site banner
PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   32899 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Have we talked about the squirrel? Sigh. Let's talk about the squirrel:

Mark Longo, the owner of the Instagram-famous squirrel, Peanut, is mourning the loss of his beloved pet.

On Nov. 1, Longo took to Instagram to reveal Peanut had been euthanized, along with his pet raccoon named Fred, by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

...

Peanut the squirrel is an internet sensation. He's the beloved pet of digital creator Mark Longo, who would occasionally share Instagram videos of Peanut eating treats, jumping on his clothes and scurrying around his house as he does various tasks throughout the day.

...

In a joint statement, the DEC and the Chemung County Department of Health say they are "coordinating to ensure the protection of public health related to the illegal possession of wild animals that have the potential to carry the rabies virus."

The DEC also notes that it is illegal to keep young wildlife as pets since they are "not well suited for life in captivity. Plus, they may carry diseases that can be given to people."

...

"To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized," they said in a joint statement. "The animals are being tested for rabies and anyone who has been in contact with these animals is strongly encouraged to consult their physician."

This story has been making the rounds on my social media feeds, with commentary, countercommentary, memes, and political implications galore. A few people have wondered why the story resonates, given that it's just a squirrel. For me, it's because of how neatly it ties into other election conversations.

A couple days ago, we were talking about an article on SlateStarCodex and I disputed Scott's framing where he felt the need to say that Democrats can be authoritarian too, even if it's not the normal definition. No, I say, Democrats want arbitrary and petty control over the smallest aspects of your life, things you can't even imagine that someone would care about. In this case, a man had a squirrel living inside his house rather than outside his house. Squirrels, you may be aware, are common animals. Rodents, in general, frequently cohabitate with humans both as pets and pests. For some, it seems only natural that the government has a compelling interest in making sure you have a Squirrel License with proper proof of squirrel maintenance. Failing to license your squirrel is proof positive of outright irresponsibility - what kind of miscreant doesn't even file their squirrel paperwork? For others, this is a great example of how under no circumstances will the government ever leave you alone, even if it's on something as small and irrelevant as whether you're sheltering squirrels under your floorboards. These petty, useless authoritarians are willing to show up without warning, sit you outside your house, and kill your pets because you didn't file for a squirrel license.

When I was young and naturally rebellious, I was a libertarian on strong pro-freedom grounds. As a young professional, I made my peace with the bureaucracy and thought this was an important part of being an adult. As I've aged, my libertarian streak has returned as I've realized just how much I despise our governments.

I read most of this thread and still having trouble understanding what's going on. In what sense did the democrats do this?

Only in the extremely broad vibes sense, in which overly intrusive bureaucracy micromanaging your life "for your own good" is generally associated with the left, and is routinely denounced by the right. Also it happened in the state of New York, which has a Democrat-dominated government at present (governor plus supermajorities in both houses of the legislature).

"To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized,"

That's bullshit, and the government should be held to a higher standard of honesty.

There's no indication that those animals were suffering (never mind suffering to such an extent that death is the only release), so they were killed to test for rabies.

It's not like killing animals is even that bad. The government is just in the habit of lying to deflect responsibility and make itself look good.

Stranger yet, beside we can tell, there is no such thing as squirrel to human rabies transmission. That's just not a thing.

I'm going to add a second comment that's different and much more spicy.

For a while now, I've had this growing knot in my guts whenever these types of things happen and the bad guys end up being women. I hate the knot because my brain says it's stupid to think women are somehow to blame for the increased pressure to root out anyone who's doing something wrong somewhere. But the knot keeps growing. I can't resolve the conundrum.

With Peanut, a lady in Texas presumably sent the complaint to a lady in New York who sent the city services to take the squirrel out back and shoot it. Clearly that's just a coincidence...right? Or is there something darker in here. Like....is the Karen meme deserved and legitimate? Why did that lady at the Harris rally scream about Palestine at a baby? What's with all the, "I'm speaking," moments? Do the ladies have more power and authority than they can handle?

