Conversation

Political ideologies don’t even meaningfully exist if they aren’t big ideas. The only candidate big idea coming out of the culture war is “beefing is good”, ie the warring itself as ideology. As a sort of cleansing and necessary lemon-cayenne enema to the body politic.
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A “big” idea is one that: - has megafauna charisma - represents discontinuous leap wrt its history - arrives as Big Bang in <5y, not trickle - redraws boundaries among old ideas - creates new institutional landscape in <10y - creates new internal language within that landscape
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A culture-war-industrial complex has emerged rapidly in the last 5 years. It emerged to sustain the culture war, but now the culture war exists to sustain it. It produces no big ideas or cultural or political capital other than the warring itself.
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It’s a terrible big idea btw. “Beefing is good” weakens the body politic so other forces can kill it. It dies not cure it. Kinda like perestroika/glasnost were meant to cure the USSR but just precipitated its collapse. Which could happen here.
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One reason this beefing-is-good big idea thrives is that people confuse their little ideas for big ones and are willing to fight for them. It’s like 50 fighting kittens equals 1 lion. Each kitten sincerely thinks it can win and become a lion. No, a kitten is not a startup lion.
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Every side thinks they can win the war, and get big in the peace after. But keeping the war going is the only big win around. If the war ends, you inherit some rubble. Not a gloriously restored public, reverent awakened masses lionizing you as liberators, and a golden age.
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Your highly hyphenated and prefixed ideology sprawled across 5 blogs, 2 meetups, a manifesto, and a redpilling subreddit really isn’t really going to be next “Marxism” or “Neoliberalism”. Believing that can happen is like believing a chat app can grow into pre-cable TV network
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I mean seriously, can you even imagine what 100 million Americans “believing” in any of these kitten ideologies fighting culture wars looks like in 2019? For eg. There’s this anti-David-Frenchism thing doing the rounds in trad-cath corner. Is _that_ the Next Big Unicorn? 🙄
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The age of big ideologies that hope to rule the world is over. You make bones today merely by running a subreddit and a few meetups. “Arrival” is having one of your Great Battles dominate social media for a day. That’s it. That’s all these manifesto-derping wannabes fight for.
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The biggest ideological successes of our time are... Bannon and Moore? That’s as good as it gets. That’s your prize for briefly getting big enough to take a break from warring. You get to try and sneak a few policies past a mad emperor, to be undone by the next gang of kittens.
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