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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish. ... It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"

It really isn't. It's a popularization (thus, inevitably, a bit of a bastardization) of a real theoretical development. I strongly recommend Martin Jay's "The Dialectical Imagination" for an academic but decently accessible intellectual history of the movement.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

So they do have a Nelson Mandela?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I don't think that the Israel issue is over - even though the focus might change away from Palestine, my money on the next major issue in US politics is the US-Israel relationship. The current arrangement isn't sustainable, and the polling I've seen suggests that a majority of Americans want AIPAC and Israel brought to heel. There's no way this particular milk gets unspilled, and none of the normies who supported Palestine because it was the Current Thing are going to forget what they saw Zionists and those funded by them do. The activists are already hard at work on projects like the Hind Rajab foundation and other efforts to make sure the world does not forget what Israel did. The outsize influence of Israel over western governments is being pulled into the spotlight all over the world, and the consequences of that conflict have in no way finished playing themselves out. Given that Israel is potentially going to be restarting the conflict with Iran and drawing the US in to that fight as well, I don't think this particular issue is going to leave "current thing" status barring some other major event (AGI getting achieved, climate disaster, another pandemic, another war, etc).

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Genuinely asking, who is the "they" in "they need to seize the means of cultural production"

Who are the cultural Marxists? Because the people Lobster Daddy hates have been in control of art, universities, etc for the back half of the 20th century and all of the 21st

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

If the money never leaves that other company, never returns to the US and then never gets paid to those executives then I don't think there's any issues with letting those other countries tax it. I don't think there are any issues with saying that money your company never actually lays hands on (a foreign subsidiary does instead) isn't subject to taxation. Of course, if you can't actually bring any money back from a foreign subsidiary there's not much point to having them....

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Israel was lining Palestinians up and then crushing them with bulldozers (see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver), on top of torturing people with downs syndrome (Mohammad Bhar) and murdering small children (Hind Rajab). They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think this is them being restrained, you're making the case that Israel needs to be removed from the Earth before they can do this to anyone else.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

I mostly lurk because I don't feel like I have much to contribute and everyone around here seems to know what they're talking about, or at least is good enough at rhetoric to fool me.

Hey, having nothing useful to contribute doesn't stop some people! Don't let it dissuade you, you're probably wrong on that front.

But yes, having thick skin is a major benefit when it comes to regular participation on the Motte. I would encourage you to dip your toes in the water in the less contentious threads, like you're doing right now.

And my study habits were probably unhealthy. I had a few friends in med school and was generally very well liked by people who knew me, but I had more than a few people say to me at some point in our 4th year "damn wsgy why weren't we better friends? You're a great hang!". I had kind of partied way too much in university and overcorrected.

Such a shame. My parents would have loved to have you instead of me. Well, not because I partied too much (I didn't, at least in med school), but because they wished I'd studied.

I'm not actually too worried about the kids in the grand scheme of things. But it's like having one of your vital organs removed from your body and giving it a mind of its own. You can't help but get at least a bit neurotic about it getting damaged.

A fair point. It's easy for me to talk about adopting a laissez-faire attitude towards children I don't have. The changes parenthood provoke are scary, but also strangely comforting. One's own struggle and strife seem so inconsequential when there are little people who need you. Yours will turn out great!

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Actually that person, Marwhan Bargouti, is currently in an Israeli prison being repeatedly tortured. The Palestinians keep trying to get him released and think that he'd be the best possible leader (he convincingly clears every poll for preferred leader), which is presumably why the Israelis are trying to make sure he will never get out.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???

The IDF is one of the most formidable militaries on planet earth, who's primary opponents (Arabs) have one of the worst track records of modern warfighting and who's societies/institutions make them absolutely AWFUL at it.

How on earth do you imagine Israel (who also has nukes) losing?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

OG Marxism says that the key to true freedom is for the proletariat to seize the means of industrial production because they are materially oppressed. Cultural Marxism says they need to seize the means of cultural production (art, universities, etc) because they are socially oppressed. Replace "economic status" with "cultural status." Hence "cultural Marxism."

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

So, this is exactly the sort of thing that can get brushed off as being simple bigotry; you just seem to prefer a level of segregation which cities don't provide. But I think it's worth thinking about.

When I wrote out my theory of The Four Failures of blue governance, the first thing I listed was Safety and Order, and I think there's a real tendency for people to talk past each other here; urbanists are particularly fond of saucy memes on that front, but you're literally half as likely to meet an untimely end in New York City as you are in rural America; the murder rate is comparably low, but car crashes make the big difference.

But that's unsatisfying in the same way that someone pointing out complete apathy in the face of brazen and repeated theft being given a lecture about wage theft; it's just whataboutism.

I came across this thread recapping Left Behind in Rosedale, which details how white people violently resisted the integration of their neighborhoods because they feared they would be the victims of violent crime, and then their neighborhoods were integrated, and the people who couldn't leave were violently victimized by the black people who moved in, and below that, the social capital, the ability to know your neighbors and go outside at night and feel safe, all of that just vanished. And it's left some kind of scar that the official narrative here is that white people resisted integration for absolutely no reason, and then we had integration, and the good guys won. Because that's not what people experienced. Just like the official narrative is that there was no reason for purity taboos either.

There are plenty of ideas about how to make things better well outside the right (The Atlantic ran this; Jennifer Doleac writes extensively on the topic; Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias do as well), and as far as we can tell, crime really is way down from the 90s. But how can there be any credibility without reckoning with the past?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Firing tank shells into Churches

From what I can gather it was a fragment of a single tank shell which struck a single church by mistake. Your hyperbolic condemnation of every single thing Israel does is counterproductive.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

wokeism is not identical with Marxism

I find these arguments nonsensical.