I don't consider myself a woman-hater. Hell, once upon a time I considered myself a feminist. Is it just my imagination or has something in our national psyche gone and unleashed the worst aspects of womanhood upon the land? The puritanical hunt for all that is good and fun in life can't just be a female thing. Can it? Or is it that safety-ism causes men to operate in a different, more narrow theater (ex. geopolitics) leaving women to police the margins (ex. protesting pussy-grabbin' presidents and yelling at babies)? I really don't want to become a Trad Chad who wants to put the ladies back into some parochial 17th century box. But if one of the issues is giving too much power to people who can't properly wield it--and it has a gender bias--what on earth do we do?

I really don't want to become a Trad Chad who wants to put the ladies back into some parochial 17th century box. But if one of the issues is giving too much power to people who can't properly wield it--and it has a gender bias--what on earth do we do?

Why not? Maybe the 17th century got it right and the 20th got it wrong. Perhaps female participation in public life really does everything the anti-suffragists (many of whom were women themselves) said it would. I believe that "longhouse" is a real phenomenon, a failure mode of societies lacking enough masculine energy. Perfectly encapsulated: https://x.com/PopBase/status/1852801265425854866

I believe the 19th amendment was a mistake. Most expansions of suffrage have been. Can't be fixed without a societal reformation, and these reformations usually involve coups, wars, and collapse. The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and bloodshed return!

But if one of the issues is giving too much power to people who can't properly wield it--and it has a gender bias--what on earth do we do?

Punish people who scream at babies, regardless of their sex.

As a great sage wrote:

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy.

That character was wrong about the one example we see. I don't think the book portrays any woman meeting that description. Or any man, for that matter -- Parsons is completely orthodox but not bigoted about it, and O'Brien is fully aware of the party's duplicity. Syme (the Newspeak writer) is excited about the party but is aware of what he's doing, and get sent to Miniluv presumably as a result (or just as a result of talking about it)

I’m not surprised in the least. I’m not sure if it’s evolutionary psychology, but I tend to find that women have perfected the game of weaponizing the system against other people. In this case, it’s animal laws, but it could be technical violations of any rules to force other people to give them what they want. I’ve always somewhat assumed that it goes down to avenues of actual power. Men have access to physical strength, technical knowledge, and the actual levers of power. Women have limited access perhaps to the levers o& power. Not as much as people think, because they are rarely the main decision makers on projects, in business, or in government. So the best way for the median woman to get her way is to basically get a man to wield actual power for her.

Puritanical rule enforcement is a part of that. It’s a way to create new offenses women can use to shame people into giving them what they want.

it's stupid to think women are somehow to blame

I'm assuming you're a man.

Female hypoagency is baked hard into your evolutionary biology. This is your instinct of "do whatever gets you laid" doing the talking, and in an era where men and women are, in fact, equal on most fields (that were for the past 100,000+ years dominated by men) it's simply maladaptive. And a woman who can't or won't perform the productive parts of that role is no woman, and it's a mistake of men to consider them as worthy of any special social status whatsoever. The biological principle of "women [and children] first" falls apart when those women in aggregate can refuse to bear children (or fail to put the interests of the nation's children above their own self-interests and aesthetic preferences).

In an age of automation (and slavery) driven equality, women and men ought to be equal parts human doing and human being- the fact that women are both and men are neither is a clear indication that our current methods and measures of "equality" need some re-evaluation.

But if one of the issues is giving too much power to people who can't properly wield it--and it has a gender bias--what on earth do we do?

If you assume that the average man and the average women are just as inherently anti-social/destructive as the other (a fundamental assumption for my worldview), you need to tailor-make the way you deal with those things to suit their biological specializations. If a woman's speech is just as destructive as a man's violence, the speech needs to be regulated in the same measure as the violence, or you're just giving too much power to women and their particular version of anti-sociality eventually starts to dominate.

