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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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I have no idea why you think any concern about this issue is "fake outrage". You acknowledge that they actually think something importantly fought over is at risk, so the outrage is not fake then, no? I guess you're saying they're disguising the cause of the outrage.

The outrage is certainly not fake. What do you think all that bureaucracy (which you call nonsense) is supposed to stop? Is it not the very deportations you argue people don't think they're at risk for, and other similar injustices? If I see a lion in its enclosure pounding away at the glass 5 inches in front of me while staring me down and yowling aggressively, I will assume that once it breaks the glass it will attack me. That's what the glass is there to prevent, and there's a reason the lion doesn't like it. It's because it wants to bite people it's angry at.

If I'm in a crowd of 1000 people at the zoo when the glass breaks, my personal odds of getting eaten are very low, but I still don't want it to happen and would take measures to prevent it. I might even feel some fear if I saw cracks forming in the glass despite knowing my odds are good. This is all pretty normal human behaviour, not what you call "play acting".

There is no legal protection for any citizen without adhering to some forms of bureaucracy, and people get scared when they are not protected.

Also, its strange that you dismiss the threat of deportation to Europe. I guess you don't see a huge cost in forcibly having your life uprooted from friends and family and work? But again, doing the utmost to avoid such a thing and being worried about it when its use is actively threatened against citizens is pretty normal human behaviour, even if the countries are nice. If you truly would have no qualms about such a thing (which I do find a bit hard to believe, but I'll take you at your word) then all I can say is I think you are in a tiny minority.

In general, I have a hard time understanding the distinction you're trying to draw between people worried about the fall of this supposed "shadow government" and actual cuts to USAID, government departments, etc, none of which I would describe as "shadow organizations". It really seems to me like people are worried about exactly the thing that it says on the tin, the thing that both Trump supporters and his opponents agree he is doing: "circumventing the procedural nonsense" that our country's documents call laws and taking a tire iron to the parts of the government he doesn't like, and which the people he dislikes support.