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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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What's going to be the big apocalyptic struggle this election?

I wrote a piece over at my blog about how at this time in 2020 we were already in "2 Weeks to slow the spread", were about 1 month out from the first anti-lockdown protests, and 2 months out from the Summer of Floyd.

It seems obvious to me that all the chaos in the wider American empire concentrates around election years and seems to have the oxygen sucked out of it on off years.. 2020 is obvious, 2016 was only slightly less history changing, and even the 2008 financial crisis was an election year event.

There's a lot of really obvious candidates: Ukraine could go south really catastrophically really quick; the middle-east is speculated to kick-off with a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and going shearly off the numbers the US southern border is one of the largest population transfers in human history with few precedents since WW2 or the even the 4th and 5th century.

But I don't know, maybe it's my mind trying to fit things too neatly to the 2020 framework... it feels like the election hasn't started yet, it feels like there's some shoe to drop or issue I'm missing, something as far from public consciousness as Immunology in Jan 2020, or racial politics in March 2020...

I can feel this massive issue just behind my peripheral vision that's about to draw all my attention and require its own Motte containment thread, and that will devour the media and twitter, for months on end.

I feel like there's this huge world shattering issue that's about to explode and within the next few months I'll be lamenting that I only have 24 hours in the day to read enough about it, convinced that it DEMANDS every second of my attention.... And I have no idea what it is?

-Is Trump going to die?
-Will a Nuke Launch?
-Is China about to take Taiwan?
-Are all those Chinese and foreign nationals on the southern border about to start targeting power infrastructure?
-Is there about to be a financial crisis?
-An "Internet Lockdown"?
-Hot ethnic cleansing in Europe?
-Global food chain collapse? .

Give me your best guess.

What will be the major containment thread at the Motte between now and election day?

I sincerely doubt anything is going to happen in 2024. The powers that be (TPTB — the PMC elites) simply don’t want anything to disrupt Biden’s chances of winning a comfy re-election. So nothing will happen. “It’s the economy, stupid” all the way down. Don’t be surprised to see the DOW approach 45000 and the S&P 500 approach 6000 this year. As long as Number Go Up, the typical voter will allow any demented meat puppet (Biden) to remain in office.

You point out 2008 and 2020. Those were the last two election years involving a Republican presidential incumbent. TPTB wanted to change to a PMC Democrat, as part of the long-term, Davos-approved plan for managed decline in the West. So, lo and behold, we got the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 (talk about a September/October surprise!) and we got COVID Floyd in 2020. TPTB overestimated its chances against Trump (as well as Brexit) in 2016, and 2012 was a rare election when TPTB would have been satisfied with Romney as much as Obama.

The idea that "TPTB" can control literally everything, including wars, social unrest, pandemics, the stock market, and inflation, in order to ensure that the person they want gets elected, is an Illuminati theory. And somehow the same people who also believe that TPTB are incompetent idiots mismanaging literally everything manage to believe both these things.

everything, including wars, social unrest, pandemics, the stock market, and inflation

That's not everything. The last 2 are the same thing (the economy). All of these things can be (crudely) controlled.

And somehow the same people who also believe that TPTB are incompetent idiots mismanaging literally everything manage to believe both these things.

It's kind of the paradox. Not that mind-boggling of a belief tho. There are very smart people out there who think that a computer program answering cues can 'become intelligent' and take over the world as well.

Why would not-very-competent people who have a lot of power not use the technology of the day that actually works decently at modelling complicated phenomena to push for certain outcomes?

Do you genuinely believe the covid psy-op was organic? That the blm reversal 'actually you can go outside for police brutality protests' was genuine? That the pivot to Ukraine when the covid thing became too embarrassing was pure coincidence? That the pivot to Israel was also pure coincidence?

Or do you wonder why all these powerful people lied so much? With lies growing larger as time goes?

I don't know what it is to be honest. Were they trying to take out Trump because he really was threatening their system despite their mostly-successful blocking of his policies? Was it a way to cover up the last 30-50 years of failed foreign policy in the Middle-East, or just some kind of test, to see if people were ready to accept 'government says you can't enter this building at this time, thank you for your obedience'?

There is a paradox of competency. Clearly letting in millions of Central and South-Americans is not going to improve the general competency of the country. Planes are gonna start falling off the sky, bridges collapsing, trains derailing, towers getting smashed into...

Who could have predicted that sending gender studies majors to teach Afghans not to be sexist would not work? To be fair, with a few billion dollars and another couple decades I think it would have worked. In the mean time that's a nice way to secure employment for party-loyalists.

Do you genuinely believe the covid psy-op was organic? That the blm reversal 'actually you can go outside for police brutality protests' was genuine? That the pivot to Ukraine when the covid thing became too embarrassing was pure coincidence? That the pivot to Israel was also pure coincidence

There's a difference between "coincidence" and engineered, just like there's a difference between "elites try to shape the narrative" and "TPTB can make everyone turn on a dime overnight." So short answer, yes, I think these things are more organic than not. I think "TPTB" would like to do the things you ascribe to them, but there's too much evidence of failure to believe they can just pick winners and move the zeitgeist on command.

So it's not a coincidence right?

