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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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Are you using these with any sort if rigor or is it just evil = globohomo,libs, person who I disagree with,etc etc

Well this is all subjective interpretation, but the point is the same. If your top priority is X, you should vote for a fool gunning for X and perhaps Y, and Z that they have little chance of disturbing too greatly rather than a very competent person running for opposite-of-X.

I think the actual choice is usually a pick between different variations of politicians who claim they want X-lite, and offer proposals that match X-lite, but then immediately compromise or do the opposite of X-lite once in power.

Ah yes only bad people ever suffer during the power vacuum of government system collapse.

People always suffer. Government system collapse can be a good thing if the government system has become too overbearing. This is not a new thing in North-American history.

'Haven't you considered that you too would suffer if the King's rule was upended?' said the Loyalist.

It's funny the way you talk about voters, malcontents, etc. It sounds like you think that a lot of people should not have political rights.

Why can't they vote RIGHT says the respectable, educated, democracy-enjoyer.

NOT THE DEMAGOG, you're only supposed to vote for the candidate that MY global media corporation tells you to!

Risking turning the keystone of all of that, the US, into Syria because people are scared the world is changing and want it to stop or angry girls won't talk to them is mind-boggling to me.

I have watched organized gangs of thugs publicly celebrate an explicitly political murder committed by one of their number. I have watched the local population shrug and state that the victim should have known better than to trespass in their territory. I have watched the local police and officials pointedly ignore the problem, while pursuit of the murderer was left to Federal authorities, who themselves had been castigated for attempting to enforce the law in the area. I saw the press celebrate the murderer and vilify his victim, and attempt to spin conspiracy theories about the officers who brought him down. I saw all these things excused and defended by thoughtful, rational, reasonable people here.

That is one thread of evidence within one sequence of events within one issue within one facet of the Culture War, broadly defined. There are numerous other examples of the nature of the problem, equally appalling, at all levels of granularity.

If people draw different conclusions from you, it might be because they're looking at a different picture. Maybe you think their picture is wrong, and maybe you're right. But if you don't understand the perspective that leads to their conclusions, arguing against a position you've invented for them is unlikely to be productive.

I have watched the local police and officials pointedly ignore the problem, while pursuit of the murderer was left to Federal authorities, who themselves had been castigated for attempting to enforce the law in the area.

I am not sure this is entirely accurate. The local police did put out a warrant for his arrest and he was charged (by the state) (https://www.mcda.us/index.php/documents/state-of-oregon-vs-michael-forest-reinoehl-affidavits-warrant-da-info.pdf) with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon 5 days after the shooting (the same day he himself was killed). They seem to have carried out a reasonably thorough investigation (as seen in the affidavit).

It was a Federal task force which confronted him, but given he had fled to an entirely different state (crime was in Portland, Oregon, he was found in Olympia, Washington State) jurisdictional issues mean we wouldn't necessarily expect that Portland police would have been the ones going to arrest him. Indeed the whole point of the task forces is:

"Task force officers are state and local police officers who receive special deputations with the Marshals. While on a task force, these officers can exercise U.S. Marshals authorities, such as crossing jurisdictional lines."

and in fact, it was Portland police who found his location and passed it to the task force:

"The team, which included a mix of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, already knew that Mr. Reinoehl was staying in a brick complex of apartments in Lacey, Wash. The task force had information from an informant, passed on by the Portland police, about Mr. Reinoehl’s location and possession of firearms, said Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, who leads the team investigating Mr. Reinoehl’s death."

Local Portland police appeared to carry out an investigation as to who the shooter was, got information where he had fled to, and passed this to the Fugitive Task Force (who could cross jurisdictions) so that he could be apprehended. I don't think that can be reasonably described as "pursuit of the murderer was left to Federal authorities", as much as arrest of the murderer was delegated to Federal authorities.

I appreciate the correction, and think it is a fair one.

If you live in the Western world then you live in, by far, the most prosperous materially easy, and peaceful period in the history of the human race.

Oh you like peace? So you're a Trump-supporter then? Or do you support the conscription of broader and broader swathes of the remaining Ukrainian population?

So much so that I theorize that most of the political and existential dread people feel is due to our monkey brains not being designed to function in an environment where most people never even come close to having to struggle to survive.

And that's a good thing? Should we get more existential dread?

Risking turning the keystone of all of that, the US, into Syria because people are scared the world is changing and want it to stop or angry girls won't talk to them is mind-boggling to me.

Syria is a fine country. Or was, before Obama. If anything, it's endless desert wars under Clinton, Bushes and Obama that did the most to turn the US into Syria. You must have loved Trump's muslim ban.

Some form of government based on Christian values. WW2 was obviously lost by the good guys. The outcome is the protracted death of (Western) civilization.

Explain to me the moral calculus that makes the feminist movement/gay rights/insert your personal modern boogieman here "a very evil agenda" while killing every man woman and child of Slavic, Jewish or Romani herriatage not that.

Why should I explain that when I don't advocate killing every man? Do you support shipping money and weapons to the Ukraine proxy war? Then you support the mass slaughter of Slavs.

Are you comparing the Ukraine-Russian war, a war that Russia started so its apparatchik leadership can LARP as Napoleon, to the holocaust?

No, just asking if you support the ongoing mass-slaughter of Slavic people by your government, which I oppose, as you brought up Slavic people getting killed during WW2.

The "right side" winning WWII means all of that happening why would that be any less necessary now?

Well they were not many good guys fighting in WW2, but they decidedly lost. A broadly anti-Christian Soviet Union took control of most of Europe, and the remainder of the West fell into a system of international banking/corporations which thrives to this day, promoting anti-Christian values like feminism, abortion, unbridled sexuality, consumerism...

There are only 2 ways out, some form of RETVRN (to breeding) or extinction, for a certain type of humans that was the backbone of (Western) civilization.

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