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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Canadian Man Dies of Aneurysm After Giving Up on Hospital Wait

So this is making the rounds on the internet today. Comparisons to the accute discussion in America obviously suggest themselves and are even briefly mentioned in the article. Now a lot of this seems to be more typically discussion of the merits of prublic vs private healthcare, but my initial thought was, "Who could you shoot for this?".

Obviously, murder is bad. But assuming you accepted the idea that killing people for delivering insufficient healthcare is ok, and you thought Canada was bad enough to count, who would it even be? From what I understand healthcare is done on a provincial level there, so maybe theres some kind of health commissioner in the local executive? But then again, budget limitations are propably more to blame on the local parliament. And they implement what they ran for election on. Etc. I mean if youre lucky theres someone somewhere who lost metric fucktons of money and thats all there is to it, but propably not.

It's to be noted that the one thing the managerial class is incredible at which allows them to rule is this effect. This dissolution of responsibility where you're not even sure who's in charge of things anymore. Hypernormalization.

Piles upon piles of agencies and companies and bodies and committees which all together sum up to the same boot on your neck. But nobody to blame.

Ultimately it's an illusion. The banality of evil is in full effect here. The petty bureaucrat may not seem to have enough stake in the dealings of his organization, but he picked a side nonetheless and is, in his own small way, exercising power.

Therefore I recommend that bit of wisdom from Clerks: if you're a contractor on the Death Star, you knew the risks. When the mobsters come to the house of their rival to shoot him and his people, they don't care that you're just there for remodeling.

It's to be noted that the one thing the managerial class is incredible at which allows them to rule is this effect. This dissolution of responsibility where you're not even sure who's in charge of things anymore. Hypernormalization. [...]

Therefore I recommend that bit of wisdom from Clerks: if you're a contractor on the Death Star, you knew the risks. When the mobsters come to the house of their rival to shoot him and his people, they don't care that you're just there for remodeling.

Unfortunately, Brazil (1985) is the better reference here. Another feature of managerialism besides obscuring responsibility is that it makes the whole society complicit. Most everyone with a living wage, enough to support a family, is working on the Death Star.

It's a problem.

My take is that there is only one sane man in that entire film.

"Harry Tuttle, heating engineer, at your service."