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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Culture War nexuses

This isn't exactly some thought-out post, more just a culture war observation. Every now and then there happens an event that feels like a CW "nexus" where it is the intersection of like five different hot topics in one moment. I had this thought while walking yesterday and wondered if someone else had any other examples. Here's two of mine:

A couple of weeks ago in Toronto a group of Indian immigrants, presumably in a gang of some sort, robbed a government-owned liquor store. They pulled a knife on an off-duty cop there. When they left, they were pursued by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and regional cops. In a rented van the thieves went the wrong way down the 401, the busiest highway in the world; the OPP stopped pursuit and told the regional cops to do the same, but they continued to follow. The getaway van hit a car going the opposite way. The other car's inhabitants was also a family of Indian immigrants: new parents, a baby, and their newly-arrived grandparents (via family reunification presumably). The getaway driver, the grandparents, and the baby were killed. The getaway driver was out on bail on weapon's charges, had a suspended license, and was under court order not to drive.

If you've been paying attention to any political issues in Canada you can see how this neatly ties together a bunch of hot topics into one incident. I have another:

In late 2022 a cement mixer in Berlin hit a female cyclist. The driver got out of his truck to check on the cyclist and was stabbed by a mentally ill homeless refugee. An ambulance arrived to transport the critically injured woman to the hospital, but on the way was stopped by climate protestors who had glued themselves to the road. The cyclist died but the truck driver survived.

I sort of remember when the Berlin incident was discussed here. It seems that it was not going to be culture war fodder at all without the climate protestors added to the mix. I can imagine the local rightist opposition, to the meagre extent it even exists, would have still tried to turn it into a scandal, but which leftist is going to question the victim status of an almost murdered trucker who wanted to assist a female cyclist (so presumably a leftist voter/sympathizer) after accidentally running her over, warm feelings toward both the homeless and refugees notwithstanding?

To the extent that the flames of the culture war were being fanned in this case, I reckon 95% of it was due to the climate protestors doubling down in characteristic fashion, and explaining, with their usual mix of complete cynicism and complete idealism, that of course public protests entail negative consequences stemming from the disruption of traffic, dumbass!

with their usual mix of complete cynicism and complete idealism

That's a great way of putting it. My least favorite arguments I've had with the woke are the ones in which my opponent argues in this way as an attempt to excuse their worst aspects, like "every movement bends the truth, it doesn't make social justice bad just because we lie, too" or "so what if the woke encourages nosy busybodies and wokescolds? The conservatives do it, too". I've never known how to argue back other than just insisting that they should be better than stooping to low techniques then making excuses.

It's like when Greta Thunberg appeared in the media.

A [Quasi-normie leftist activist climate warrior soyboy]: OMG LOOK AT THIS STUNNING AND BRAVE YOUNG LADY! SO FIERCE! SHE'S NOT AFRAID TO STAND IN FRONT OF THE MIC AND MAKE HERSELF HEARD! YOU GO GRRL! STICK IT TO THE SYSTEM!

B [Average normie NPC griller]: "But dude, wait, it says in this article here that some handler wrote the speech for her, it was all pre-planned, rehearsed beforehand..."

A: WELL DUH, DUMBASS! WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?! IT'S COMPLETELY NORMAL FOR A PUBLIC FIGURE TO HAVE HER STAFF PREPARE SPEECHES FOR HER, AND REHEARSE THEM AND CAREFULLY PREPARE FOR THEM! IT'S ALL ABOUT YOUR IMAGE AND MAKING AN IMPRESSION! EVERYBODY DOES IT LIKE THIS! THAT'S HOW IT GOES EVERYWHERE!

"every movement bends the truth, it doesn't make social justice bad just because we lie, too" or "so what if the woke encourages nosy busybodies and wokescolds? The conservatives do it, too". I've never known how to argue back other than just insisting that they should be better than stooping to low techniques then making excuses.

This looks similar to arguments I've had with myself as someone who used to be "woke" before the term was popularized ("social justice warrior" was the common term back then), and hashing out the argument was one of the many factors that got me to abandon the ideology.

