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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

6 Jan

I've said it before, but this bears repeating but entire so-called academic fields in the West are basically de facto government agencies. Political science, international relations, cultural anthropology, any "area" studies. Everyone who isn't financially independent going into

these so-called fields ends up either as a government serf or working retail. The reality is that all of these seemingly disparate fields of study actually used to be unified field before subject to the specialization pressure rampant in academia. That being the Colonial Office

of the British Empire. This was never a field for Ivory tower dilettantes but for would be imperial bureaucrats. This fact has been obscured by the people filling it's corridors but cannot escape the observant. You can tell because the focus is all on areas of interest to empire

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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

2 Jan

The bourgeoisification of taste, or why poetry and everything is moribund. The triumph of the middle class whether it be in aesthetics or in politics is I think ultimately responsible for the death of culture because the middle class has fundamentally a mentally of risk aversion

and follow the herd. Their status is relatively precarious unlike a true aristocracy and they simply lack the resources for experimentation. I think the early 20th century was ultimately the turning point for this cultural shift, at least for the arts and letters. Whereas before

your average poet or writer was usually a gentleman of leisure, a polyglot pursuing his flights of fancy. Now everything has to be properly credentialed and everyone has to fit into a very narrow specialty. It's very constricting mentally. It's also why someone like Rudyard

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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

29 Dec 21

US government assets are very simple to identify because they cannot but help using very particular shibboleths that identify their loyalties. If they ever utter the word "civil society" he/she is a US government lackey plain and simple. Like Pentagonese or academic jargon, words

carry particular subtext for specific communities. In the case of "Civil Society" the dictionary definition is the intermediate organizations that are neither government nor family but that is never what the people who use the term mean. Instead they very narrowly use it to

singularly refer to the labyrinth of "independent" media organizations, ngos and quangcos, and activists who all get their funding either direct from the US government or various corporate and charity foundations with alphabet agency controlled pursers. Also any non-liberal

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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

29 Dec 21

The idea that trannies is a bridge too far and that it will engender a pushback of some sorts vastly overestimated the political role of the lumpenproletariat, past history, and how human social dynamics function. The lumpenproletariat is fundamentally an inert force who can only

can only react to external stimuli chiefly by elites. They simply have no deeply held interests or beliefs. Every one of the now mainstream liberal social positions whether it be normalization of miscegenation or homosexuality started out vastly unpopular but it was an elite

minority that became a majority that shifted the Overton window by changing signalling that this was now the elite opinion to stake your flag to and the middle classes dutifully emulated those positions. If you think that this time is one bridge too far, human history will show

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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

28 Dec 21

On why the most intolerant win. Or why Emily in Paris leads to Jihad. Now that I have your attention with a seemingly entirely random non sequitur there is actually a very real connection of how status is accrued in groups and how it directly leads to moral signalling spirals.

A fashion conscious American girl in France and a Syrian "freedom fighter" may appear to have nothing in common but within their respective peer groups they both serve as social vanguards whose raisin d'etre is to make their peers feel provincial and less. To diminish the status

of others and elevate their own via proximity to purity/authenticity. This role is as necessary for the would be class queen, the revolutionary, or the aspiring non resident fellow. People instinctively respond positively to conviction real or feigned and the more effective you

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Duke of Qin

@qin_duke

27 Dec 21

The Americanization of the West cannot be understood absent the impoverishment of the West. The world of 2021 is a completely different economic landscape since the end of the Cold War but in a way that is commonly misunderstood. The economic balance of power between America and

her satrapies has dramatically tilted in favor of the former against the latter. The US had a GDP of 6.1 trillion 30 years ago. At that time Japan's was 3.58, Italy 1.25, Germany 1.9, France 1.27, the UK 1.14. When the Cold War ended the US could truthfully be called the primus

inter pares of the Western alliance. What a difference 30 years makes where this year's US GDP is 22.9 trillion but Japan's a mere 5.2 and the former European powers even less. Like the Delian league what started as a voluntary defensive alliance has morphed into a hegemon strong

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