To the point of the thread:
Uccisore, are you saying that both the Russia hack and the Manning leaks are acceptable, or that they are both unacceptable? Or do you, like many who you disagree with politically, find a way to distinguish the two?
To the trans issues: This clearly gets beyond the scope of this thread, though the scare quotes invited it, so…
It seems that the conservative worldview is the more common one in human history, given that it is more common in the developing world, a place that is effectively living in the past relative to the developed world. And I don’t mean that as a put down, but rather by explanation. In the historic context, uniformity within a group was extremely important to the survival of the group, because it had implications for group efficiency and coherence. In a threatening world full of rival groups, it’s extremely important for the group that it not fight itself.
That homogeneity was and is policed by shaming. Transexuals, like goths and many other subcultures, are groups forming in opposition to the mainstream, a significant threat to group coherence. Being mean to transexuals is a way of encouraging everyone to move back towards the middle. It communicates that deviation from the norm has a social cost in the form of exclusion. That, I think, explains a lot of the ‘hate’ that comes from people who align as more urban, working class, nationalist, etc.: those are all positions that made a lot of sense when you couldn’t communicate directly with anyone anywhere, and buy almost anything from anywhere in the world, and form group allegiances without regard for geography or nationality or traditional ties. The hate is instrumental.
But to preempt what I think Uccisore will say: it’s true that transexuality is no longer just people being different. It’s become a signaling mechanism for both sides, a way of showing group membership by indicating strong affiliation with a positions that really doesn’t have much practical relevance. And I think the left is actually borrowing a page from the conservative playbook, by using transexuality as a shibboleth to show membership, policing social norms and being intolerant of deviation. That I think makes sense if the left thinks of itself as a minority movement, because a minority should prize group cohesion. It’s just a little awkward to choose the tolerance for a certain difference as the thing around which you won’t tolerate differences in order to enforce in-group sameness.
Xunzian, I’d recommend the early part of Uccisore’s Generation, Tradition… thread for insight into his worldview, I feel like I got some good insight from it before the german-fetishy members made it about race. I also recently read Scott Alexander’s intro to reactionary philosophy, and I don’t know if Uccisore considers himself a reactionary, but I see a lot of similarities between it an his thought, and it definitely fleshes out some things I see more and more in mainstream conservative thought (note that Alexander isn’t a reactionary, he wrote that in preparation for an anti-reactionary FAQ, also worth a read).
And a belated welcome back, by the way.