On lies, it took very little thinking to recognize that lying is a habit that one can get into that's very difficult to turn on and off at will, especially since it's often difficult even to recognize when one is lying. This goes even more for lies that one tells oneself, which is by far the most common kind of lie and the most difficult lie to avoid telling even under the best circumstances and with the purest of intentions. It's also difficult to recognize which ideology is better than others if your beliefs are based on lies; as such, if I want what's best for the world rather than merely my team winning, then that means choosing the best ideology on the basis of an honest assessment of the facts and truth. But if I make it a habit to lie to others for the sake of convenience, then it'd be easy for me to unintentionally lie to myself for the sake of convenience, e.g. I could lie to myself that this ideology that happens to be popular among my peers and happens to give me social status for overtly supporting also happens to be the best or most correct ideology - what a convenient universe for me this is, that these characteristics happen to coincide in this one ideology! It also raises questions about how I was won over to the ideology, and whether those were based on lies that other follower of the ideology decided was convenient to tell to me for the sake of recruiting another follower - questions that can only be answered by taking a brutally honest look at the actual underlying reality, and that brutal honesty only comes about by making honesty a habit, which obviously includes doing so towards one's ideological opponents.

Unfortunately, I don't see this as being possible when a third party is involved, because the ideology is so hardened against external (and internal as well) scrutiny that only scrutiny that comes from an internal desire to get things right can survive long enough to actually have any effect. I think there are right wing parallels, such as some Christians dismissing some arguments as literally satanic, or Islam allowing for dishonesty towards non-Muslims as a way to win them over, but these are explicitly faith-based religions where the followers openly acknowledge that the reason they chose their team is faith. This is contrast to modern progressive idpol, whose followers claim to genuinely believe that they figured out the correct (or, at least more correct than the others) ideology through non-faith-based means. Genuinely believing this while also intentionally corrupting one's ability to discern lies from truth - and more generally abiding by the intentional corrupting of this ability in the followers of this ideology - seems like cognitive dissonance. Which, again, just doesn't seem possible to penetrate as a third party. Without the genuine will to actually figure out what the best ideology is for the world, most people will be happy enough to lie to themselves that the ideology they like also happens to be the one that is the best one for the world. Again, not lying to oneself that way is hard enough even under the best circumstances and with the purest of intentions.

and will almost immediately start collecting benefits. There was a similar deal a while back in the US when a Pakistani Uber driver was killed after his car was hijacked by a couple of, um, youths. The guy was 66 years old and driving for Uber. He had only immigrated a few years previously.

If he was driving an Uber, he wasn't collecting benefits, he was working. Does Uber collect payroll taxes?

Does Uber collect payroll taxes?

No, their drivers are all considered independent contractors. A driver's supposed to pay the payroll taxes himself when he files income taxes.

If you emigrate to a country at the age of (say) 61, you are almost certainly going to be a net drain on that country's resources for far longer than you will be a positive contributor, even if you work for a few years.

newly-arrived grandparents

It's insane to me that this is allowed. The justification for immigration is that these are net contributors and we need them to prop up the social safety net but instead actually we're letting in people who will never work again (or not for long) and will almost immediately start collecting benefits.

Mass immigration as a policy rests on a tripod of supporting interests: 1. disinterested economics and demographic realism (or academic dogma posing as such); 2. ethnic hate of/guilt by native populations combined with charity towards foreign populations; and 3. high-middle-low factionalism to gain votes/a client class for the current ruling elite.

In different parts of the online right, it's fashionable to speculate that one of these is the "true" reason, and the others merely a facade or pablum for useful idiots. In reality, the technocratic center-left is not a monolithic. Each leg is true reason for different parts of the governing coalition. The current policy is a negotiation between their interests, and its "illogic" is an illusion born of your assuming a primary motivation.

Family reunification in Canada requires that the sponsor vouches that they can financially support the sponsored immigrant and that they will not need to ask for social assistance for 3 years. They check that the sponsor is in good enough financial health to support them. If they do ask for social assistance, the government can ask the sponsor to reimburse it.

I mean, it's not perfect, but it's not like no one though of this problem.

