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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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"The usual suspects" went mask-off and no one should take their complaints of "tyranny" and "human rights violations" seriously ever again. It is only ever an attempted bludgeon to manipulate people to do what they want.

This is an extremely slippery slope. I suspect that if people in the first world truly stopped taking tyranny and human rights violations seriously you would be very concerned.

Sure the language is being abused by a subset of the left, but come now, do you truly think we should throw the whole framework of human rights and tolerant governance out of the window?

I lived in Eastern Europe during communist time and after joining EU. On the day covid hit we were back in communism - you need permission to travel, you don't have freedom of association or freedom of speech - there were severe monetary penalties for breaking curfews or criticizing the policies or fearmongering. The government can do whatever they want.

So yeah - all of the cherished human rights disappeared overnight.

What does "take tyranny and human rights violations seriously" mean in this context? We have three years of ridiculous examples of "the usual suspects" in "the west" not taking them seriously and ridiculing those who do and they repeatedly demanded more.

A discussion about how such people could offer real recompense and atone for their behavior is a good discussion to have, but none of them have done anything at all. They haven't broken down in embarrassment and shame for what they did. They haven't begged for forgiveness. They want to move along as if it didn't happen or they didn't really do exactly what they did.

I didn't say nor imply that we should throw out the whole framework of human rights and tolerant governance, I at most said people who revealed themselves to not care about human rights should properly be recognized to not care about them and are using it as a bludgeon to get what they want.