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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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We are actually in a much better situation, against a much less ruthless enemy. We have not yet begun to fight, metaphorically or literally.

And you never will.

There is no rational basis for despair in the current situation.

Your enemy holds the bureaucracy. They hold the media. They hold the vast majority of the corporations. They hold an even more complete majority of educational institutions. They hold Federal law enforcement and state law enforcement in many states. And of course all big city law enforcement. Your tribe has paths for exit but no paths for entrance -- you may birth more young people but they end up rejecting you under the influence of the institutions. Immigrants may not join the other tribe but they vote for their party, and so do their children.

And most of your tribe respects all of those institutions despite their obvious capture. They can cynically ignore all the rules, all the laws, everything, to go after one of yours, and when the verdict comes in, your tribe will accept it. Ask Alex Jones or Rudy Giuliani. When Trump is duly convicted in New York Kangaroo Court, a large number of your people will say "Well, the jury had more information than I do, so he must be guilty" or similar rationalizations to trust the institutions. Because the very idea that the institutions are utterly corrupt and should be defied is anti-conservative.

That is the rational basis for despair.

Your enemy holds the bureaucracy.

Abbott and DeSantis are coordinating open defiance to the bureaucracy. Maybe they'll lose, but they haven't yet. The Bureaucracy tried to put Rittenhouse in a cell for the rest of his life, and he's a free man. The Bureaucracy is losing the fight on gun control, and they are losing it permanently.

They hold the media.

The media are losing their influence, and in many cases their ability to even keep their doors open due to their entire business model going extinct.

They hold the vast majority of the corporations.

And they are destroying those corporations, in a way that's pretty impossible to hide.

They hold Federal law enforcement and state law enforcement in many states.

And yet, those agencies can and have been successfully defied, and they can and have fought and lost.

And of course all big city law enforcement

And those cities continue to decay.

They don't actually have a plan. They have a scam that works when we endlessly cooperate with it, and that falls apart if we simply and consistently defect. We are currently organizing that defection, and it is delivering tangible results. Your predictions have been consistent for some time, and increasingly they are being falsified by the actual outcomes. Your prediction was that Abbott would not be able to defy Biden on the border, but he did. Your prediction, I think, would be that Republicans would "compromise" and vote for the border bill, but we didn't. Resistance is not costless, but the costs can and are being borne.

Your tribe has paths for exit but no paths for entrance -- you may birth more young people but they end up rejecting you under the influence of the institutions.

Time will tell.

And most of your tribe respects all of those institutions despite their obvious capture.

Too much of my tribe does, it's true, but less and less each day, and the more we push resistance, the more obvious the problems with the system become and the less my tribe respects it.

When Trump is duly convicted in New York Kangaroo Court, a large number of your people will say "Well, the jury had more information than I do, so he must be guilty" or similar rationalizations to trust the institutions.

This is a prediction. Let's see how it goes.

Because the very idea that the institutions are utterly corrupt and should be defied is anti-conservative.

To the extent that this is true, it seems to me that Conservatism is on the way out. Again, Abbott and DeSantis seem to be going for open defiance. The gun culture is definately going for open defiance. Trump's supporters are going for open defiance. Maybe you're right and it will all fizzle out, but that does not appear to me to be the trajectory we're on.

The Bureaucracy is losing the fight on gun control, and they are losing it permanently.

Certainly they are not. There have been some Supreme Court decisions, but the blue states just ignore or even defy ("Spirit of Aloha", "No Second Amendment in New York State") them. And with Rahimi the Court is poised to neuter Bruen. ATF is getting shirty (and shooty) with gun dealers again, not to mention classifying every L-shaped piece of metal a firearm. In New Jersey I still can't buy a gun or carry one if I had one. And even in Virginia, didn't they pass a bunch of new gun control?

Abbott did beat them on the border, I was wrong there. But that's a tiny light in a sea of darkness.

Certainly they are not.

Certainly they are. The guns are never, ever going to go away. Registration is not going to happen. Confiscation is not going to happen. They're still trying to go after the manufacturers and dealers, but DIY manufacturing gets easier and more accessible every year, and we're well past the point where this process can be stopped or even meaningfully slowed. Enforcement on any of this, whether against the gun culture or against criminals, is a complete joke.

Meanwhile, the Gun Culture has learned to actively erode existing laws through malicious compliance and technological innovation, and are doing an excellent job of radicalizing the community as a whole to reject the legitimacy of gun control laws. The Fudds are all but extinct, and the people who replaced them are moving from "I lost them in a boating accident" to "I didn't lose shit." I am pretty sure I'm going to see the NFA die in my lifetime, one way or the other. Concealed Carry continues to steadily expand. And as fantastic as all that is, we've barely started on the low-hanging fruit. There's beautiful avenues of practical lawfare/tech development just lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up and thus further beclown state and federal laws.

Yes, it's easier for the blues to violate the letter and the spirit of the laws they don't like, thanks to their stranglehold on institutional support. But it is not only possible to do as they have done, it is inevitable.

They are literally tracking all the online purchases of people buying 3d printers, checking them against social media and reports by leftist informants, and raiding people at 3am.

Thinking about "revolution" is insane with the kind of tyranny you're facing.

Surely the number of people buying 3D printers is far too high to perform meaningful background checks on all of them.

Not when you can casually cross-reference all credit card transactions to automatically detect "home grown violent extremists" who shop at sporting goods stores and search for political topics. That narrows it down well enough to make a target list for manual investigation.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEEkKBDWgAA6g4R?format=jpg&name=large

You do not seem to realize what the Democratic party are capable and willing to do to maintain power, and what a powerful tool the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is when used as a political weapon.

This is just cons complaining about the lib version of 'noticing'. Pattern recognition applies to everyone. If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that? Would you have the same sympathy with some Muslim garden supply business owner regularly profiled and investigated for his high-volume fertilizer purchases? I know for a fact that this kind of transaction analytics is responsible for preventing a lot of successful terrorist attacks, and I also know that conservatives don't care when it's used on their outgroup.

If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that?

This is facile. There is no specific transaction pattern highly predictive of mass shootings, in that it is both selective and specific; there can't be, because there are way too few mass shootings. The way they get "highly predictive" is by reversing the order and noting things like "gee, looks like nearly all mass shooters purchased guns recently", maybe we should check out anyone who buys a gun?

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