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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32380 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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Him mixing in normal life activities in his narration is not what's making it off putting on it's own, it's the fact that he's trying to present his experience as exactly the examples you just brought up. It's an attempt at the slice of life narration about a person in (what he thinks are) adverse conditions, but in reality he's a middle aged/boomer good boy that is inconvenienced by self involvement into operation of completely lawful agents of the state.

I remember reading some stories during the Syrian civil war which were like, yeah, we had to avoid those blocks because the rebels have control and the government forces are also over here, but we could take X street though and so after school we went to the theater.

This is exactly what he thought this would come off as when he was writing. Except he's not an unlucky Syrian or a Gazan who is thrown in the middle of a war that turns his life (and fate) upside down. Every struggle is entirely self imposed, there's no stray bullets or bombs flying around. He, at any time, can make it all end for himself by walking a block over. I'm not discrediting his opinion (although I'm not entirely sold on if he actually has one, or if he has to consult Jill before he can take a stance) about what's happening as a whole, I'm merely put off by his dramatic narration.

Yeah, the fact that he and Jill can drop the protests by travelling to a different part of the city and doing their 'here's our fun visitor schedule' means that this is not wartime Syria/Gaza/Belfast during the Troubles. That's the tourism part of it: "a few blocks from where we stayed X happened" but then across the city we went to the museum, had our dinner, went shopping, etc. They're not embroiled in anything and are going to where the "creeping authoritarianism" is by choice, and making it sound like "aw shucks, tweren't nothing, we wuz just doing what decent folx do!"

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