This is all sensible, except:

will not need to ask for social assistance for 3 years

3 is wildly low. If I had to make up a number I'd go for at least as long as it would take for them to qualify for citizenship. I'd start around 15 years.

That's for a spouse, the situation I'm familiar with. I checked again, and for parents and grandparents, the sponsor vouches for 20 years (except in Quebec where it's 10 years).

If I had to make up a number I'd go for at least as long as it would take for them to qualify for citizenship.

The number would be 3 years then. The requirement to qualify is being a permanent resident and having lived in Canada for 3 years in the last 5 years.

Okay. 3 years to be eligible for permanent residency and then Google says 5 more to be further eligible for citizenship. So 8 years from stepping foot in Canada to possibly getting citizenship.

I would have gone with 8 then. But they went with the time to permanent residency.

No, how long before you get permanent residency is dependent on what pathway you're using. My wife visited as a tourist before we started the permanent residency process, but she never actually lived here officially until she got it. Technically you don't even need to have been in Canada. You're eligible for citizenship 3 years after having started living in Canada, and once you are a permanent resident. So you could even count, for instance, years spent as a temporary resident with a student or work visa before you got permanent residency.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/become-canadian-citizen.html

have lived in Canada for at least 3 out of the last 5 years (1,095 days)

I see. That's not quite what Google told me, but Google is only approximately accurate.

So that means someone could become a Canadian citizen with a grand total of 3 years in Canada. Which sounds really, really low. It's five years in the US after attaining permanent residency. Which is also rather low in my opinion.

I would guess there's a lot more sponsored immigrants that are/will be economically productive (spouses and children) than there are elderly sponsored immigrants, making it not worth writing an exception around, especially when there's a pretty compelling compassionate reason to allow the relatively few cases.

Unfortunately, I think this runs into the same sort of issues that the foreign student process does.

For anyone who isn't aware, Canada requires that foreign students demonstrate that they have enough money to support themselves for the time that they enrolled. It sounds like a good plan, but:

  1. The amount is laughably low (it was $10,000 CAD until very recently - for reference, rent averages around $2100 a month for a 1 bedroom in my city).
  2. The verification is only done once; the government checks if you have the funds once, then never checks again. There's an obvious loophole (that has been exploited) of people getting very temporary loans to pass the check.
  3. The government has no interest in pursuing individuals who blatantly abuse the system - a recent estimate had about 1 in 40 people in Canada being present from overstaying visas, for example.

My concern with the grandparents is that "supporting" their grandparents does not actually reflect all the services that they consume (healthcare, primarily), and even if it did, the government isn't going to do anything about it.

protestors who had glued themselves to the road

When protestors started using the roads, I came up with the idea of making roads (outside of crosswalks) open range cars. Meaning you can do what you want but if a car hits you not only is the car not liable for any damage done to you are liable for the damage any damage you do to the car. That remains true even if the car speeds up or aims for you. The car has a priority right to use the road, and other users must yield to that right or bear the consequences.

And people say the U.S. is too car-centric!

This would be a terrible policy. People already burn their cars for insurance fraud. This adds an obvious incentive to cause personal injuries while you’re at it.

This seems like it would have horrendous unintended consequences, in a way ‘the police beat morons who decide to glue themselves to the street and haul them off’ doesn’t. It also seems no more likely:

If only the police were actually beating morons who decide to glue themselves to the street.

To keep such a system fair, you would also need a lot more crosswalks perhaps one every 50 meters in dense cities. As others have implied, you would have to sacrifice one lane per side plus change for parking so that drivers can get out of their car without stepping out onto the death zone. Or you just make parking on the side of the road illegal.

I think the result would be rather hellish for drivers.

That seems like a lot of side effects for something that doesn't happen that often.

Places with no cross walks? Places with no sidewalks so people have to walk on the road? Places where people have obstructed the sidewalk by parking on it? The fact people have to get out of cars onto the road when parking or when getting into their car?

Not to mention how it allows you to murder someone just by waiting nearby until they walk into the road to get into their car. Shoulda yielded to me! I was in a car, he wasn't! Sure he was about to get into a car, but he wasn't actually in one! Yeah I aimed for him, waited for him and accelerated to 80mph but so what?

