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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   35174 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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South Africa : The Ultimate Red Pill

There's been quite a lot of speculation on what Elon Musk's red pill moment was. Some have said it's that the government interfered with his space launches. Others have said its because his kid transitioned from male to female. But it's hard to write the story of Elon without considering where he grew up: South Africa.

South Africa is a cautionary tale. It's the ultimate failure of the progressive experiment.

The decline of South Africa since the end of apartheid has been as stunning as it was predictible. At one point, a small population of 3 or 4 million white South Africans was able to build a suprisingly advanced society. They performed the first human heart transplant. They had nuclear weapons!

But over time, international pressure against apartheid mounted and South Africa became a pariah state. In 1994, the apartheid government caved and allowed blacks full participation in democracy. Optimism was high. F. W. de Klerk, the last white president, even ran for another term. He got 20% of the vote.

The man who won the office with 63% of the vote, and who de Klerk would share a Nobel Peace Prize with, was Nelson Mandela. Today, Mandela is often compared to Gandhi or MLK, but that is not an accurate representation of his earlier years when he viewed himself as a guerilla in the model of Che Guevara. Fortunately for his image, he was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned until 1990, largely avoiding personal involvement in his party's genoicidal rhetoric of "Kill the Boer" and the infamous use of the South African necktie which involved placing a tire around a person and then burning them alive.

Neverthless, as President, Mandela managed to be mostly conciliatory towards whites. The Truth and Reconcilation Committee was an effort to bury the hatred of the past, and was largely viewed as succesful at the time.

But the rot had already started. Mandela's term saw the imposition of huge amounts of welfare spending and affirmative action. There was an influx of illegal immigrants from poor countries nearby, but an outflux of whites and coloreds. As a result, the percentage of whites in South Africa fell from 13% in 1995 to just 7% today.

After Mandela, things would get much worse. Thabo Mbeki, the next President, denied the link between HIV and AIDS, and the number of South Africans suffering from the disease skyrocketed to a quarter of the population. After him came Jacob Zuma, a polygamist, who would rehash the "kill the Boer" song during a 2012 rally.

Today, South Africa is in shambles. The passenger rail system, which once served 600 million annual journeys, is now essentially defunct. The electricity grid is teetering. Life expectancy and GDP per capita have been stagnant for 40 years, while nearly every other country in the world has seen staggering increases.

Worse, though, is the fate of rural white farmers who have been subject to attacks in which they are tortured for several hours and then murdered. Almost none of these attacks are prosecuted, meaning the farmers can be murdered with impunity. In fact, the government of Cyril Ramphosa, the current president, has proposed seizing white-owned farms without compensation, echoing what happened in Zimbabwe.

It was in the context of all of this, that today the Trump administration said it will grant asylum and a rapid path to citizenship for white South African farmers who flee to the United States. Furthermore, the government will cut off all aid to South Africa.

This will likely hasten South Africa's decline, and it's an acknowledgement that there is no longer anything there worth saving. South Africa is a failed African state, no different than many others. But despite everything, I'm not sure what could have been done differently. Apartheid is morally reprehensible, and at the same time it was the only way to keep South Africa from falling apart. That's all in the past now. It's time for the elves to get back on their ships and sail back to Valinor. And pity the ones that stay behind.

After Mandela, things would get much worse. Thabo Mbeki, the next President, denied the link between HIV and AIDS, and the number of South Africans suffering from the disease skyrocketed to a quarter of the population.

Hey, all these people were saying the US was following in the footsteps of Brazil and South Africa, but I never believed it until now:

In the fifth chapter of the book, titled "HIV Heresies," Kennedy writes several times that he is neutral on the whether HIV causes AIDS. "From the outset I want to make clear that I take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS," he says at the beginning of the chapter. Later on, though, Kennedy says in a parenthetical passage that he believes that HIV is "a cause of AIDS" and there are numerous mentions throughout the chapter of HIV infection not being the sole cause of AIDS.

Despite assertions that he is not taking sides, Kennedy spends much of the chapter on HIV presenting arguments made by Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and perhaps the most influential HIV "denier." Duesberg has argued that HIV does not cause AIDS but is a "free rider" common to high-risk populations who suffer immune suppression due to environmental exposures.

In "The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy sums up Duesberg’s theory as follows:

“Duesberg and many who have followed him offered evidence that heavy recreational drug use in gay men and drug addicts was the real cause of immune deficiency among the first generation of AIDS sufferers. They argued that the initial signs of AIDS, Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), were both strongly linked to amyl nitrate—poppers—a popular drug among promiscuous gays.”

Thabo Mbeki, the next President, denied the link between HIV and AIDS

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Kennedy says in a parenthetical passage that he believes that HIV is "a cause of AIDS"

Even the obviously hostile second hand source written to gin up fear about lenacapavir possibly maybe potentially being banned by Kennedy you found for your smear by association admits that Kennedy believes HIV is a cause of AIDS.

