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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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You are easily amused. There is no contradiction between a country being poor and being able to harm the United States. Especially if it has a command economy where the rulers can arbitrarily decide to spend the budget on the latter and not care about the poor people.

Care to share some of Cuba's nefarious plots against the USA? What have they actually done to harm the USA since the Cuban Missile Crisis?

"Nefarious plot" is a very apt way to describe "cooking the heads of US intelligence personnel with a sound cannon."

I'm reminded of Scott's article about rising crime rates, which fails to take into account that if crime rises, and you use costly anti-crime measures, that restores the status quo so that's "no increase in crime", even though the impact of crime has gone up.

Cuba hasn't been able to harm the US much because the US exerts effort to stop it from causing harm, but this effort has a cost, and being forced to pay the cost is itself harm. Where it still does harm the US is mostly on the diplomatic and propaganda front.

but this effort has a cost, and being forced to pay the cost is itself harm

The USA cries out in pain as it strikes you. What cost exactly has the USA paid for the most recent round of "if you trade with Cuba we'll tariff you" or any of the items I listed here

Tariffing countries for trading with Cuba has a huge political and diplomatic cost.

Which the USA has gladly been paying for practically 0 gain for the last 12 months (not even related to Cuba, basically just for love of the game) so clearly it's not that painful lol