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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   25286 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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I've noticed the alt-right (specifically the Richard Spencer wing) is blaming Christianity for cucking Whites and making them accept non-whites in their country. To me this isn't even close to being true and can be dismissed outright as nonsense.

We know from genetics that modern Europeans separated from sub saharan African 30 to 40 thousand years ago. We also know that Western Europeans didn't have any meaningful contact with Blacks until the 15th century when Portugal "discovered" West Africa during the Age of Exploration. By accepting this, we can see that Western Europe has had over 500 years of contact with Blacks.

I've specifically been looking into England, but the same is true for other nations. The highest count of non-whites I can find on Google Scholar recently is 2.6% in 1951. Interestingly, 2.2% of those 2.6% were first generation immigrants. This is by far the highest I've seen with other estimates putting it close to 99%.

So at this point, we have pretty clear data that when Europe was Christian (and America), there was almost 0 non-white immigration to Europe. We also know places like France put in racist laws like Code Noir that explicitly put Whites at the top of the social hierarchy.

When we look at when this changed, it was really the 1960's. But at this point, Christianity was starting to decline due to science and especially Darwin (and in my opinion became obviously not true). The increased immigration and anti-racist views correlates with Christianity's decline, so the idea that Christianity having everyone's soul being equal can be equally dismissed. In fact, I would argue the pro non-white immigration came from the secular left or if you want to argue it's the right neoliberalism. I see zero evidence of this that Richard Spencer and his allies argue to be true. In fact, the evidence shows the complete opposite.

The culture that these people all seem to want to “R E T V R N” to is pretty explicitly not just Christian, but Catholic, isn’t it?

The idea they are supposedly criticizing, that human beings have dignity, is not a “slave mentality”, it is the foundational idea behind ending the standard where the vast majority of humans were subjects of their King. Christianity is a liberating ideology at its very core.

Of all the dumb, grifting things that people like Richard Spencer have said, this is perhaps one of the dumbest. This puts him into the same category as people like Andrew Tate; just absolute luke warm IQ people who would be working some low intelligence job if it were not for social media.

The main problem is that these guys think that under the perfect 'no Christian egalitarian shit' system, they would be LORDS AND MASTERS.

They wouldn't. Best they could get, they'd be some kind of household staff dealing with running the kitchens and stores for the real LORDS AND MASTERS. Worst case? They'd be ground down into the dirt. "But I am so smart and big-brain!" "Yes, and I have big sword. Which of us wins this contest?"

I completely agree. All political radicals face this issue, no communist thinks they’d be a manual laborer on the collective farm, they think they’d be a playwright in good standing or an academic or on the politburo.

But I also think you need to look at our current level of economic development. If a Western country became an absolute monarchy tomorrow there wouldn't be millions of peasants because farmwork has been largely automated; it would just look like a modern country that is an absolute dictatorship, and there are many examples of those.

I completely agree. All political radicals face this issue, no communist thinks they’d be a manual laborer on the collective farm, they think they’d be a playwright in good renown or an academic or on the politburo.

I keep telling people that my ideal regime — or any near it — would have me executed for being a useless parasite. And yet…

I wouldn't take input on the way society should be organized from someone who's suicidally depressed for the same reason I wouldn't take any from those who place themselves at the apex of the proposed pyramid - clear conflict of interests with not only myself but the majority.

Actual historical monarchies had tons of useless parasites supported by the state, either directly or through corruption.

Given how much of the population was involved in agriculture pre-Industrial Revolution and how little economic surplus above subsistence their was to redistribute, I'd question that. And there's definitely a difference between an "idle courtier" and your average modern welfare recipient.

Idle courtiers- and military reserves who in practice just steal the budget- took up a much larger fraction of a state’s resources in 1700 than the welfare class does today, unless you’re counting pensioners. And, of course, today’s monarchies spend gobs on welfare compared to their normal dictatorship neighbors, or to democracies.

military reserves who in practice just steal the budget

Only until there's an actual conflict.

I'm reminded of this 2020 Los Angeles Times piece: "California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them"

In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.

“In light of the pandemic flu risk, it is absolutely a critical investment,” he told a news conference. “I’m not willing to gamble with the people’s safety.”

The state, flush with tax revenue, soon sank more than $200 million into the mobile hospital program and a related Health Surge Capacity Initiative to stockpile medicines and medical gear for use in outbreaks of infectious disease, according to former emergency management officials and state budget records.

But the ambitious effort, which would have been vital as the state confronts the new coronavirus today, hit a wall: a brutal recession, a free fall in state revenues — and in 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a $26-billion deficit.

And so, that year, the state cut off the money to store and maintain the stockpile of supplies and the mobile hospitals. The hospitals were defunded before they’d ever been used.

Much of the medical equipment — including the ventilators, critical life-saving tools that are in short supply in the current pandemic — was given to local hospitals and health agencies, former health officials said. But the equipment was donated without any funding to maintain them. The respirators were allowed to expire without being replaced.

Together, these two programs would have positioned California to more rapidly respond as its COVID-19 cases exploded. The annual savings for eliminating both programs? No more than $5.8 million per year, according to state budget records, a tiny fraction of the 2011 budget, which totaled $129 billion.

Better to have and not need, than need and not have, after all.

And as for idle courtiers, they may have been individually of little use, but they generally came from accomplished families; thus, if nothing else, they represented a reserve of quality genes, in a way a modern welfare bum most certainly does not.

And, of course, today’s monarchies spend gobs on welfare

Which monarchies are you thinking of here? Are you counting the monarchies-in-name-only that are democracies plus a powerless figurehead? Or are you talking about Middle East petro-states distributing shares of oil revenues to the citizenry, much as we do here in Alaska via the Permanent Fund Dividend?

Neither Bhutan nor Eswatini seem to be particularly generous welfare states — and is there anyone in Monaco poor enough to need one?

I would hope that my ideal regime would help to make me (and you) not a useless parasite. But perhaps that just means you have more self-awareness than me!

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