Kennedy is doing the same skeptic thing he's been doing for years, on a variety of topics. I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think he is ever going to learn that skepticism is evil and dangerous and bad and killing people. He's too much of a monster, I mean he literally growls instead of speaking.

To me it is interesting why Kennedy while believing the scientific evidence, delves so much into speculations that are known to be without strong evidence?

In a way, it could be healthy skepticism. We can benefit by examining our beliefs once in a while. Science changes, new evidence appears and sometimes people forget to update. But it doesn't seem what is happening here.

Maybe it is just that his tribal consciousness has become stronger with age that now it supersedes his rational thinking.

Most people are very tribal. They don't think deeply and just repeat what their tribe leaders tell them. Only a rare person is looking for truth. That is a hard work and requires to be in constant defiance towards the rest of the society who is very tribal. At the end you get tired and decide to live like everybody else, have an easier life and even make some profit.

The US is in practically no danger of a HIV running rampant, though, so it's kind of irrelevant. Yes, we'll lose some sodomites and drug addicts. We have people demanding fentanyl be allowed to run rampant for the same purpose on this very forum.

I think that HIV is rather irrelevant in the US because most people, including drug addicts have correct beliefs about it. They will try to use clean needles when injecting to avoid getting infected and so on.

I just look at this from public health point of view – if beliefs are causing people to make wrong health choices, then how can we change those beliefs?

Atul Gawande writes in detail how polio vaccination programs worked in India. The organizers knew that some people have beliefs that polio vaccine is causing disease or making people infertile etc. They also knew that shaming people or forcing vaccine doesn't work. If someone refuses, calmly explain why vaccine is beneficial and move on. In one episode the supervisor who otherwise was calm about all problems, got angry to vaccinator who berated a mother for refusing to vaccinate her child. He said, “she was listening to you before but now she will not listen at all”.

This approach was slow but successful, polio was eradicated in India. One has to be very stoic by allowing people to make wrong choices and then empathising with them when bad things happen without the slightest reproach.

Somehow we forgot all this and during covid acted very irresponsibly by forcing people to get vaccinated, by shaming them officially etc. Child vaccination rates predictably are going to fall and it will be hard work to improve them again.

With HIV beliefs in Africa, it's probably because we don't have vaccine against HIV so they never had contacts with field workers like that. Those people with HIV in Africa who happen to be involved in programs that provide treatment, quickly understand how all this work. But there is no a systemic reach like going from home to home to vaccinate or treat everyone.

The leaders could do that but they are tribal leaders. They have no capabilities to think or act rationally. It requires deep political scheming to entice them to implement such programs. The WHO is often accused to be working for China and other dictators but I don't see a way how they could not be. Otherwise those dictators are not going to listen to them.

This isn’t germane to the discussion. If you don’t like RFK Jr fine. We aren’t discussing RFK Jr but feel free to take potshots at your local political opposition.

Can someone explain to me why it's a matter of controversy that HIV causes AIDS?

IIRC, many people dramatically worsened after taking the earlier, largely ineffective treatments for HIV such as AZT.

Even if AZT created marginally longer life spans, it had severe side effects that took place immediately, so people might reason that it was actually AZT that was killing them. And, in some cases, it was AZT that was actually killing them. It's possible, though perhaps not likely, that it killed more people than it saved.

There's a lot more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis

It's not totally out of left field, and it's not unreasonable for a person to have considered this in the 1980s.

Of course, this is totally different than Thabo Mbeki, who had a totally different belief system that made no sense, lived in the era of effective HIV treatments, and who presided over a country where 25% of adults were infected with HIV.

The comparisons that the original poster made between RFK and Mbeki seem motivated more by Current Thing than by an actual analysis of the AIDS epidemic or South Africa. It's a bit disappointing.

IIRC, many people dramatically worsened after taking the earlier, largely ineffective treatments for HIV such as AZT.

There's a lot more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis

I don't understand why this isn't out of left field. The article seems to list about four different hypotheses (it's AZT, no it's poppers, no it's opioids, no it's sodomy), and most everything (except I guess AZT) was a thing before the AIDS epidemic. Given that AZT is a treatment for AIDS and nobody gets AZT without having AIDS, it doesn't pass the sniff test that the causality actually runs the other way.

Of course, this is totally different than Thabo Mbeki, who had a totally different belief system that made no sense, lived in the era of effective HIV treatments, and who presided over a country where 25% of adults were infected with HIV.

The comparisons that the original poster made between RFK and Mbeki seem motivated more by Current Thing than by an actual analysis of the AIDS epidemic or South Africa. It's a bit disappointing.

What is so disappointing about it? RFK also lives in the era of effective HIV treatments, so you can't let him off because AZT is not good. He was writing those things in 2021. Surely we're way past the "not unreasonable to consider this" time window you describe.

In any case I encourage you to discuss with the poster directly rather than taking potshots in a grandchild comment.

I suspect because people can be HIV positive for years even untreated and not show symptoms of AIDS. Most people are used to things like colds where exposure leads to symptoms in less than a week. So a germ that causes a disesase years out leads to people doubting that that is the true cause.

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