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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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I was just thinking about how Dreher is here basically taking a "Why can't these other guys just lay down and die kindly, since otherwise there's a (marginal) threat to my life and welfare?" point, since - as far as I remember - he has criticized similar thinking when it comes to Covid response.

Of course, deep down, it's a familiar scenario - a rather naive American journalist encounters an authoritarian power (here mostly the Hungarian government, though Dreher seems to also feel his Orthodoxy should predispose him to at least some Russia sympathies), learns that the narrative is a bit more complicated than how Western media might generally talk about authoritarian governments that it dislikes, and resolves that actually the authoritarian government is a Much Maligned Victim and should be trusted on everything. (Though he has never offered an explanation why he thinks that the American government's Covid response was overbearing but the Hungarian government's considerably tighter Covid measures were nothing to particularly comment on, but then again similar double standards are nothing new here.)