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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   28963 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Two different topics I am not qualified to talk about but am interested in hearing your opinions on:

  1. Apparently there is now a crime in Britain called a 'homophobic public offense.' Committing this crime will get you arrested. This has come to the wider world's attention because of a video of an autistic teenaged girl being dragged out of her home for telling one of the police officers she looked like her lesbian nana. I will speak plainly that I read the same evil on the face of the lesbian-nana-cop that sent the kulaks to the gulags and now have the impression Britain is pretty well not a free country. But it's a big country, anyone can cherrypick one terrible story out of millions (or billions, in the new case of that little girl in india who had been gangraped and then gangraped again in the hospital by the doctors), and I am not British so I can't speak to the probative value. Throwing it out there though https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12396427/Lesbian-nana-arrest-police-autistic-exclusive.html

NB This was a few days ago and the cops have since dropped the charges after public backlash. This time.

  1. A new audio sensation is sweeping the nation, a previously-nobody named Oliver Anthony has come out with an actually-good red tribe anthem called 'Rich Men North of Richmond.' Over the last week or so it's become ubiquitous in 'the RW blogosphere' - too many big names to list have independently drawn attention to it and Anthony is going to need some serious professional help to manage all of the invitations to appear on, well, everything. Give it a listen and see if it does anything for you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

I'm not from the south, but I and most of the rest of non-southern righties decided a long time ago we would just appropriate it. Confederate flags in rural Michigan, etc. To me it has a kind of universality to it. Don't miss the line 'if you're 5 foot 3 and 300 pounds, tax dollars shouldn't pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Interested to hear your thoughts

The Oliver Anthony song hit me hard. I also grew up within 100 miles of where that artist is based. So the appalachin country twang blues is familiar to me. I'm usually more of a fan of pop music.

Oliver has additional commentary on the song:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tmxyMJd7IQ8

Its a nine minute video that I watched all of, but I'll summarize some things I remember (cuz i know I hate watching videos that other people post):

  1. The video I posted was uploaded just prior to the one that NotBritishorSouthern posted. It is his first video released not on a cell phone camera.
  2. He comments on many parts of the song, but doesn't mention the line "if you're 5 foot 3 and 300 pounds, tax dollars shouldn't pay for your bags of fudge rounds."
  3. Was formerly an "angry agnostic", said he used to make fun of the "sky daddy". Has come around to religion recently.
  4. Doesn't like pedos. Doesn't understand how someone can do that to children.
  5. Feels like Washington has made things harder on people.
  6. He has gotten messages from people about his music helping others. He hopes to do more.
  7. Talked about getting high and drunk and wasting his early time in life.
  8. Says he met good people at the factory he worked at.
  9. Some other stuff, but I'm forgetting now.

In the UK, a 19 y/o was found guilty of a hate crime for quoting a rap lyric containing the n-word on her instagram page. A while ago, a man was jailed for 20 weeks for posting 10 "grossly offensive" George Floyd memes in a private Whatsapp group. Another man was found guilty of sending an offensive tweet, celebrating the death of Sir Tom Moore, and the tweet was only live for 20 minutes. Recently a man was found guilty of wearing an offensive football shirt (a reference to the Hillsborough disaster over 30 years ago). There are many more examples in kind, these are just from the top of my head.

I think these are all absurd. Anything that offends normie public sensibilities is illegal. I would much prefer the American free speech norms.

Recently a man was found guilty of wearing an offensive football shirt (a reference to the Hillsborough disaster over 30 years ago).

Huh? Care to elaborate please?

The disaster occurred when fans without tickets stormed the stadium, there was a crowd crush and 97 people died. The tabloid 'The Sun' famously blamed the disaster on the fans, subsequent investigation found that the police official in charge on the day made numerous mistakes and that various safety procedures were not followed. This turned into a 30 year saga in part because of a wider 'culture war' between what was perceived as the Northern working class (associated with coal miners, unions and the left, and with the city of Sheffield where the disaster occurred and with Liverpool, where the victims were largely from) and the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher that was in power at the time, associated with the police (to whom she gave huge above-inflation pay raises) and the South. By this point Thatcher had had the police fighting the miners for 10 years and had largely won against them. The disaster thus became a political culture war topic for many years and countless expensive investigations were conducted, especially after Labour won again in 1997.

