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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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I guess what I'm asking is: where the liberals at? Or alternatively, why has the proportion of racists increased dramatically since moving off Reddit?

I may kind of qualify?

While I appear on themotte: I have limited amount of time that I can spend on "someone is wrong on the internet".

And there is only so much that I will spend on arguing with handle abbreviated to SS about holocaust denial. It can be sort of interesting but only in low doses. (the same goes for other witchy topics)

Many other topics seems to be equally witchy in noninteresting way, where I have no competence or interest or are extremely USA-specific in a boring way.

And when something is on topic, it is often of so low quality that it is eyerolling.

Yeah - like, there's an argument on this thread about leftists not wanting to argue.

But, this isn't true - go to a Democratic/left-leaning well-educated group of political types and ask them about health care, taxes, etc. and they'll be a bunch of different ideas thrown around.

It's just yes, I don't have much interest in arguing about why the 2020 election wasn't stolen, why the Jew's don't actually control everything, how smart or not specific racial groups are, and how much we have to limit women's freedom to get them to make more babies, and start having them earlier.

Note, even controversial stuff is fine if it's based in actual reality - if somebody wants to argue we should stay out of Ukraine because America shouldn't involve itself in European power politics or something like that, OK. But, if it's arguing about how America helped an illegal coup in 2014, and Ukraine is full of Nazi's, then yeah, there's not much to talk about.

Same thing on immigration - if you want to talk about economics versus culture, or criminal rates or whatever, again, we'll probably disagree heavily, but there's something there. If your belief is well, immigration has basically been too high since anywhere from 1830 to 1970 depending on the poster, and our racial mix has been terrible since then, then there's not much to talk about.

In general, when I try to get involved here is when something is insanely wrong on a basic thing, when I think the actual left-wing view is being wrongly thought out, or something like that. But in general, this place is less interesting, not because it's more right-wing, but I already know the responses to anything the moment an issue or story gets brought up.

Which, I'm sure one could say about left-leaning forums or arguments, but y'know, we're right and you're wrong. More seriously though, on the issues I care about and don't have 100% firm opinions on, like health care, taxes, spending, foreign policy, and so on, there are plenty of conversations going on in left-wing, center-left, and centrist spaces. But, if you're only interest is proving social freedom of women has gone too far and we need to IQ test everybody to put them in their proper place in society, then yeah, left-leaning spaces probably do similar.

I don't have much interest in arguing about why the 2020 election wasn't stolen, why the Jew's don't actually control everything, how smart or not specific racial groups are, and how much we have to limit women's freedom to get them to make more babies, and start having them earlier.

I think this is a pretty heterogenedous collection of topics in terms of how debatable they are.

I think that the 2020 election almost certainly wasn't stolen and I have not seen any good evidence to the contrary. I think the legitimacy of the 2020 election is debatable, but not very.

The Jews clearly don't control everything, that is not debatable. Jews are obviously heavily overrepresented in elite positions compared to their population size, and it is interesting to talk about why that is. But the idea that the Jews control everything is not debatable because it is simply ludicrous.

How smart or not specific racial groups are is highly debatable. It is obviously true that different racial groups differ significantly in average intelligence. I don't think there can be any reasonable debate about that. However, there is a lot of worthwhile debate about why they differ in average intelligence, what the detailed nature of the differences is, and how easy the differences are to change going forward. Nature vs nurture when it comes to intelligence seems like a pretty interesting and worthwhile debate to me. People who lean on the "nature" side of things aren't necessarily frothing racists who want to hurt other ethnic groups, although many are.

As for the idea that we have to limit women's freedom to get them to make more babies, this one basically boils down to preference. I personally consider people who want to limit women's freedom to get them to make more babies to be disgusting, and I mock them wherever possible. However, my point about preference is that unlike the previous three topics, this one does not boil down to a disagreement about facts. It boils down to largely irrational preferences and matters of taste. Liberalism vs authoritarianism, for example. Hence, it is in nature different from the previous three. I personally am more liberal than the majority of people here, but I also understand that I cannot argue people who do not fundamentally find authoritarianism objectionable out of their authoritarianism by using facts any more than I could argue someone out of thinking that a particular kind of food tastes good. So, while I deeply loathe authoritarian social conservatives and find them repulsive on a fundamental level, nonetheless I can see that the core of the debate that I have with them boils down to preferences rather than disagreements about fact. It is thus a very different kind of debate than the debate over whether the 2020 election was stolen.

But, if it's arguing about how America helped an illegal coup in 2014, and Ukraine is full of Nazi's, then yeah, there's not much to talk about.

I don't understand this part. I mean, we can debate the extent to which America helped the 2014 revolution, and the answer might indeed be "very little", but to me it seems hard to dispute that America at the very minimum stood by and cheered for the revolution. And cheering counts as helping, even if on a minimum level. In reality, I find it hard to imagine that America, with all its three letter agencies, did nothing except cheer. I don't necessarily think that America instigated the revolution, but I would be surprised if it did not at the least jump in and try to take advantage of it once it started.

Is it the "illegal coup" part that you specifically disagree with? As far as I know, the legality of what happened is disputable, but to me it seems that at the very least one can make good arguments that what the revolutionaries did amounted to an illegal coup. It being illegal does not automatically make it immoral, of course. That is a separate debate.

Yanukovych was legally elected, inasmuch as anyone in a corrupt country can be legally elected, in an election considered fair by international observers. He then fled the country during massive violence between security forces and revolutionaries, with both sides blaming the other for having started it.

Whether it was an illegal coup is up for debate, but I don't see why you would automatically assume that anyone who considers it one is unworthy of talking with.

People who consider it an illegal coup aren't even necessarily against it, although most are. I'm sure that one could easily find many intelligent Americans who believe that the American revolution was an illegal coup, yet also a good thing.

Or is it more the "full of Nazis" part that you find objectionable?

Not the same person, but I would not be really interested in "how America helped an illegal coup in 2014, and Ukraine is full of Nazi's" discussion as for me indicates that person is overestimating importance of what USA did and denying agency of people in Ukraine. Either because they are hilariously USA-centric, pushing Russian propaganda or using this to engage solely in tribal warfare.

And we do not have any useful info how much USA helped but no indication that it was really significant. So we have simply no real material to discuss.

"illegal coup or something else" focuses on definitional warfare which is the least interesting type of topic.

"and Ukraine is full of Nazi's" pushes me toward "Russian propaganda repeater" (and no, I am not denying that they have some Slavic people dumb enough to propagate failed ideology that supported extermination/enslavement of Slavic people - or use nazi symbols as lame contrarianism or for trolling reasons or due to massive stupidity). But "Russia denazifies Ukraine" take is just so bad that I would need to be really bored to engage.


So Ukrainian war is interesting, but I am more interested in say evolution of drone warfare (I am listening to Perun presentation right now), first-hand accounts (I have read recently interesting interview about Polish volunteer with some stories about various pathologies in Ukrainian command), geopolitical implications, analysis how much stored materiel Russians used up already based on satellite imagery (bought by random civilian!) and so on.

Not definitional tribal warfare.