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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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The big story in North Carolina this morning is that power went out across Moore County last night and it appears it was due to intentional vandalism at several substations.

https://www.wral.com/sheriff-intentional-vandalism-at-substations-causes-power-outage-affecting-nearly-39k-moore-county-residents/20612201/

Speculation on the North Carolina subreddit is that it was motivated by outrage about a drag show scheduled to be performed in Southern Pines last night.

https://www.wral.com/drag-show-in-southern-pines-ramps-up-security-after-backlash/20596538/

So yes, nothing is known for sure as of this morning, but let's say they're right, that someone was so focused on making sure the drag show did not happen that they engaged in this intentional vandalism. It's really just an extreme form of no-platforming, isn't it? The same crap college students have been doing for years? The idea is that the featured content or entertainment is so harmful or damaging that it can't be allowed to exist and the community must be protected from it by any means necessary. In both cases I think it's idiotic. If you don't like it, no one's forcing you to go, but just let people do their thing. It's just as wrong to deplatform a drag show as it is to deplatform someone like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson.

Tangential, but decaying infrastructure + rise in conspiracy theory is a terrible combination. The latter will be invoked to explain perfectly predictable outcomes from the former.