The man wore a shirt that said "97: Not Enough" on it. He was sentenced in part because there are special rules and laws governing behavior at soccer games in the UK because of longstanding issues with hooliganism. His sentence was a £1,000 fine and a ban from football games for 4 years.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, although for the sake of those who know nothing about this tragedy, I'll point out that it's slightly misleading to state that fans "stormed the stadium". But anyway, my point isn't that, it's that this incident with the T-shirt appears to be rather different from the other ones listed in the original comment. After all, surely working-class Northern English football fans don't count as a protected group.

In the UK, a 19 y/o was found guilty of a hate crime for quoting a rap lyric containing the n-word on her instagram page.

I thought the absurd US incoherency around "the N Word" (where a teenager's life can be ruined because we have to pretend she learned the word from her racist grandpappy rather than the radio) was the worst it could get.

US ridiculousness + European free speech norms though...

Interestingly, the sentence was in part because in the UK, the -a variant and 'hard r' variant are (in most accents) pronounced exactly the same, so "trigger" and "trigga" have the same pronounciation unlike in most US accents. The judge therefore ruled (iirc) that her excuse that they were two different things didn't count.

I had idly wondered this to myself for a time. Just goes to show how intellectually bankrupt it is to fluff up a particular inflection of a word as a grievous sin.

Give it a listen and see if it does anything for you: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

Honestly not much, but it wasn't written for me. Unlike the wonderful sound, the lyrics resonate like a laundry-list of complaints. It's too prosaic to be subversive. Plus I think it misidentifies the problem as rich men north of Richmond, and not the local power brokers enthusiastically elected and re-elected. But the song is overwhelmingly well-liked, so I'm glad for the artist.

Someone below linked the Antifascist Blues. While I found that song more catchy and clever, I have some of the same criticisms.

So, when the US has bad cops caught doing bad things, we get tons of counterexamples of good cops doing their jobs correctly and professionally. When the British police get caught doing bad things, are their any popular counterexamples of the British police doing their jobs correctly and professionally?

Could easily be a bias thing based around my getting most of my good-cop-bad-cop news from themotte. Since American police code as red, and British police code as blue, that kinda makes sense, though even these days, we seem to have enough lefties around to point out when confirmation bias is painting a misleading picture. But I can't recall any instance of someone being positive toward the British police. Where are their defenders?

The Metropolitan Police has one of the highest homicide solve rates of any major western urban police force. In 2019, it solved 98% of London's 143 homicides, for example. San Francisco's homicide solve rate seems to fluctuate between around 65% and 75%, and that is one of the very highest of major US cities. London's homicide rate is vastly below US cities with similar (or indeed better, in SF's case) demographics from an HBD purist's perspective.

Generally I find the police here to be moderately competent. They remove schizo homeless people quickly. When annoying street buskers play near my home, they come in 15 minutes to move them along. I've asked them for directions and they've always been polite. The police don't set hate crime laws, politicians do. Police are usually authoritarian personality types, there are always issues with them enjoying the power they wield over civilians. But they enforce laws that are, ultimately, passed by others.

In 2019, it solved 98% of London's 143 homicides

I'm deeply suspicious. Some combination of wrongly classifying many murder victims as deaths by accident or suicide and also pinning lots of murders on people who maybe didn't really commit them?

The usual solve rate is more like 80-90%, by the way, 2019 was an exceptional year. But it makes sense, regular homicides in the age of DNA and mass surveillance (which London has more of than any other Western city) are usually easy for police with enough resources to solve. Gang-related homicides are more complex because they often involve groups of people fighting each other, but there surveillance can help, drill rap means they often admit it themselves, and they have extensive gang databases to tie people together.

The Metropolitan Police has one of the highest homicide solve rates of any major western urban police force.

Is that because they have better police, or because they have killers who are worse at hiding their kills?

I could imagine that, for instance, lone killers might find coverups harder than gang killers.

Or many fewer killings between gangs / in cultures where the victims don't cooperate with the police?

The majority of homicides are gang-related, gangs are often along ethnic lines (typically Caribbean, West African, Somali, Bangladeshi, sometimes mixed (eg. there are gangs with black and white members)). But I have heard that London has a uniquely comprehensive gang database compared to other cities, a lot of members are tracked from early teenagerhood, family groups are tracked etc.. I don't know how true that is. I do know that stop and frisk seems pretty common in London though, I see teens in groups getting searched almost every week. There are large-scale orders that allow the police to search everyone they want in an area for periods of time without cause.

There's also option C- the same lack of civil liberties that results in autistic 16 year old girls getting hauled off for saying a cop "looks lesbian" gives the police the ability to solve murders far more efficiently and thoroughly than in a country which protects individual rights to do weird or suspicious things.

