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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   1586 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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The road to hell is paved with agitators certain their one weird trick would bring about the revolution clean energy a balanced budget ethnonationalism.

Worked for El Salvador.

In the case of Sweden, it was literally regularly cited as an example of progressive utopia back in the 00's, until they became a meme after a different type of one weird trick.

I’m not sure it did. See section 3. If those stats are right, the murder rate peaked four years before Bukele got the presidency, and three more years before he started imprisoning everyone.

Also, I don’t get the impression his campaign was actually focused on one weird trick. Running a general law & order message isn’t that weird.

By the same token, there’s no one weird trick to Sweden’s policy. It’s not like someone ran on a single issue of opening the gates. Liberal policy plus world events equaled a ton of migrants. Integrate over a decade or two to get the current totals. Or is there some tipping point I missed?

I’m not sure it did. See section 3. If those stats are right, the murder rate peaked four years before Bukele got the presidency, and three more years before he started imprisoning everyone.

There are two problems with that:

  • The peak that the murder rate dropped from was absolute insanity. The "stable" level before it was still a deranged 3rd world level of murder.
  • The annual statistics obscure what actually happened. People look at the yearly rates, then check the year Bukele took office, and conclude that by the time he showed up El Salvador was already on a neat downward slope. What they don't check is the month he took office - it was June - so he had a full half of a year to implement his approach to law enforcement, and for it to bear fruit. The monthly statistics bear this out, there's a massive drop in homicides the very moment he's sworn in, and the whole reason it looks like 2019 is part of a download slope, is because of what happened during that year. Prior to Bukele, El Salvador was on track to stay at the ~50-ish / 100K homicide rate that was "natural" to it. There's another massive drop exactly when he did start imprisoning everyone.

Also, I don’t get the impression his campaign was actually focused on one weird trick. Running a general law & order message isn’t that weird.

I follow him on Twitter, dude literally reposts "fix everything easily switch" memes.

By the same token, there’s no one weird trick to Sweden’s policy. It’s not like someone ran on a single issue of opening the gates. Liberal policy plus world events equaled a ton of migrants.

"Liberal policy" is the "one weird trick". Look at a map. Tell me how Syrians end up in Sweden, but somehow skip Denmark or Poland without someone trying out a "one weird trick" (which was them literally inviting the Syrians over, along with Merkel and her "refugees welcome" bit).

I haven't followed the politics closely, but my impression is that Bukele was also a mayor of a major city and had pivoted to a hard anti-crime posture a few years before he got the presidency, so it's not like he or his policies were just showing in El Salvador completely fresh, either.

So there's a lack of granularity in that graph, it makes more sense with more detail.

Essentially a previous government had struck a deal with the big gangs to behave, and that caused the initial murder drop. The gangs decided to come back with more demands and the murder rate was going back up just before Bukele.

Bukele came in with a "fuck negotiations, lock them up" policy and the murder rate collapsed.

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