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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3226 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Why is LGBTQ so important for liberals in terms of foreign policy?

For example, when debating Russia, arguments often amount to Russia is evil because they aren't onboard with pride. Russia isn't putting LGBTQAASASFDSFDSFDSFDSFSD people in concentration camps, they simply seem not to have pride flags while having a don't ask don't tell attitude. Why does that infuriate liberals that much?

Countries in the middle east can engage in all sorts of questionable behaviour but, often it is a lack of LGBTQ flags that infuriates the left. Again, they aren't mass-executing LGBTQ people or having concentrations camps, they simply don't celebrate it or want it rubbed in people's faces.

It seems like existence of pride parades seems to be a key benchmark for judging the moral virtue of a country. Why is this benchmark so central?

About 5 years ago I was hiking in the Grand Canyon with friends and we met a 20-year-old Russian kid at the beach who asked if he could tag along with us for the hike back up to the rim. He spent a lot of the time telling us how great Russia was, which was fine, but one of the things he pointed to in evidence of its greatness was the fact that they could "beat faggots in the street" with no repercussions. I don't know if this kind of attitude is typical, but the fact that any random tourist would find it appropriate to tell Americans he just met that apropos of nothing in particular is at least an indication that the attitudes over there go beyond simply not celebrating it. Hell, even the rural Trump supporter in our group seemed pretty unnerved by it.

He spent a lot of the time telling us how great Russia was, which was fine, but one of the things he pointed to in evidence of its greatness was the fact that they could "beat faggots in the street" with no repercussions. I don't know if this kind of attitude is typical, but the fact that any random tourist would find it appropriate to tell Americans he just met that apropos of nothing in particular is at least an indication that the attitudes over there go beyond simply not celebrating it. Hell, even the rural Trump supporter in our group seemed pretty unnerved by it.

Well yeah, that’s an urban attitude. In America you’re more likely to find it in black ghettos than on a farm.

Sure, you might find it among hired laborers who commute in from a nearby trailer park. Honestly a lot of 'based' Russian social attitudes seem like they're copied from the attitudes of people living in... less-affluent settlements. This isn't a great match for the American right, which is driven by rural and religious attitudes, not shitty neighborhoods.

Last time I checked, the country in Russia was notoriously destitute aside from, as mentioned by others, dachas and cottagecore influencers. Not much trailer culture, either.

which is driven by rural and religious attitudes, not shitty neighborhoods.

This is a distinction without a difference. Rural areas that are not subsidised by commuters/retirees who make money in the city and spend it in the country are poor, have crap amenities other than access to nature because of the high cost of proving them in remote areas, and preferentially retain dumber people. The first two of these points have been true for a long time (since before 1900 in the UK, probably around 1950 in the USA), the third since time immemorial (idiot and pagan are derived from Greek and Latin slurs for country bumpkins respectively).

America has a sufficient number of decent if not particularly nice rural areas that this is not, in fact, a distinction without a difference, and homesteading laws have also tended to spread the rural population a bit more thinly than in other places; there are fewer agglomerations of extreme poverty in rural areas. And it’s the slums which I was referring to, not the rural lower incomes itself.

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