Wherein I lay out the morally and rhetorically correct response to the Death Cult’s demands for reparations.
From Twitter:
To recap: The Left isn’t after anything rational. They are a hysterical Death Cult motivated by moral posturing which reinforces their sense of identity. They reinforce the sense of moral superiority which underlies their identity by holding public morality plays wherein infidels are invited to don devil horns and caper about menacingly. The congregation then pelts the prancing Conservative devil with rotten fruit, frozen urine, and bike chains in an act of ritual solidarity much like burning the Devil in effigy.
The play’s script contains certain stock lines which the Conservative participant is expected to recite. These lines include, “My family didn’t come here until after the Civil War!” “Given the amount we’ve already spent on special programs for minorities, I say we call it even!” and “No reparations without repatriation!”
These ritual chants serve only to identify the speaker as a racist/bigot/Nazi, i.e. the Leftist Devil. They rally the Cult around the Evil One that they may identify themselves in opposition to him.
Conservatives have been well-conditioned to play their role in the Death Cult’s mystery play, as many of the replies to my thread demonstrate.
Thanks for volunteering, Your Malevolence!
I’d often wondered how, when the enemy consists of soyfat, limpwristed, Xanax-addled heathens, we could possibly be losing so badly.
Now I know. First, the lunatic-to-autist ratio between the two sides is pretty much at parity. Second, Conservatives have been so deeply conditioned by the Death Cult and their Con Inc. accomplices that red pilling them to the true nature of the game takes herculean effort.
Hearing a Leftist pontificate on the need for some kind of government action elicits a Pavlovian response from the Conservative. He will immediately descend into the policy-level weeds and obstinately stay there while the Left consolidates its hold on the moral high ground.
I thought I understood the strength of this conditioning, but the glut of responses that selectively ignored my insistence on keeping to the moral and rhetorical levels were mind-boggling. A lot of folks just wanted to debate policy even after being shown it was a dead end.
To explain this one more time, no one is making policy proposals. Nor is anyone talking economics, and to do so is an idiotic waste of time when the Death Cult is on the cusp of utter triumph.
The point is not to stop reparations. There is no stopping them now that the GOP has proven completely spineless.
Neither is the point to negotiate favorable reparation terms. That’s getting stuck on the policy level, which is where Conservatives have been for decades–just like the Left wants them.
Instead, think of the agree & amplify response to calls for reparations as a form of the Witch Test.
The Left wins by claiming the moral high ground. Thus, the way to beat them is by undercutting their moral authority.
When they say, “Give us reparations to atone for America’s original sin of racism!”
And you say, “OK, if that means the slate’s wiped clean and no more affirmative action, hate speech laws, or guilt-tripping white people in general, name your price.”
Their defining morality, which is founded on absolution for racism being impossible, will compel the Cultist to silence, or to admit that racism can never be atoned for.
And at that point, you’ve gotten the Cultist to admit that his call for reparations is based on a lie, and you take the moral high ground, and you win.
We need to win, get it?
Not bicker over percentages.
Not wring our hands over the national debt.
Not snark about Liberia.
WIN.
No one cares if this approach seems suspect “to your mind.” Sperging over budget deficits is irrelevant. Unless you’ve come up with an anti-Death Cult weapon that’s as effective as the Witch Test or Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You, stow your reservations and fight with the effective weapons graciously provided to you.
Or get ready to wash the feet.
Brian
It's a similar strategy with abortion no?
So the question I need to ask:
Abortion and then selling fetal body parts contributes to women's reproductive health, how?
Is that the correct strategy?
xavier
No, that's exactly the wrong tactic.
If the "Abortion hurts women!" canard were going to work, it would have worked by now.
Anyway, it's an apples and oranges comparison since abortion is already legal. The analogous tactic before Roe V Wade would have looked like this:
MOLOCH WORSHIPER: Keep abortion safe and rare!
BREAKER OF IDOLS: How rare, exactly?
THRALL OF BAAL: What?
WITCH FINDER: "Rare" implies a metric, so what number of annual abortions would meet your criteria for "rare"?
TEMPLE PROSTITUTE: Er … um … You can't put a number on women's health!
LORD INQUISITOR: Your position is predicated on the assumption that we can. Would you agree to a national yearly cap of 1,000 legal abortions?
THE BLARE WITCH: No! That's unconscionable government control over women's bodies!
CRUSADER KING: OK, What yearly cap *wouldn't* be unconscionable government control of women's bodies?
HECU-BITCH: There isn't one. ANY legal limit on abortion is an infringement of women's rights!
ST. CHAD: I see. Then your initial claim was a lie. There's no moral obligation to deal with bad-faith actors. Good day.
