualifications from SJ-affiliated universities would help, a lot.

Replace academia: Obviously, repeal all the Civil-Rights-era law that forces DIE departments. That's the process. But there's also the question of how to deal with the existing academia, since outright banning Harvard wouldn't be constitutional. So, repeal student loans, with perhaps an exception for ideologically-appropriate universities (and to salt the earth, make wage garnishment for private student loans illegal so as to force market failure). And this synergises well with the above, in both directions.

Replace media: You can't dismantle the MSM without running into 1A problems. But there's a substantial alt-media ecosystem already. Some light incentives to raise its accuracy level, plus control of the schools, above, to point out to kids that the MSM is partisan should get things moving in the right direction. Maybe ban large social media sites, or smartphones, to cut down on that side of things.

Replace NGOs: Hard, because a lot of them won't die without government funding, but you can for the most part just stop listening to them.

I'm leaving aside "lawfare" tactics such as those currently being employed against the Right because they're of dubious constitutionality and execrable ethics, but in "would you get away with it" terms it might work. And of course, a lot of this would be pretty chaotic; omelette and eggs. But it wouldn't inherently involve bloodshed, it just would probably lead to revolts.

Note: Some of this I actually have ethical qualms about, and some more of it I'd avoid doing for the moment due to the civil war risk (although if such a civil war were to break out anyway, or if e.g. a nuclear war occurred and wiped out a lot of SJers, then I'd be more willing in the aftermath).

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort of going point by point as to why exactly none of these will work, but none of these will work. The courts will shut down any attempts. They'll figure out a way to rule that repealing the Pendleton Act is unconstitutional, or failing that, find a way to rule that firing for social media posts is somehow forbidden.

You can't get rid of all the "SJ-affiliated" civil service bureaucrats and public-school teachers, because that's practically all of them and there's not enough "non-woke" candidates to take their place. Abolishing college DEI departments and reforming financial aid won't do anything about the near-total lack of right-wing professors. There is no way to "fix" the political capture of American academia within the bounds of the law and the constitution — doing so will almost certainly require bloodshed.

Some light incentives to raise its accuracy level, plus control of the schools, above, to point out to kids that the MSM is partisan should get things moving in the right direction.

I doubt this. The MSM simply has too many advantages over the not-so-substantial "alt-media ecosystem" to be defeated by the latter. Nothing will dislodge the left's control of the media megaphone except deliberate action by a right-wing government in blatant violation of the first amendment… or else something more extreme.

But it wouldn't inherently involve bloodshed

Which is why it will fail. These people's hold on power is so strong, so absolute, so insulated from democratic mechanisms, that I simply see no possible way to remove them from power except for killing them.

You can't get rid of all the "SJ-affiliated" civil service bureaucrats and public-school teachers, because that's practically all of them and there's not enough "non-woke" candidates to take their place. Abolishing college DEI departments and reforming financial aid won't do anything about the near-total lack of right-wing professors.

The teachers and the professors aren't really that big a deal. To fix the teacher problem, bring back the rubber roomers and drop most of the qualification requirements. Maybe cut school hours if there's still a shortage. There isn't really that big a professor problem, since there are plenty of non-SJer STEM professors (particularly if you seek out the ones that were politically purged) and letting political science/philosophy/history/literature/sociology lie fallow for a decade isn't the end of the world (we arguably want there to be less PS and sociology graduates). The bureaucrats are a bigger problem, but I think it's not completely insoluble. As I said, though, this is definitely a "move fast and break things" plan and would have some degree of chaos in the short-term.

These people's hold on power is so strong, so absolute, so insulated from democratic mechanisms, that I simply see no possible way to remove them from power except for killing them.

I mean, I'm not disputing that that's the most likely way for the Blue Tribe to fall. My preferred grand strategy has been and continues to be "get out of cities, plan, and wait for nuclear war to wipe out most of the Blues", as I've noted several times on this site; this kind of root-and-branch would be much easier in a lot of ways with a drastically-reduced Blue Tribe.

drop most of the qualification requirements.

I'm sure that in at least some states, courts could nix this via reference to the state constitution's education guarantee clause.

"get out of cities, plan, and wait for nuclear war to wipe out most of the Blues"

Except I don't think any such war is coming. So what's your "plan b" if it fails to materialize?

Except I don't think any such war is coming.

All the stars are basically aligned for the PRC to make a Taiwan play in the near future, and that probably means nuclear exchange.

So what's your "plan b" if it fails to materialize?

Me personally? Don't have one, would rather lose than go even as far as the plan I laid out. But that plan is more workable than you give it credit for.