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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Because everyone not a coward is stupid. A real man would have options, and he'd probably want to exercise them intelligently.

The situation boiled down to two options -- do something that will leave you destroyed, or suffer extreme humiliation. It was deliberately constructed by the filmmakers that way. In-film it was constructed by the cop that way -- and such sadists exist in real life.

I wonder, as you lovingly recount a just-so movie scene of abject humiliation, what you really feel when you see yourself in that moment. Injustice? Vengeance?

Frustration and anger, naturally. But also recognition. Because there are many situations a modern person under a modern government faces all the time that are similar, though the consequences for yielding are usually lesser. The government causes a problem or refuses to address one, but also provides such negative incentives to anyone solving them themselves that it makes sense to just suffer the problem. Homeless people menace and assault others on NYC subways. Groups of urban youths camp on rental bikes, preventing renters from using them. Farmers have their livestock taken by Federally protected predators -- or the suburban version, Federally protected geese shit all over people's lawns and parks. The commonality is there's a problem and fairly simple direct action one can take to solve it, but the government forbids the direct action. By itself the direct action might be risky, but add the government in and it's no longer risky; loss of some sort is near-certain, and now it works out that suffering the original problem is clearly the right move.

As Hlynka noted with a somewhat different valence, the job of the government isn't to protect regular people from criminals; it's to protect criminals from regular people. And that job they do.

I'm arguing that there's more than one way to skin a cat. Yes, we live in low-grade anarcho-tyranny. But part of that is the ability to circumvent or subvert that system. You just have to be willing to color outside the lines a bit. Lean into the anarchy to contravene the tyranny.

Of course, that risks the benefits of social status granted by the tyrant, which you value and I do not.