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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28352 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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Good example of this: Every year for a decade or more, there has been a UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. Back in 2017, an old friend of mine—a single, middle-aged Seattle woman with all the political attitudes that implies—shared a link to this article about the US, fuming about how "shameful" it was that the US stood nearly alone in voting against it. I pointed out that the Obama administration had voted against it as well, which took a bit of the wind out of her sails, but she was already committed, so she said that was shameful, too.

The rest of the story:

  1. While only the US and two other countries voted against it, (almost?) every advanced democracy abstained.
  2. The other two countries voting against? Ukraine and Palau.
  3. The country sponsoring the resolution every year? Russia.

This looks a an interesting piece of evidence for the relative weakness of the US Deep State. The UK (and, as far as I can see, most other western democracies) has a “policy” of abstaining rather than voting against these bullshit resolutions if they are going to pass anyway (which they usually are, because the slightly evil bloc of third world dictatorships that look to Russia and China for leadership is a majority). The reason for this is that it doesn’t affect anything, and voting against generates friction for the career diplomats whose day job is making nice to slightly evil countries. The elected government, on the other hand, would be better off with the positive media attention it would get for public ally opposing slightly evil UN resolutions. There is a Yes Minister episode about how the UK Deep State pulls this off.

The reason why the US votes against these resolutions is that the multiple layers of political appointees at the top of the State Department are, in this case, able to overrule the Deep State in a way Jim Hacker was not.

I don't know. I'm not sure that US politicians get credit for consistently voting against this resolution. My perception that it's mostly ignored, and when people pay attention to it, it's "OMG, the [current] administration doesn't want to condemn Nazis! I'm so ashamed to be American!"

I mean I guess the question is why not vote for? These resolutions don’t do anything, after all. Is it just to stick it to Russia?

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