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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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That you wrote six paragraphs to vent a simple emotion that you could have stated in one sentence does not lure me into thinking that you are making a rational argument. I am not that much of a Motteizen. Plenty of people disagree with your idea that the greatest current failure of American civilization are the violent homeless drug addicts. There are so many other options. For example, the endless foreign interventionism... the NSA domestic surveillance... the war on drugs...

You are a Singapore-style authoritarian but I am not. If you want to move to Singapore, I doubt that it would be difficult.

"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."

Aha... but in this authoritarian utopia of yours somehow you think that The Motte would still exist? You think that a government that literally kills people for selling substances that people consensually want to consume is going to... let people post on a forum that allows free speech?

"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."

...

"Lock the free-thinkers up, slaughter the spreaders of dissident thoughts, forget about the problem."

No, fuck you.

  • -10

Aha... but in this authoritarian utopia of yours somehow you think that The Motte would still exist?

Yes? The Motte is not banned in Singapore.

Through a relatively unimportant happenstance of contingency. The same kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies is the kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from disagreeing with them.

The same kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies is the kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from disagreeing with them.

If you consensually put a substance in your body that then causes you to try and shove someone under a train or attack them with an icepick, I think your rights end at the point where you're doing the shoving.

This is the entire chasm in understanding right there: I'm a nice guy who likes to consensually use fun substances and I don't shit on the street or try and shove people into traffic, therefore I should not be prosecuted (debatable up to that point but not incorrect to hold this view) and this kind of legislation or enforcement could be used against me (perhaps) and anyway it's wrong because it disapproves of fun stuff and thus condemns my choices and makes me feel sad about myself and therefore it is bad and wicked and Nazi Fascism! (okay, no).

The people talking to themselves, attacking other passengers, and pissing themselves in public are not the nice people like you who responsibly use fun stuff, and fuck 'consensually putting substances into their own bodies'; I think they've rotted their brains to the point where "consensual" is a very dim signpost in the past, and they certainly are not harmless by their 'choices' and when it comes to hurting other people, that's where the interest of the public good overrides "but it's my natural human right to get high!"

The same incentives which lead the police not to enforce other laws against the homeless people also results in them not enforcing drug laws against them, though. So you make more drug laws or increase their penalties and you still have a bunch of crazy homeless people but now you're putting the mostly-harmless pot-smoker in jail for longer. You can't solve anarcho-tyranny with new laws that will be enforced anarcho-tyrannically.