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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   13085 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.

“America,” Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

As tempers rose, one U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.

This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?

The Pope planning to spend the 250th anniversary of the USA in the completely irrelevant island named Lampedusa (yeah we get the pun Leo), known solely for importing Africans into Europe, reminds me why I ultimately have to hate Catholicism. This is a serious insult to an entire country over a political dispute involving a transient administration. And never would an Italian pope consider missing an important political anniversary in Italy. If Catholicism continues supporting endless migration into America and Europe then I will support any effort to shatter them into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds. There’s a generous middle-ground between “not supporting the destruction of an alien civilization” and “bringing literally infinite aliens into your country”, I don’t know how they could get this so wrong.

(Just reasoning from love thy neighbor: the Hispanic laborer who works in America has the privilege of sending home remittances with significantly greater purchasing power. Due to average salary difference adjusted for USD, cost of living difference and purchasing power difference, the Hispanic laborer could effectively make 10x more than his American counterpart. This allows him to easily support a family back home, which according to God’s design is a key factor for happiness, but the poor American laborer does not have this same privilege. Even the poor Indian who migrates here to work at a gas station has greater odds of supporting a family due to the status / wellbeing differential between here and India. We oppress our poorest neighbor by forcing him to compete with foreign workers when he makes significantly less in two key ways: (1) he often makes far less in terms of purchasing potentials re Latin America, (2) he makes far less in terms of marital potential re all foreign migrants. Same amount of stressful work, but significantly different payoff for wellbeing. Seems evil to me.)

Americans generally do have the option of sending their families to live in Mexico and sending them remittances.

Do you seriously think the quality of life for a lower class American is the same in Mexico as it would be for a lower class Mexican who grew up there, speaks the language, has a large extended family there, and associates it with all the nostalgic qualities which make one’s homeland appealing?

Those are social advantages, but yes, an American in Mexico would have more or less the same buying power and quality of life as a local. That's why many less affluent Americans' retirement plan is to move to a poor country.

No, but people move around all the time to improve their economic status, including to places where they don't speak the language, have extended families,nor have nostalgia for from growing up there. If these kinds of migrants were getting as good a deal as the OP thinks they are, more people would go in the opposite direction.

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