The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish.

What on earth does grievance politics have to do with redistributing the means of production so that the workers capture more of the surplus value of the product of their labour? How do you do that with "culture" at all?

It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Right. So, rather the Americans should be telling Israelis to move to some corner of Montana and have at it. Because what's happening is not tenable by modern ethical standards, either lording it over a population in that way or having a state charter built on the lord.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

I'm starting to think you're Coleman's descendant.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

I mostly lurk because I don't feel like I have much to contribute and everyone around here seems to know what they're talking about, or at least is good enough at rhetoric to fool me. And then I have this really bad habit of needing social approval in a way that downvotes cause me mental distress, even if I am positive I'm right. I'm kind of a coward online like that in a way that I am not irl.

And my study habits were probably unhealthy. I had a few friends in med school and was generally very well liked by people who knew me, but I had more than a few people say to me at some point in our 4th year "damn wsgy why weren't we better friends? You're a great hang!". I had kind of partied way too much in university and overcorrected. My (now) wife even mentioned what it was like to date me those first two years at our wedding. The rule was she could have me for an evening and overnight either Friday or Saturday and had a blanket invitation to stay over at my place on other days but I wasn't going to talk to her until 8pm and we had to be in bed by 10:30. Like she'd be hanging out on my couch watching TV while I ignored her with earplugs in my head. It got a laugh, appropriately.

I'm not actually too worried about the kids in the grand scheme of things. But it's like having one of your vital organs removed from your body and giving it a mind of its own. You can't help but get at least a bit neurotic about it getting damaged.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

Are they? Why? What makes them so? Base matter seems sufficient for perception and thinking. I'm not saying there is no non-material aspect to life, but the "things" you named...seem doable by material means.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.

Are you not aware that this has been the leftist demand the whole time? The problem is obvious. If Israel annexes the whole of mandate Palestine then the Jews will be a minority and swiftly have the mechanism of state turned on them. At best they would be Dhimmi in a shariah state subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world and with a reasonably high chance of being subject to massive pogroms that would make the holocaust seem loving by comparison.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

Idk, being asked to triple my work output was kind of disastrous for me...

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I think they'll eventually succeed at taking over the West Bank. In part because they want it (it's good land and it's right there for the taking, not to mention the religious motivation to control jeruselum), and in part because they've found a way to successfully "salami slice" it, taking little bits at a time. The rest of the world expresses outrage and indignation but does nothing, and the Palestinian authority can't fight back. There seems to be no shortage of Israeli's volunteering to move in there, and not just soldiers but normal middle-class families. This might take multiple generations, but it'll happen.

I do not think they'll take over the Gaza strip that way, because the situation is totally different. Nobody really wants it, because it's an ultra-dense ghett of bomb-blasted buildings and unexploded ordnance. The people living there are highly motivated to fight back, and there's a ton of world attention that would make a huge outcry if Israel tried to adjust the borders even slightly. There's also no holy city there, no natural resources, limited water... it's not a place any sane person would want to live.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

LOL Ayn Rand would be hilarious. Would love to see that.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Honestly, three and four don’t work simply because of geography. Israel and Palestine are fighting over pieces of land that in total is the size of New Jersey. Problem being that any missile launched can reach just about anywhere in that land area pretty easily. Which means that if either side ever defects, it’s back to square one. And thus Theres at best the return to form — ceasefire, rearm, and start another war.

The only way to have a permanent peace is to do the suitcase or coffin solution, as nothing less will survive the first defection.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Lacan's cult of personality is bigger than Marx's? What? How are they even in the same order of magnitude?

I feel like you are in a very small bubble if you genuinely think that! Unless maybe you're defining it in a counterintuitive way.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. Titans of business are often of this mold.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

This article by arcove is a great dive into the genetic & cultural markers of the priest caste, which sounds like what you're pointing out here.

I recently stumbled onto a website outlining something called “CAPS” (aka CYP21A2 Mutation Associated NeuroPsychiatric Spectrum), which is a medical theory proposed and advanced by a psychiatrist named Dr. Sharon Meglathery.

Briefly, we know that the RCCX genes are unique in that mutations can be inherited together and they mutate often. There is a collagen matrix/hypermobile gene (TNXB) sitting next to a stress response gene (CYP21A2), sitting next to an autoimmune/CVID/schizophrenia gene. Doctors often see combos of these illnesses in families and individuals at a rate far higher than by chance alone.

It claims that if you have one of the following conditions it is likely you and blood relatives have others:

“Giftedness” (unusual abilities in music, maths, arts or abstract thinking)

5/5 of the “Major Psychiatric diagnosis”: Autism, ADHD, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and Depression.

Hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (aka double-jointedness)

Hormone disorders

Sensory processing issues

Anxiety, Cutting and Eating disorders

Autoimmune disorders, Asthma, Allergies, Mast cell activation disorder

Gender dysphoria, fluidity, Same-sex attraction

Sleep disorders, Chronic fatigue

Left Handedness

… and loads of other random stuff.

It apparently makes you “wired for danger”, and so overly stressed by the normal world that many have brain wiring identical to PTSD patients despite having lived relatively tame lives. Perhaps there's something to all of this talk about “trauma” after all. People with these qualities seem to be drawn to one another, so you might even find evidence of this lineage on both sides of your family tree.

When the stress accumulates past a certain threshold, something called 21hydroxylase overwhelm is triggered, and it brings about near-death illness, life-changing burnout, and/or psychosis.