You could also hit the "safe" leg of the stool. It's especially timely when they oppose requiring admitting privileges to a hospital. Further when even with chemical abortions, it's very well-documented that they simply send women home and tell them if they feel something is wrong or if they have abnormal bleeding to go to the emergency room and tell them that "they think they're having a miscarriage" rather than the truth that they took x/y drugs to induce an abortion.
Here's my strategy.
Me: Abortion kills babies and it is an abominable practice that brutally and painfully kills the most innocent among us.
Cultist: What about rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger?
Me: Deal. Keep those legal and ban all other abortions.
The cultist will then reveal himself as a bad faith actor and be forced to defend the motte, rather than the bailey.
This is the easiest one, but the technique remains the same for harder ones. Always make a moral argument, and call their bluffs
Brian
Thanks for thé corrective exposition.
I'll leave out abortion.
So the iconclasim would be a better target.
All statutes are symbols of whiteness.
Ok so we remove all the statutes then there no need to riot anymore.
xavier
You're welcome.
Pick a screen name, Anonymous.
Gasp, the economy might crash? But, but, what would happen to my Social Security investment, why it might be made worthless! I demand we stave off economic doom until after I die! Harumph!
The proponents of reparations are also the proponents of Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that sovereign states can't go bankrupt or even have cash flow issues because they can just print more money without wrecking the economy. So it would even be a bad faith argument if they brought up the risk of an economic crash, given that their fiscal policy holds that there's no risk from printing money to pay for whatever they want.
I am by no means convinced of MMT, but I can't really say I care anymore. Why should I want to save the economy of an enemy state? They hate me and my children, but they want us to pay for their bad choices, I say bring on hyper-inflation. Will it destroy what little savings I have? Yup! However it will also destroy the legitimacy of the current regime.
You're not giving the left enough credit. They already lurk on your blog, and you just told them what to expect from us. Now they will absolutely begin naming prices and proposing means of distribution; we'll look like racists if we immediately refuse, and we'll look like racists after we discover that they lied and demand even more reparations in the future.
We're losing the culture war because *we* are the soyboys. The left is more than prepared to burn down the stage the moment that we deviate from the script, and there's no sense in trying to show the "normies" that we aren't the devil. They already know that we aren't the devil, but they're more afraid of leftists kicking their teeth in than they are of playing along with the narrative.
Why do we need to refuse?
I don't know about you but I'm not writing any legislature lately. I'm just some schmuck who occasionally gets trapped in conversations with leftists and moderates. If I say yes to ten billion dollars apiece, with a personalized presidential thank you card, what have I lost?
Not the argument!
Have you forgotten that the left is after your livelihood? When they realize that they can empty your pockets, they will keep demanding money from you until you lose your home and your children starve. And when you have literally nothing left to give them, they will set upon you like wild animals who were refused one chocolate candy bar after a month of handouts.
More importantly, has Mr. Niemeier not thrown shade upon those who accept their enemies' terms? If we believe in a merciful God who pardons our sins, then why should we pretend that we can atone for the "sin" of racism via secular means? Satan is our enemy in this game, and if you think that you can outsmart him, then you will lose your soul itself.
Except the price is completely beside the point being made. It doesn't actually hurt the point if they know what you're doing. The point is that they've built up a whole artifice that collapses without the indelible mark left by the Original Sin of slavery and racism.
It's not really a financial discussion. It's a discussion of what that money is buying. I see this as a fun twist on the old quip about "just haggling over the price." The point is to get them on record about what sorts of people they are. They can avoid that as long as you stick to their approved thought patterns and euphemisms. They're fundamentally unable to have a frank discussion on the philosophical underpinnings because it gives the game away.
They can't ruin your livelihood without first winning elections, which in turn are won from the moral high ground. If you lose the moral high ground you will lose your livelihood, no matter what concessions you did or didn't make, because they will take what they want, which is everything.
Any further anonymous comments will be deleted. See the clearly posted rule in the side bar.
You don't win a moral war with pretend nihilists, because they have no real morals.
Observe the "All Lives Matter" freak-out. It might be true, but they don't want to seem morally inferior, so they concoct blueprints to get around it. They have built-in responses to claim the high ground on that one just like every good NPC would.
But say "No Lives Matter" instead and they ignore it–scattering like cockroaches. They will never argue with it. Because they have no built-in resistance to the obvious endpoint of their own beliefs.
You win by exposing their bankrupt morality for what it is. You do this by letting them explain the incomprehensible rules to their own game and coming to the conclusion that, actually, there is nothing there but rehearsed catchphrases and empty mottos. They do this without you having to lift a finger. You're dealing with humanists, and there is nothing humanists hate more than nihilism, aside from maybe God. They hate it because they cannot form doctrine to explain away the logical conclusions to their own beliefs.
Just look at how easy Metokur demolished the skeptic crowd when they went after him. All he did was tell them the truth and they devolved into childish tantrums and meltdowns, ending in their utter irrelevancy.