Just like now they drivers would have to look before opening their door. Pedestrians would still be allowed to use roads, in all the ways they currently do (even protesting) they just bear all the liability if they get hit outside of a cross walk.

But if I do look, open my door step out and you deliberately speed up to hit me, I still take the liability seems entirely unworkable.

Because now, we have legalized tit for tat, you hit me, if I survive I wait outside your house and wait for you to try and get into your car and hit you.

Its entirely unworkable.

Agreed. I think culpability should be assigned on a case by case basis. Someone jumps off a highway bridge in front of a moving truck, you can hardly blame the truck for not going slow enough so that it could come to a stop within a meter. Someone went 50km/h in a 30km/h zone and runs over some kid? Whole different story.

That…isn’t that how it already works? It’s definitely true for speeding and vehicular manslaughter sentencing. I don’t really want to spend my afternoon looking for overpass suicides, but I would not expect the truck to be blamed in that scenario, either.

That takes a sort of good thing and goes too far and makes it a bad thing. I jaywalk all the time. Usually with the flow of traffic which makes things way more efficient (pedestrians crossing opportunistically means you don’t need 40 seconds of pausing the road for them to cross).

Your idea would make it legal for the car to speed up and kill me while driving outside of the flow of traffic conditions. Also would provide no zone of safety if I make a mistake. This applies to cars too. If I accidentally pull out in front of you it’s better you brake than have a right to ram my car.

More broadly this applies to all sorts of things. If someone in a business deal has their lawyer make a mistake in the other sides favor is it better to bankrupt the guy or adjust the contract. Maybe for the other side it’s even more profitable to burn the guy but for society as a whole it’s better to adjust and continue with the deal providing a good/service for society. In business deals like this if you always chose short term gain it would mean all deals needs more lawyers for longer contracts detailing every possibility and more eyes to catch mistakes. But lawyers overall are a negative sum game as they costs money and produce nothing.

Of course in many ways these protestors who glue themselves are shitting on the commons. We won’t run them over because saving ourselves 2 hours isn’t worth killing them just like it’s not worth killing a pedestrian who fell into the street when you could have just breaks. Yes the pedestrian is an annoyance to you and costs you 10 seconds and the pedestrian is in the wrong but the commons are that everyone is sometimes partially in the wrong and inflicting maximize damage on them for a small gain to yourself doesn’t benefit the whole of society.

For the protestors though you could argue running one over when they are costing 300k people one hour or like 13k days gets close to being net efficient.

Car collisions would remain case by case. Only pedestrians would be liable by default.

That’s just an example. You are still proposing something radical to deal with protestors blocking roads that would apply to a pedestrian tripping and falling into the street. Just legalizing murder for a death that could be avoided.

There is a much simpler solution. Give the protestors 5 year jail sentences.

And since no one with power is even willing to hand out 5 year jail sentences, how is it remotely possible that a bill allowing drivers to hit pedestrians would ever be passed? The reason the protestors get away with it is that the powers that be are generally sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, the protestors and their cause. The minute an anti-immigrant group tried the same tactic, the police and courts would magically stiffen their resolve and start handing out the lengthiest sentences permitted by law. It’s all “who, whom.”

So you're free to kill jaywalkers like you're in the purge? I see a lot wrong with this view. Any deviation from lawful norms should not be death. How about if a kid wanders into a neighborhood road after a ball? Free to run him down on purpose?

"I'm going to run over children and make the families pay me for the privilege!" seems like a bad platform to run for office on.

We're all in this life together. I only live every day because some asshole doesn't decide to cross the center line on my commute and kill us both at a combined speed of 120 mph. We live by the grace of others. Always.

Shiri's Swiss Army knife.

Some comedians were complaining about how the world is impossible to parody nowadays, but this is taking it to a whole new level. I mean... I can keep adding layers, but it's not going to push it from "real news" to satire...

The beats of these two stories are basically structured like bad late-night TV jokes. Like you can imagine Jay Leno saying "Hey folks, you heard this story about the Indian getaway driver?"

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