EDIT: nevermind you did write you thought these things were more 'organic'. What kind of evidence would you need to believe that something is not 'organic', but rather 'fake and gay'?

but there's too much evidence of failure to believe they can just pick winners and move the zeitgeist on command.

The problem is that we don't know what exactly the goals are and what a 'failure' looks like, what we do see is large organized actions toward certain apparent goals, and they only seem to get bigger. What we may think of a failure may just be another possible path. Perhaps making all the boomers go MAGA was just one more way to get more people dependent on online socialization...


I gave you an example of 'TPTB' influencing various thing such as 'pandemics', 'social unrest', 'wars', which imo passes the bar of 'the idea that "TPTB" can control literally everything'.

But to you it's not valid because it's not 'TPTB can make everyone turn on a dime overnight.' I didn't claim that. They have a measure of control.

Most people don't say 'meteorologists can't predict the weather' because predictions after 5 weeks are generally meaningless. There is a certain level of prediction going on.

I'd say this is analogous to a boulder. If the boulder is big enough, no matter how hard I push it will not budge. If not, I can probably make it nudge forward and backward a little bit. If the boulder is uphill and I try really hard I can probably make it roll down the hill.

Am I able to roll the boulder back uphill? No. Am I able to send that boulder wherever I want? No. Can I make all boulders roll downhill? No.

I do believe that there are people that TPTB can make turn on a dime overnight. Journalists. It only took a few weeks for the coverage to go from 'It's racist to close borders to prevent Asians from bringing him a nothingburger of a cold' to 'Orange man bad for not doing enough to stop the spread of the Black Plague 2.0'.

Obviously the people in charge of these schemes are somewhat competent, but the moving parts are not necessarily. My understanding of those who are made to be 'flexible' in their beliefs is that there is some kind of underlying cognitive weakness. I don't expect these people to make good long-term decisions aside from professionally 'doing what TPTB say to stay on their good side'.

For the ones in charge, I would say the problem is their 'out-of-touchness'. It's hard to tell what being 'in-touch' means, but being a multi-faced sociopath 24/7 probably doesn't help introspection and relating to the common man. Especially if most of your interactions are with lackeys who are only thinking and saying whatever they think you expect them to.

What kind of psychology is at work behind the concurrent media coverage of : 'Glorious underdog desperately needs our support to fight back to the last man in urban guerilla against evil invader'

vs 'Glorious topdog desperately needs out support to invade and suppress evil terrorists fighting to the last man in urban guerilla' ?

I gave you an example of 'TPTB' influencing various thing such as 'pandemics', 'social unrest', 'wars', which imo passes the bar of 'the idea that "TPTB" can control literally everything'.

No, you claimed they do that.

If you embrace a belief in "shadowy gray cardinals " sitting in a room somewhere deciding what will happen this month, you can make everything fit that theory.

If you embrace a belief in "shadowy gray cardinals " sitting in a room somewhere deciding what will happen this month, you can make everything fit that theory.

Well that's the point of beliefs, that they fit the observed world. It'd be weird to have a belief that does not adequately address what actually happens.

Unfortunately I'm not aware of a website that tracks media lies over time to reliably be able to provide receipts for what I consider as evidence in this case.

One such example would be for example the response to the Steele dossier. My understanding is that a number of media outlets all came together with claims of leaks from US/Western officials of a mysterious dossier circulating among the 'experts' in intelligence that would implicate candidate Trump in nefarious immoral or anti-American acts. Such media reports were riddled with quotes from 'anonymous sources' and such.

Another example would be the coverage of the Jan6 protests. For example the NYT made the incorrect claim that a police officer was killed by protesters:

A few days ago, the New York Times quietly “updated” its report, published over a month earlier, asserting that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick had been killed by being struck with a fire extinguisher during the January 6 riot.

I saw recently somebody claim online that these protesters killed a policeman, which shows that the strategy of 'lie loudly then quietly retract' had the intended effect of priming the mind of people who don't pay attention.

A third example would be the reaction to the NYPost article detailing their finding of Hunter Biden's laptop containing materials implicating him in at best in highly promiscuous activities with many connected socialites and at worst in international corruption, influence peddling, potential incestuous pedophilia... The reaction was of course to censor, dismiss, diminish as much as possible, using the same previously discredited 'anonymous intelligence' sources as for the Steele dossier, or the WMD in Iraq story... Why'd they stop using the same gimmick when it still works?

I believe that there are 2 underlying facts behind these examples:

  • media professionals have a narrative that they're trying to push (duh)
  • they coordinate together to either push false narratives or kill true but embarrassing ones, along with intelligence agencies/government operatives and social media companies, especially when it matters most right before elections

Does this involve "shadowy gray cardinals"? I suppose you could call the people in charge of media companies that, as well as the government officials they interact with, as well as the coordinators at the social media company level. Can the room be an email chain? Or a zoom meeting?

Perhaps when they wipe the servers they use to communicate confidential information on, they do not use acid, and Hillary does not personally smash them with a hammer.

Is it still a conspiracy if they're not literally wearing capes and bathing in blood?

How does your theory fit the facts better than my theory, which is "The media is very liberal and captured by woke nowadays, and thus needs to no cabal to push a particular narrative; nonetheless, they do not have the organization or unity or control to just make everyone do what they want"?

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