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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   7374 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I got a lot of pushback here, but I still think my standard of "anything over 50 years ago should be dropped" as a current-year topic still works pretty well, not ideologically obviously but as a more pragmatic principle that preserves at least some notion of evenhandedness. 50 years later, most everyone in power then is dead now, or dying, so it seems increasingly pointless to try and get reparations or impact current policy. For Israel, that means the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War both ought to be non-factors, but the Oslo Accords and first Lebanese conflict might still be fair game. For Ukraine, that would mean you can't hold Stalin against Russia, but you can look at some of the last decade of the USSR. For Turkey, that would mean a lot of the PKK conflicts are still relevant. Does that imply that an Armenian shouldn't feel ill-will towards Turkey still? No, that's understandable, I would more say that it implies that you can blame their upbringing or current education system for mis-educating people still, but that at the same time pursuing any kind of reparations would be a fool's errand.

More controversially, your reasoning would imply that the following are off the table:

  • Every former British colony griping about British colonialism (including the Great Famine of Ireland, the partition of India and Pakistan, and on and on)
  • Jews griping about the Holocaust
  • Black Americans demanding reparations for slavery, or even bringing up Jim Crow
  • Aboriginal Australians griping about the Stolen Generations
  • First Nations people griping about residential schools
  • Native Americans griping about the Trail of Tears

Interestingly, the Rwandan genocide and South African apartheid are still within the statute of limitations.

I'm actually ok with those being disallowed from the complaining zone. I get quite sick of being held to collective blame (as a white American) for things that happened before I was even born. Slavery and the Trail of Tears happened before my ancestors even came over to the country! It doesn't seem very fair to hold grudges against a group of people who couldn't possibly have committed the wrong to begin with.

I basically agree, though I'd prefer an exponential function with a half-life of 25. But I guess that will be too complicated.

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