The current folly of liberalism was believing that legal equality would lead to objective equality, where what actually happened is that by removing the societal safeguards from the gender that has had 100,000+ years to specialize in manipulating men to do things on their behalf, they [predictably] unleashed that machinery upon society. People get confused about "well, then why didn't gynosupremacy have massive negative effects earlier?" but fail to recognize that this is a 1920s problem that we got to punt on for 50 years because the post-WW2 economic boom gave so many advantages to male social power that women would actually end up on the losing end for a while, but naturally they wouldn't last.

I really don't want to become a Trad Chad who wants to put the ladies back into some parochial 17th century box.

We already recognize strict legal equality in the face of women as a stepping-stone to strict objective equality, and women in aggregate recognize the concept of intersectionality and equity. They're correct in that these are things that should happen; where they're incorrect is that if it was applied fairly it would be almost exclusively at the cost of their current social license to be destructive. And, as these same women are quick to point out, loss of that privilege will feel like oppression (but, of course, isn't).

The problem I have is that, if this is done improperly, you catch the "transgender" women and men in the blast radius (i.e. the women and men who don't need rules restraining a latent gynosupremacist/androsupremacist attitude they didn't have in the first place). They tend to be the most productive/least disruptive people society has and the cost of this change might not be worth what it costs them.

I have some ideas for the way this might work, but the trick is implementing them in a way contradictory to instinct, are not feasible while men are still in socioeconomic oversupply, and are just as easy to conveniently leave pointed at men (just like how we use paper-bag tests to determine which criminals to prosecute now). (Of course, these measures wouldn't be needed if women were all of a sudden in socioeconomic oversupply -> in less of a position to demand men conform to them; this is why, ironically, that gynosupremacists being able to exclusively choose to bear saintly girls and not toxic boys would eventually end up diluting their current power over time.)

With Peanut, a lady in Texas presumably sent the complaint to a lady in New York who sent the city services to take the squirrel out back and shoot it. Clearly that's just a coincidence...right?

No, it's probably not a coincidence. Ignoring petty complaints, that's a Boys' Club thing. The Boys' Club decides it's not worth the time and ignore it. Sometimes the Boys Club decides to ignore the casting couch. Sometimes it decides to ignore women who complain about too many ice cubes. Sometimes The Boys Club isn't a Boys' Club at all and is instead a restaurants wait staff full of Non-Boys.

You guys talk about a decrease in state capacity. How's'a'bout the capacity to investigate and euthanize wild pets in an orderly and timely fashion? Didn't think of that one, did ya? I would have guessed that the NY Department of Environmental Conservation would just ignore complaints from out of state. It's what I would do. Where did you learn it was a lady from Texas sent a complaint? I just see "anonymous" complaints. Why not a neighbor?

If my neighbor in the next apartment kept weird wild life pets I'd probably ignore it. If they posted cute videos online I'd ignore it. If those pets did things like cause minor problems for my dog I'd be less inclined to ignore it. If that happened more than once I'd probably report it after speaking with them*. This seems possible. If you want to collect wild life without consideration of your neighbors, then live somewhere you can do that.

A lot of people seem fine critiquing this event. Not a lot of defenders. Biden hasn't denounced all garbage squirrels. Maybe he should though, because they are crafty assholes that empty bird feeders.

Why did that lady at the Harris rally scream about Palestine at a baby?

Young woman lost sight of herself and actions at a political event. Her political ally recognizes the malfeasance and polices her behavior. That's a learning experience for most.

A lot of people seem fine critiquing this event. Including one in the video. Not a lot of defenders. We can all make mistakes. Ping me if we see her again.

Like....is the Karen meme deserved and legitimate?

Probably. People's wills can be overbearing and annoying. I wanted to attribute a defense of 'Karen' as a social policing agent to a Freddie deBoer article, but all I can find at the moment is this regarding Covid.