They don't want you to bring attention to the fact that they know their beliefs are fundamentally hollow.
I don't care if a death cultist sees me writing this. I have had several outright tell me there is no such thing as objective morality but they are going to pretend there is anyway. They admit they aren't living in reality. There's nothing to debate with, here. Humanists cannot build a defense against nihilism. Wake me when Sam Harris has finally figured out how to create objective morality through fee-fees. Any day now, I'm sure.
They are playing play pretend, and they know it. Make them admit it as many times as you can by allowing them to do it themselves. Don't argue morality–let them expose how they don't even know what morality is. Because they don't, and can't.
The normiecons, accelerationists, and econ spergs would have a leg to stand on if they weren't just throwing pure conjecture at a method with demonstrable results.
The BLM riots are an excellent field study. The Death Cult was hoping for much more than some toppled statues and a burned-out Wendy's. They fully expected the Right to hit the streets in opposition. The plan was to lure us into a dozen C-villes nationwide.
Instead, we stayed home. Since the Cult's morality play requires a scapegoat and the show must go on, they cannibalized each other, with a few unfortunate normie casualties caught in the crossfire.
They wanted another Unite the Right style panic that would elevate BLM to unquestioned moral dominance. Instead, the grim spectacle of the Cult eating itself has squandered their moderate gains. BLM's unfavorable rating among whites has fallen to pre-riot levels.
You can't argue with results, and letting the enemy expose their utter moral destitution is the only tactic proven to bear fruit.
BLM doesn't care about "no lives matter", because it's a dodge that signals BLM won.
All arguments are inherently emotional. Owning people with FACTS and LOGIC only works on people emotionally invested in FACTS and LOGIC. The sooner you realize this, the better off you will be.
"Facts don't care about your feelings"
Sure, but feelings also don't care about your facts. And feelings are stronger than facts.
This game has been over from the start.
This is what I keep trying to tell people with the statues.
Nobody cares if you can make a good argument for why we should be tearing down a statue of Columbus. Least of all the person tearing it down. Stop arguing about it and defend the damn statue.
The very act of arguing for keeping the statue grants the premise that we need to justify our cultural expressions.
"We live here," is the only justification we need.
Or as I try to remind them: what they are doing to these statues is what they will do to you if they can get away with it.
They telegraphed that pretty clearly with the "Behead your Oppressors" placards attached to decapitated statues of Columbus.
Additional thoughts:
This is called granting the premise. It is a perfectly valid formal argument.
"Very well; you say that there is a moral debt that must be redressed materially. Now, rather than bickering endlessly over the premise: Name the material cost of retiring this moral debt, that we may proceed toward making these reparations a reality."
For the people sperging: You've failed to recognize a standard form of argument. You're angry right now because you don't WANT to use a standard form of argument, you want to SHOUT AT BAD PEOPLE. But the fact is that's a moron move that fails; /and facts don't care about your feelings/ .
In addition, you've failed to recognize the structure of a negotiation. You don't haggle by screaming NO NEVER REEEEEEE before the other person has even named their price. Just making them name their price will very often wrong-foot a rival, if they're angling to find out what you're willing to pay. Aren't conservatives meant to have business savvy?
"This is called granting the premise. It is a perfectly valid formal argument."
I was not aware of that. Thank you.
"Just making them name their price will very often wrong-foot a rival"
He who names his price first, loses.
-Old haggling maxim.
If you want to throw in Latin, you'd use the term Arguendo or "assuming, arguendo." It's more of a legal formalism there than a business/negotiation one, but it is a useful tactic in business to cut to the chase.
No offense to wreckage, but it seems better to avoid the idea of "granting the premise" because that's tacit agreement. Better to agree to "assume the premise" in a given context to further the negotiation or discussion without going on the record agreeing with it. Of course, in a BLM/modern liberal context that may result in accusations of intellectualization (but so would the "granting the premise" tack).
You know, I tried to get an explicit source for my claim and my terminology, but I simply can't easily turn one up. Note that I have precisely zero formal training in logic, only my exposure to the ideas over time.
So say we have:
Premise: Modern culpability for past slavery exists and:
Premise: Reparations are a just resolution to damages done by historical slavery, therefore:
Conclusion: Reparations must be made for past slavery.
So, we grant P1 and P2 in order to validate the conclusion (which is reasonable given the two premises) and move to the next stage, which would be to make the reparations material, and therefore requires an attached sum.
Valar; you might be right, but this is a dialectic argument being deployed in a rhetorical discussion. Saying that we can "assume for the sake of argument" will just result in shrieking, which is what they like to do. "Slavery is REAL bad, not ASSUME bad, you MONSTER!"
It's a complex dance, cha-cha-cha.