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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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Not to blame it all on culture, but it honestly does have an effect if you're a population that has been seen as less capable to the dominant one. There's an awful strain persisting in Irish society of (1) lack of appreciation for built heritage, now ironically the chickens are coming home to roost because our tourism industry wants to find selling points but we've mostly trashed the Georgian and other heritage due to the 70s-90s building booms (2) what is called cute hoorism, where you look out for Number One, do down others, and generally don't give a damn about the common good.

A lot of that is due to the colonial past, where the best way to succeed was to play up to the Handy Andy stereotype of the broth of a boy, a bit dim, but brave and hardy, even if boastful and foolish. Of course, such people weren't fit to govern themselves, being in the same position as children, but that is why the superior Anglo-Saxon/British stock was placed by God over them as natural rulers.

While that flatters the vanity of the rulers, what it engenders in the ruled is a culture of being two-faced, of putting on a performance, of pretending to be (and maybe really being) dependent, incapable, and harmless. If you can't be held responsible, then you can't be blamed either, for drinking, fighting and stealing. It's corrosive to the national character to be liars, hypocrites, and thieves.

And I think a lot of that happened in African-American culture (the Stepin Fetchit caricature) and is made worse by being exploited, by white liberal guilt and black grifters; why not steal and rob, you're owed reparations? Why teach kids to 'act white' where that means 'don't be lazy and criminal'? The worst of "they can't help it, the poor things, it's their nature" and "we are owed for the wrongs done to our people" combining to make future generations worse than they need to be.

In that case, I don't much give a damn about relative IQ or is the average population score lower, I do care about "is misbehaviour being punished or is it being reinforced as 'our culture'?" If your height of ambition is to be a rapper or drug dealer, does it matter if you're a smart drug dealer or a stupid one? It's still bad all round for you, your community, and the future.