I've found an article by "the Graham Factor" where he mentions another difference that isn't directly related to the police powers: the courts don't have to dismiss illegally obtained evidence if it's otherwise reliable. If someone was found to have a tactical assault butter knife on their person, then the charge sticks, even if the cop did something wrong: wasn't allowed to frisk the person, made a mistake when filling out the report, etc.

How does stop-and-frisk help solve murders? By harvesting fingerprints?

I mean to start with stop-and-frisk worked well in NYC until the NYPD stopped it as a civil rights violation. It’s reasonable to assume that it works in London too.

But more to the point, I’d expect that it’s coupled with a lot of additional measures. Upthread there’s a discussion of a gang database- in the US the use of gang databases in serious crime prevention gets floated every once in a while and shot down for civil liberties reasons, because having bad friends and suspicious habits is not illegal. In the UK it presumably isn’t either, but looser probable cause rules related to such things plausibly make evidence collection much easier. And that’s just one example.

Stop and frisk is a tiny part of the puzzle, the UK has vast surveillance powers over its populace and a huge amount of infrastructure to support it.

Watch any UK crime drama and they basically have to invent unrealistic reasons for their multiple layers of CCTV, Internet snooping, etc. have all fallen through the cracks for a particular case. It's kind of hilarious.

Watch any UK crime drama and they basically have to invent unrealistic reasons for their multiple layers of CCTV, Internet snooping, etc. have all fallen through the cracks for a particular case. It's kind of hilarious.

I think you could make an incredibly good show revolving around some evil Ed Snowden equivalent who knows all about the CCTV/surveillance system and uses it to construct incredibly tight alibis etc in order to commit a series of murders. You get to have the conflict between the hardened old detective with a distrust for the new high-tech methods, arrogant political appointees claiming the Panopticon is infallible, etc.

I think it’s also somewhat a preventative measure. It puts potential criminals on notice that the cops are present and active in a given area, thus it’s more dangerous to carry drugs or a weapon in that area. This would naturally lower the rate of drug related crimes and murders.

I think that even with “potential abuses” stop and frisk and broken windows work well enough to be well worth the trade offs. The entire community benefits when ordinary people can walk in their city without fear of street crime or gunfire.

I think that even with “potential abuses” stop and frisk and broken windows work well enough to be well worth the trade offs. The entire community benefits when ordinary people can walk in their city without fear of street crime or gunfire.

I don't think it is particularly useful to combine stop and frisk with broken windows. The latter is simply the enforcement of law, while the former is, often, the violation of law. (eg: In NYC "[b]etween January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted over 4.4 million Terry stops. . . .52% of all stops were followed by a protective frisk for weapons. A weapon was found after 1.5% of these frisks. In other words, in 98.5% of the 2.3 million frisks, no weapon was found.". Given that police are permitted to frisk only when they have reasonable suspicion that a detained person is armed,* the police were clearly engaging in widespread Fourth Amendment violations.

And, while it is perfectly true that "[t]he entire community benefits when ordinary people can walk in their city without fear of street crime or gunfire[,]" one can say that of most civil liberties. "It is OK to violate the civil liberties of a small number of people if the community benefits" is a recipe for the complete evisceration of civil liberties.** It is certainly the rationale that has been given in the past for the evisceration of civil liberties.

*Though if Justice Scalia had had his way, they would not be able to frisk without probable cause, a higher bar. See Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993) (concurring opinion)

**Obviously Including, given this particular rationale, Second Amendment rights.

I think there’s a faulty assumption here in the sense that I don’t think the actual discovery of weapons in a stop and frisk is nearly as important as the show of force S&F represents. There are more efficient ways to find contraband. However the show of force, the fact that cops are making a point to stop people likely known to police as troublesome serves as a strong deterrent to carrying weapons or contraband around.

More comments

Yes, and DNA if the frisk leads to an arrest on a lesser crime. That is a big part of why police do stop and frisks. See the oral argument in Maryland v. King, which okayed taking DNA from arrestees, where the Maryland AG said, "Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King." King's crime was rape FWIW.

PS: Note that this not meant to be an argument in favor of stop and frisk, which is far too subject to abuse.

new audio sensation is sweeping the nation, a previously-nobody named Oliver Anthony has come out with an actually-good red tribe anthem called 'Rich Men North of Richmond.'

Eh, it's no Antifascist Blues.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

After a minute, I turned it off because I found it to be too whiny and self-indulgent. I've never understood why anyone, on either side of the political spectrum, would want to identify with someone who whines about being powerless. It's sad to see the South reduced to this. I'm the descendant of Confederate soldiers. They didn't whine about the federal government, they did something about it.

