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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   31820 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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I'm reposting a top level comment that got posted yesterday, because I don't think it got enough discussion.

Historic flooding in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Whole towns washed away. People retreating to their attics as water levels rise. People losing everything.

Tragic. Horrific. But this is the Culture War thread so I am going to ask the insensitive question, what does this mean for the election in <40 days?

My first thought is that there is a certain irony that these states are among those that just limited the forms of ID allowed at a voting booth. Someone who has lost their house is less likely to have all their documentation, and getting new copies will take longer than the time before the election.

Rural areas that were wiped out will have a harder time finding their polling location under the mud and timber. Mail-in voting will be difficult without a mailbox.

People are going to watch the Biden-Harris's administration to see how they respond.

Do these factors make it more likely for these swing states to turn Blue or Red? Buncombe County, one of the hardest hit, went 60% for Biden in 2020.

I want to add, as I commented, I am beyond frustrated by the federal response. Biden just put out a press release today, over 5 days after it happened, and he just sounds so tired and apparently has a cold. That being said, he says a lot of the right things even if the delivery is bad.

But why has it taken so long to get things out there? As another commenter said, why aren't planes and helicopters air dropping supplies and Starlink in?

And if there has been a major relief effort, where is the news on it? The left controls pretty much the entire mainstream media, so where are the videos of airlifted supplies? I know internet is out, but people on X have shared plenty of videos of waters washing away homes etc.

I'm just shocked at how poor the response has been, though I guess I shouldn't be. Also man, those videos really are something to watch. Reminds us how fragile things really are if Nature decides to make us face her wrath.

I think we’re lead by incompetent people. We just plain lack the ability to solve any of these kinds of problems. Biden gave an interview and claimed to be leading from the beach because he’d been on the phone with Homeland Security for two hours. That’s barely trying in my opinion. What amazes me is that we have a lot of disaster relief programs out of Fort Bragg (or whatever it’s been renamed to) and nobody seems interested in using those resources at all.

Very huge issue if true.

The fact that 100% of the anons promoting this meme insist on misnaming Fort Liberty in honour of a slaveholding traitor strongly suggests that it is partisan bullshit. Unless you favour calling it Fort Bragg in honour of Braxton Bragg's noteworthy contribution to the Union victory in the Civil War, which I suppose would kind of make sense.

  • -10

You know, renaming something "Liberty" has been a central example of overly-politically-correct euphemism since WWII's "Liberty sausage", "Liberty cabbage", "Liberty steak".

I agree with your points on the merits of "Fort Liberty". "Fort Sherman" or "Fort Burnside" would have been better given both generals won important victories for the USA in the area. But ostentatiously refusing to use the official name of the base is clearly an attempt to dogwhistle something, and the rules of this board require me to charitably assume that what they are dogwhistling is support for the MAGA campaign to retain military bases named after white supremacist traitors, rather than actual support for white supremacism or treason.

In any case, "Troops from nearby Fort Liberty have not been deployed to the relief effort. Does anyone know why not?" is an attempt to "Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion." "Fort Bragg or whatever it's been renamed to" (when the correct name is well-known and can be found with thirty seconds' Googling) is what you say if the only audience you care about is the kind of person who cares strongly about naming military bases after white supremacist traitors.

One can object to the practice of renaming things to fit modern political sensibilities without supporting the politics or the actions of the people they were originally named after. The idea that this sort of renaming is required arises from a a whole constellation of beliefs about the scope of politics, the role of language, the lens through which history should be interpreted, etc. that many people simply don't share.

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