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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Firstly, after looking into Haitian cuisine and religious practices and noticing the size of the denominator, it seems unlikely that it isn't happening. Moreover, waiting for evidence isn't all that important, since whether the allegations are true or not, the probability of strong evidence being found and then fairly distributed is quite low. The nature of the act is just not easy to prove.

Secondly, I think more people should be eating the local wildlife. We have severe overpopulationa of deer, rabbits, and other prey species across most if the US. Humans have displaced predators, but they have not taken up their responsibility to fulfil the ecological function predation serves. This has been highly destructive to local ecosystems. Wild cats and outdoor cats are almost as much of a problem because they destroy bird populations. Frankly, the Haitians are probably doing an ecological service while also getting a free meal, so it's a win-win scenario.

Thirdly, if it was my goal to create ethnic and racial conflict, then I could hardly think of a better way than to dump thousands of Haitians on to small town Ohio. These allegations, the suspicions, the resentments, the prejudices, etc., whether true or false, are all obvious consequences of throwing radically different people together while also encouraging a system of racial identity and spoils. This is just what happens when people don't speak the same language and have radically different cultures and values. It's not an historical anomaly--this is what usually happens. It's not even irrational, since these groups really are different, their interests do not align, and they're being pitted against one another. If the Haitians had power, then they'd almost certainly be behaving far worse toward their outgroup.

The real enemy is clearly the NGOs, politicians, and bureaucrats who made this happen.

Tangential rebuttal to the idea that we should be eating the local wildlife: I'd like to not get prion diseases. This is admittedly more specific to deer, and I can get behind an "eat more rabbits from your backyard" proposal. But the prevalence of CWD, the difficulty of killing and butchering a deer without damaging and blood-mixing any part of the nervous system, and the fact that the harmful protein remains a stable environmental contaminant in the soil for years, compels me toward lower-risk culling of deer.

Lots of people eat venison. We’re fine.

For now...

CWD cases have rapidly expanded from a handful of states a few years ago to more than half of the US and most of Canada. Overpopulation, indirect contact transmission in deer, and durable environmental contamination are going to mix in a nasty way for the next few decades. Several states already have incidence rates in double digit percentages of the statewide deer populations.

And there's moderately compelling evidence of venison-to-human transmission.

Whether or not the venison-eating population is fine today, I personally don't like the odds, and it doesn't look better in 10 or 20 years. Even if transmissibility between deer and humans is poor, nobody knows for sure. I don't want to take the risk with a guaranteed-fatal deadly disease affecting single- or double-digit percentages of the North American deer population, that can't be reliably detected without a lab examination, for which the trigger is a protein that is stable below 1000°F and is unaffected by stomach acid.