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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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There has been a distinct and focus driven propaganda effort to marginalize certain peoples concept of an ingroup in the western world. More specifically, any concrete group like a nation or any concrete narrative of a shared suffering and hardship that has eventually been overcome together is, for certain groups, not allowed. The success of this propaganda leads to the conditions you describe.

You can't be angry at immigrants because there is no such thing. There can't be any immigrants since you don't exist. They are people, you are people. They live here now, you live here now. Without any sense of being you can't own anything. In clear terms: There is no you that can demand recompense without asserting, in some form, that you are owed more than the others. The quick and predictable reply to any of your supremacist assertions is the established fact that the Chinese real estate mogul that's lending out apartments for Indian workers is no less a human being than you are. Let alone the poor that are paying rent. You would have to be completely heartless as an individual to stand on your own two feet and maintain that your personal life is worth more than theirs on no greater grounds than because you feel that it is. (This is the base framing of every right winger in mainstream media since that's what they actually are when they buy into the propaganda)

If people had a sense of self and a coherent group identity they could demand, on the grounds of their common ownership of the land, that things change in their favor. Not as individuals but as a people. But if you reject that, you have nothing.

Most people in the west accept and regurgitate propaganda that is premised on the notion that they don't exist as an ingroup but rather an outgroup. At best they can defend themselves by appealing to the nihilistic universalism of money and 'common sense'. (As if it should make any sense to a Chinese person to privilege a bunch of Canadians from Europe. No, you pay rent. No rent, no house. That's common sense.)

I hope this makes enough sense to illustrate why I don't care about Canadians and their plight. I pity them, sure. I share a lot of their problems. But I can at least humble myself and recognize that the liberal humanist ideology I held as a young adult is deeply flawed. I was never a good person just because I felt I was selflessly tossing away notions of being a part of a coherent and exclusive group. I, in fact, wasn't being selfless at all. I simply otherized my ingroup and sense of self.

Canadians will be 'good people' with healthcare that tells them to kill themselves when the constant pressure of the cost of living finally breaks their back. And they will kill themselves, alone, isolated and suffering, because that's what a good Canadian would do in a world where we there is no such thing as a good Canadian. If you want to live, stop being a good Canadian.