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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Examples like El Salvador really make me see how tenuous human rights really are. They're a 'nice to have' that can only exist in a stable society. Establishing that stable society should come first. If the UN or outside countries wish to punish El Salvador for doing what it needs to do to re-establish stability, then it is the geopolitical version of Anarcho-Tyrrany.

In this case, the perfect is the enemy of the good. There is unlikely to be a way to restore order and tackle the criminal gangs that is practicable on any reasonable timeframe with the resources available, so doing it the messy way is far more reasonable than it looks (at least from my perspective).

Get them off the streets first. There will be plenty of time to process their claims of innocence after the fact.

Get them off the streets first. There will be plenty of time to process their claims of innocence after the fact.

The sheer scale of the tattoos in the videos I've seen leads me to believe that it's pretty easy to find and target these criminals. These gangs are clearly adapted to an environment where they're not concerned with mass arrests so much as projecting power and fear. You wouldn't see a resistance group in East Germany with massive, distinctive facial tattoos. It seems closer to a Centurion's horse-hair crest or the wings of Winged Hussars, a way to show off.

I suspect it may be to 'lock in' gang members too.

Yep, it's a costly signal of your allegiance. A quite common tactic among any group that wishes to establish tight bonds and high costs of defection.

Suspect?

It's obviously that. All gang tattoos are. What better way of ensuring loyalty ?

If the UN or outside countries wish to punish El Salvador for doing what it needs to do to re-establish stability

They should have claimed that all the gang members were COVID superspreaders.

That might piss them off more, but it would have been funny- outside countries have no problems doing this sort of thing to their own people when it suits them, so you might as well at least throw their excuse back in their face if they're going to start the who/whoms.

Care to point me to a source for America’s version of 60,000 arrests, or the prison to which people were sent?