They got the snot kicked out of them. If you want to project strength when you are weak for the sake of your pride you need to be ready to sacrifice yourself for it. But that's not what modern Southern men are willing to do. As they exemplify every day of their lives where they waste away eating corn syrup and drinking liquid estrogen whilst reveling in a culture that worships black people.

Treating victimary discourse as if it's beneath you is missing the point of it. It's not for you to feel sorry for yourself. It's for the next generation to have something to ground themselves in. If you feel you have suffered you feel free to believe you are owed something. Which is an attitude that could have served Southern men very well. Rather than the endless mentality of individually bootstrapping yourself through life like you owed it something.

I don't think it's actually good for the next generation to ground themselves into a slave-moralistic "I suffered so you owe me something" mentality. One does not need to feel oppressed to feel entitled to the government treating them like normal people who have a normal country that deserves preservation.

You have suffered yet don't even have the gumption to demand recompense. You are already grounding yourself in slave moralistic 'I just want to be treated normal!' which is even weaker and more slavish than what you maintain I am proposing.

If you don't act like you are owed something no one will think of paying you.

No one will think of paying conservative whites whether or not they write maudlin songs about how taxes make them sad. That's not demanding recompense, it's acting like a whipped dog. In any case, why do I need to "suffer" to be entitled to my country? It's mine and I'm entitled to make demands of it whether or not I suffer.

You are just arguing against your own point. If whites aren't getting anything even if they complain about it, why would they get anything if they don't? A whipped dog that doesn't whine is no less whipped than a whipped dog that does.

As far as I’m aware if the police were prosecuting her under Part 3A 29B of the public order Act she has a clear defence because she was in a private dwelling and only people within that dwelling heard her. Now, maybe she is screwed because the police recorded it and the police then played the recording to people outside the dwelling but I think you can claim a defence that you reasonably believed your words would not be heard outside the dwelling. I suspect the reason for this defence is to cover situations where the accused is being secretly recorded. Of course it also completely ridiculous for the police to accuse you of a crime that they have facilitated by their own actions.

2)An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.

In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to prove that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the written material displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/3A

The whole situation is a bit sad because without the altercation at the end it does look like good community policing. Maybe the officer was just sick of being a glorified taxi driver for bratty girls and kicked off.

The first topic reminds me of a ridiculous story from sixth grade. Someone told me this kid in my class had a gay cousin, and since I was gay I asked this kid if his cousin was gay. He got mad at me for implying that his cousin was gay, and then complained to my science teacher, who I was sure was a lesbian because she was a soccer coach and I saw her buying wine with women at the grocery store multiple times. My lesbian science teacher scolded me for asking this kid if his cousin was gay, even though I was just asking because I was gay and wanted a gay friend. (Granted I probably didn't ask with a very polite tone.) Either way, the kid I asked was more homophobic than I was, since he was offended that I'd imply his cousin was gay, whereas was just asking for a gay friend, and it ended with me getting scolded by a lesbian teacher for homophobia instead of the kid who was actually homophobic.... anyway I'm just relating this to try to illustrate how the "homophobic public offense" law is terrible and will lead only to ridiculous outcomes. Am I allowed to be homophobic as a homosexual? If not then I can only see this law being worse for me as a homosexual who interacts with homosexuals all the time and happens to do things that can probably be framed as homophobic if they need to be, compared with someone who knows no homosexuals and runs little risk of doing homophobic things unless a lesbian cop shows up at their door...

I like the song you are asking about. As a rich man north of Richmond I empathize with him and people like him more than most of the people in my class FWIW. Rich people lording their power over the poor is really bad and every time I see it I cringe. I thought about writing out a response to this piece in the NY Times but don't have much to add. The rich are increasingly divorced from the realities of the poor. All everyone with a college degree has been doing since 2008 is throwing poor white people under the bus, pointing at Trump voters as racist hicks while trying to differentiate themselves in increasingly extravagant ways. I think (hope) this has basically run its course, even the Barbie movie seems to be illustrating the horrors of "going high" while everyone else is struggling in the gutters.

Am I allowed to be homophobic as a homosexual?

The amount of times a straight person has accused me (a man who's had sex with three men, variously giving and receiving) of being insufficiently supportive of the gay community. It drives me nuts. It's always a straight white woman too.

Wait, like, at the same time?

No, separate encounters.

