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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I think the point is that the government is completely incompetent. So they can distribute money but they can't actually rescue people.

But they are also incompetent when they spend money overseas. For example, they sent an aircraft carrier to deal with the Houthis but then retreated in defeat after a couple months. Or, for another example, they spent a couple hundred million building a floating pier to deliver supplies to Gaza, but then it didn't work and they just abandoned it.

So, while I agree we should spend at least as much on our own disasters as those in Ukraine and the Middle East, more money won't necessarily solve the problem since FEMA seems to be incompetent.

Honestly, I think the same. We’ve lost the ability to do a lot of things that our great grandparents took for granted that would just work. I could go down the list of usual government functions and for the most part we did them better in 1924 than we do in 2024. And I think it’s a combination of easy living, culture and poor education that’s created an elite that simply cannot handle the realities of running a complex society in the real world.