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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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'They enriched us.' Migrants' 44-hour visit leaves indelible mark on Martha's Vineyard

I encourage people to read the article before reading my impressions.

Incidentally, this article made me really wish for the Bare Links Repository back.

There is so much about this article that is just amazing to me. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe "witlessly mask off"?

First, I want to note the tic where every time the author notes an age, he specifies that the migrant in question looks younger. It's just so artlessly manipulative.

Second, the people patting themselves on the back for the casual, mild, one-off generosity. Wow, a Martha's Vineyard homeowner reached into his wallet and gave a migrant a $100 bill. Then there's the guy who spent $100 on candy for the kids, which is extra Wholesome 100 because he lives in his car because the rent is too damn high. It's like Ray Sanchez crammed an entire scathing allegory about life and housing in the blue zones into a sentence and didn't even notice.

Third, I'd really like to see the argument for how offering people a plane ride to a rich resort town is a human rights violation.

But the thing that really gets me is the detailed, yet uselessly vague, descriptions of the incredible dangers the migrants had to overcome to get to the US. Murderous mud and murderous cartels, and floods and cliffs. Coming from Venezuela, it's 2,684 miles by plane. Map software can't even calculate a route by land, I'm guessing it's something more like 4,000 miles, going through at least seven other countries. The article quotes the migrants clearly describing themselves as economic migrants, but repeatedly calls them asylum seekers. No one seems to notice that these people trekked, apparently on foot, halfway across the hemisphere, losing something like 2/3rds of their number to the assorted lethal dangers for exactly the storied rewards they want these people to get, quoting the article, "access to services including legal, health care, food, hygiene kits, and crisis counseling" along with housing.

The MV people celebrating themselves in this article seem to bear a large portion of moral blame for creating the exact incentive for people to take these risks and find themselves in these situations. Imagine if some billionaire was offering people a large sum of money to take their children and hike across a deadly desert. I think there would be mass outcry at how incredibly fucked up that was. And the few people who reached the other end are instead greeted with a king size Snickers bar and a crisp Benjamin to fuck off. Do you want people dying to get to you or not?! How many dead kids is worth a few hours of cultural enrichment?

I'm at a loss for how to categorize this, but it all just strikes me as appalling. This is the most cruelly champagne socialist shit I've ever read, and it's being presenting as flattery by CNN!

Your hatred is clouding your thinking. What, exactly, would you have considered the appropriate response?

  • Engage in charity individually

  • Coordinate aid to minimize the chaos

  • Lock the doors and hope they go away

  • Call their lawyers/politicians and make them go away

  • Hunt the most dangerous game from their thoroughbred horses

Choose according to your personal valuation of community vs. charity. All but the last would have been valid--if this weren't an active political maneuver. By framing the whole program as owning the libs, DeSantis added a giant publicity cost to anything which could be reported as pearl-clutching. It's only natural to choose the options least likely to give him the headlines he craves. If that's cringeworthy or tone-deaf, so be it.

Oh, but you've got to have something to froth about, so it's time to pick apart the execution of that option.

The MV people seem to bear a large portion of this moral blame for creating the incentive

So "Republican governors" can organize a plan to ship them cross-country. And red states can pay tax dollars for the travel. And DeSantis can bluster and make political hay and otherwise ensure that it gets massive news coverage...and you're blaming the residents?


Say your roommate brings in a homeless guy from the street and tells you he needs to sleep on the couch you just bought. Maybe you put your foot down; maybe you decide to be a good Christian. If you're feeling really charitable you might even try to offer aid of your own.

The calculus changes if your roommate calls your friends, coworkers, and pastor and hints that you're going to lose your shit. Might you feel a little...constrained? A little incentivized to prove him wrong in front of your social circles?

Either way, it's not ambiguous who's to blame.

What, exactly, would you have considered the appropriate response?

  1. Keep them, or

  2. Admit "we want them to go away"

"You are racists if you don't keep them, but we don't need to keep them" doesn't count.

I’m fine with either of those. “Put up or shut up.”

What sticks in my craw is the insistence that the residents are morally blameworthy for “creating the incentive”!