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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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All anyone is going to talk about tomorrow is going to be the Haitians. How that will play is anyone's guess.

Yeah, talking about the dogs was him trying to get the media to deny it, which means the media is talking about the Haitians. Didn't help in the debate, but might help afterwards.

Yep. The more we litigate this the better for Trump. It's a brilliant ploy, and I bet his team even told him to say it.

It's the right-wing equivalent of George Floyd. The more this gets "debunked", the more it raises awareness of the tragedy that unfolded under Biden's watch.

He lost the debate in my eyes, but winning debates never matters anyway.

There does seem to me more evidence coming out that police were aware that Haitians were taking waterfowl from public waterways, but that’s a far cry from killing pets.

Of course, those of us paying attention will remember that they tried to deny the ducks and geese too, but normies won’t care.

What evidence? Snopes isn't great but they say this photo is from Columbus, Ohio not Springfield. And there's no evidence the man is Haitian and not just some black American. There's this video from someone at what looks like a public community meeting in Springfield claiming such (@1:04). But who knows how legit the rumors he's quoting are.

Just so we're clear. The video of a cat eating woman (Alexis Telia Ferrell) was also not from Springfield and was not known to be Haitian rather than just some black American, probably on drugs.

After learning how common such culinary practices are in Haiti, I actually find it hard to believe that it isn't happening in Ohio. It should have been predictable. It's not exactly easy to prove someone has been eating cats, especially if they have even an inkling that they're not supposed to--the evidence tends to disappear. Moreover, the authorities and media have very little incentive to look for the evidence, since it can only bring trouble for them--better to just say there is no legitimate evidence and move on. 20,000 is a lot of people, and Haitians aren't exactly known for their tempered good judgement. Even if most of them know they're not supposed to be eating the cats, it only takes a few. If only 1 percent kept on doing so, then that's 200 people. If 200 people in town start eating the local "wildlife", then that's going to impact very quickly. It's basically the same with driving without a license, contracting diseases, and all the other things that are apparently going down. These are massive impacts on a small town like Springfield, Ohio.

The story wouldn't have gone viral if it was about geese. People love cats and dogs almost as much as they love kids. Normies don't care about geese.

Normies don't care about geese.

I wouldn't assume that. On multiple occasions, I have seen motorists stop in the road to allow geese to cross.

You’ll damage your car if you hit a goose.

Also “don’t want to kill themself” doesn’t imply “doesn’t want anyone to kill them.”

But the motorists literally just stopped. They didn't even inch forward to either (1) scare the geese into either moving faster or turning around, or (2) run them over at speeds low enough to avoid damage to their cars.

Also, on the most recent occasion (just a few days ago): A westbound motorist had stopped for geese. I, going east, observed a gap in the formation of waddling birds and barreled straight through it at 25 miles per hour—and I distinctly heard the other motorist (a woman) shout "Fucking asshole!" at me as I passed. (The windows of both cars were open in the heat of the afternoon.)

So I think the motorists genuinely do care about the stupid geese.

I've never met anyone who has anything nice to say about them, including blacks and latinos, for what it's worth.

Lived in Miami for a few years, including in Little Haiti for over 6 months, so I think I'm above-average qualified to talk about Haitians at least.

Haitians, culturally, are... fine. There's a lot to say about them that I could go on about and most generalizations are going to be at least a little reductionist, so there's that disclaimer. They don't party quite as hard as the Dominicans by a long shot, but they are generally above-median openness, which I consider a virtue. Of course, they tend to get along with better with white people than other immigrants, with that said (and Dominicans in particular, that's a complicated and tough relationship). The education level is genuinely lacking, and it's pretty prevalent -- most Haitians grew up speaking Haitian-Creole which only got a written version to match maybe two decades ago IIRC, so schooling when present was in French, so you get really a strong rich-poor divide, with most being poor (partly as a result of frankly some long-lasting hostile foreign wealth extraction, partly the language thing, partly very poor self-governance and partly of course some terrible economic/natural disaster luck). There's a small handful of comparably wealthier older-generation Haitians around, similar situation to Cubans, but not a ton. They as a culture tend to love old people, generally, so many Haitians find themselves in the (large) retirement/medical complex in Florida, lots of friendly Haitian ladies there I've met. There's a germ of truth in bits about unfaithfulness and generally chaotic family relations being the norm but I'm not sure how far to take it.

Must say though! Local folk magic including yes voodoo but mostly the variant "santeria" is still alive and well overall, and that includes things like the occasional chicken sacrifice. However, you're in the States, very little chance people are actually eating cats and dogs and pets. I could theoretically see a priest eating a ritually sacrificed chicken (that was a thing in the Old Testament too) but beyond that I don't really think so. I consider this kind of prevalent superstition a negative thing, but at least some percentage of it is a cultural divide (but another part is, well, I AM actually a relatively devout Christian and on a personal level I consider aspects of santeria to be somewhat legitimately Satanist, but that's neither here nor there).

My brother spent a summer working at a resort with a lot of Haitians. He said they were the worst people he has ever had to interact with. On the other hand, he's only had positive things to say about Dominicans, Cubans, and other Latinos.

Anyway... anecdotes are anecdotes. I'd look at the actual country of Haiti and decide if we want more of that here.

The quality and prosperity of a country is not always strongly correlated with the drive/quality/cultural traits/etc of its people. Historical quirks come in to play too. Studying the history of Haiti is fairly illuminating.

The quality and prosperity of a country is strongly correlated to the intelligence of its citizens. While there are negative outliers like North Korea there are no significant positive outliers. Yes, a sufficiently awful government can keep a country below its potential. But nothing can take a country with low potential (like Haiti) and make it a high performer. It has never been done, and not for lack of trying.

This is similar to arguing that IQ is environmental because you can malnourish and starve a genius to lower their IQ. This is true, but the opposite of course is not true. You can't take a person with an IQ of 85 and make them a particle physicist. The best you can do is help everyone live up to their potential.

But nothing can take a country with low potential (like Haiti) and make it a high performer.

That nothing is called oil.

Tomorrow one side is going to be running with immigrants are eating cats and the other side will be running with this clip over and over.

https://x.com/ronfilipkowski/status/1833594196630114747?s=10

The funny part is I bet that guy is voting for Trump.

It's a high variance play. If you assume Trump is still playing strategically and isn't lost in the canyons of his own subconscious, that probably indicates that Trump thinks he's losing.

But the fact vs blood libel debate is going to overshadow who said what about fracking when.