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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Again this is nothing specific to progressives. You can make the same argument about malaria nets, the civil war in Yemen, how many people Putin has disappeared, the benefits of getting us to Mars, outbreaks of cholera in India, and the like.

People simply do not have the bandwith for all the terrible things in the world, so this is largely outsourced to whatever influencers in their community. What my local church talks about is influenced by what the minister talks about.

That is just how people work, and not just progressives. It does mean perhaps they are more worried about church burnings in Canada than flooding in the next state. But that doesn't mean they don't care about the flood victims,it means they can't pay attention to everything and outsourcing that to others is a significant benefit.

What goes viral in a community tells you what goes viral not what they care about. Otherwise we'd be forced to believe people care about the colour of dresses or laurel vs yanny. What goes viral is unpredictable and emergent, it depends who saw it first and decided to share it. The reason BLM went viral was because it was all over black social media first. It had plenty of momentum behind. Black on black violence does not have that in the black community, as it stands. And where it does it is aimed inward quire often because they fear that bringing attention to it would bring more attention from organizations and people that have mixed trust.

Does that mean black people themselves don't care because they don't talk about it as much? Or does it mean these things are complicated and trying to reduce it to "doesn't care" is simply incorrect?