As /u/Absoluto correctly notes, this is a rather paltry number of same-sex partners compared to the gay male average (and a drop in the bucket compared to how many women I've had sex with), but I still feel confident in saying that I'm gayer than a straight woman who's never even kissed a woman and yet purports to be an "ally" of (that is, speak on behalf of, unappointed) the LGBTQ+ community.

It is confusing because between the options of “three guys at once” and “lifetime body count of 3” one can easily imagine someone saying that having a gay body count of 3 is not sufficient to be really gay

kinda funny because on one hand banging 3 dudes isnt gay enough to participate in the gay discourse but it also excludes you from claiming to be straight.

I mean I'm not as impressed by that song as some seem to be, but it's nice to see traditional country performed by someone who isn't a hipster every once in a while.

There’s pathos, some nice unexpected breaks from the established flow of the song, and an earnest rawness to it. It’s a good song regardless of the content.

I'm from the south. Not really a fan of the "sad folk" style of music, so personally I wouldn't say that I like that song.

However, the message of "fuck the government" has appealed to all humans throughout history. And I'm happy whenever an unknown musician suddenly gets a hit, so congrats to this guy for his burgeoning success.

https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/humberside-police-twitter-transgender-limerick-2468385

I'm wary of Chinese robber-ing a nation of 60 million people, but there seem to be far too many of these stories for it to be coincidence (especially when compared with the conspicuous years-long police inaction against grooming gangs in Oxford, Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford). One gets the distinct impression of an ideologically captured police force.

I'm wary of Chinese robber-ing...

Sometimes, one example is enough. I don't think that example is (it could've been a bored cop, and asking questions without a warrant isn't illegal), but the ones downthread are.

Think of what was required for the 11 arrests for football tweeting:

  • (optional) There is a background level of public support which makes this popular,
  • Politicians pass a law that affects it,
  • (optional) There is specific outrage and/or reporting by the public
  • Police investigate it and make arrests
  • The news reports on it, and doesn't include any significant backlash.
  • (forthcoming??) They are tried, convicted, and punished.

Even when one example isn't enough, the public response (or lack thereof) to one example can be enough.

There appear to be some peculiarities to police in the UK that I've heard are to do with a scandal in the 80s that left them incredibly paranoid of being accused of racism, and they therefore are overly-relisnt on procedure and ass-covering paperwork. As a beat officer, any time you interact some sort of minority, that minority will apparently call you racist, which will be officially logged and looked in to. The joke is that going after mean Tweets and people who quote rap lyrics is a better investment of police time/money for the police; makes the numbers look good in terms of arrests vs complaints of racism, since no one goes outside.

there seem to be far too many of these stories for it to be coincidence

I mean, any such arrest is really dumb. But 'it isn't a coincidence' and 'ideologically captured' are very vague claims. And it's usually a mistake to conclude anything about the relative frequency of events from their relative frequency in headlines you see. 50 school shootings, 800 dead in mass shootings, vs 25,000 total homicides - news consumers intuit a different ratio. The police still spend >98% of their time on things other than 'arresting for offensive speech'.

The police still spend >98% of their time on things other than 'arresting for offensive speech.

What sort of argument is that supposed to be? Serial killers also spend 98% of time doing other things than killing.

The argument is you shouldn't use the frequency of news stories of 'arresting people who say bad words' to 'normal police work' to judge the frequency of the events actually happening, which this quote seemed to do:

but there seem to be far too many of these stories for it to be coincidence (especially when compared with the conspicuous years-long police inaction against grooming gangs in Oxford, Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford

I agree all instances of offensive speech arrests are bad.

The police still spend >98% of their time on things other than 'arresting for offensive speech'.

A claim I would have a lot less trouble believing were it not for their aforementioned systematic refusal to investigate child grooming in four separate English towns for over thirty years with the victims numbering in the thousands, owing entirely to the ethnic background of the perpetrators.

We've all seen "man arrested for having his dog give hitler salute" or "man arrested for calling a player on his football team a slur after they miss a kick" coming out of MiniTrue in Oceania. The pattern is clear, but I wonder what led to this? How common are these arrests (obviously they're much less frequent than slur use or offensive speech generally), what classes of people support and oppose them, what social or intellectual trends led to the implementation of these laws there while America retains support for and enforcement of the first amendment? Any insight from locals?

Also, concealed carrying butter knives.

"But you said you are engaging in prayer, which is the offense," the officer responded.

"Silent prayer," she responded.

"No, but you were still engaging in prayer," he said. "It is an offense,"

https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-woman-arrested-second-time-offense-silently-praying-outside-abortion-clinic

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