Meanwhile we live among a Praetorian guard of busybodies who want everyone to know that the rest of us aren’t taking Covid seriously enough. These are people who are existentially similar to the “Karen,” 2020’s favorite archetype, except that they’re used to calling other people Karens. But they are precisely that figure of clueless white deference to authority that self-nominates as the world’s hall monitor. And while they want you to mask up and vaccinate and obey other rules, what’s much more important to them than regulating your behavior is that they let you know that you don’t feel the right way about Covid.

Which reads like a truncated version of Planet of Cops. Which is not a defense of Karen.

There's a some Defense of Karen thinking out there. This one is kinda one. as an important (if elevated) part of society. We have a need for Karen. Some business interests want to stop Karen, but they are powerless. Karen keeps the trains running on time. Except for the times where the train isn't on time and she inconveniences the line of people behind her by not shutting up about it. Then she makes me late.

I don't consider myself a woman-hater. Hell, once upon a time I considered myself a feminist. Is it just my imagination or has something in our national psyche gone and unleashed the worst aspects of womanhood upon the land?

Are you particularly sympathetic to gender critical view? Smarmy, scolding Karen might be annoying, but men do a violence and rape. I don't think making men an outgroup is necessary to denounce or police murder and rape. I'm not saying you can't or should not police Karen's gross excess. The culture even still allows and, sometimes, encourages this. If the conditions are right.

I have sympathy for the view that detests the feminization of society. Not all of it is bad. I'm glad not every dispute is concluded with a rock to the head. I would like to work towards something... healthier and more easily appreciated. I wouldn't make women your outgroup, though. Go find you a nice girl that doesn't like yelling at babies or killing squirrels. And there's always Sam Hyde's sage advice.

Go find you a nice girl that doesn't like yelling at babies or killing squirrels.

My wife and 2nd daughter were aghast that this happened.

I don't think I'm particularly sympathetic to a gender-critical view. I know a lot of women. I don't view women as out-group, that's maybe, sort of the problem? Because it seems the evidence is mounting that there may actually be an out-group, largely composed of some type of woman that can't be identified or encircled; something like Vance's cat-ladies but not quite. I think it's closer to something revealed as an epistemic preference to always automatically believe the worst, caused by the flattening of society vis-a-vis the Internet. Similar to how you can't tell if a terrible opinion is a naive adolescent or stoned octogenarian.

You guys talk about a decrease in state capacity. How's'a'bout the capacity to investigate and euthanize wild pets in an orderly and timely fashion? Didn't think of that one, did ya?

Since we obliterated Posse Comatitus even the forestry guys have flash-bang grenades, heavy machine guns and tanks. The state capacity can be summarized as: We can ignore it or atomize it, which do you want?

Where did you learn it was a lady from Texas sent a complaint?

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/texas-woman-monica-keasler-reported-peanut-the-squirrel-to-dec-claims-surface/ar-AA1tuR8j

Example link. All alleged. Apparently she deleted her Interweb accounts so who knows. It would be very interesting to have the state-run agency that acted on the anonymous tip not leave us in the dark, but privacy for some if not for others, I guess. I would absolutely agree that a state receiving an anonymous tip from outside the state would ignore it, that is my prior. At the same time, who would know? That's kind of the point of anonymous tips. What leads people to think it was the woman in Texas is hearsay that she was bragging about it on Facebook. That doesn't really change the situation tough: a government department acted on an anonymous tip from...wherever...and took someone's unlicensed an unregistered pet (the pet was allegedly in the process of being registered). One can easily see how this is raw meat for Libertarian types, but Leftists would also be historically appalled by this + it's cute animals!!

Here's an interesting update regarding the alleged reporter of the mis-housed animal.

https://www.dexerto.com/tiktok/woman-speaks-out-after-being-wrongly-blamed-for-peanut-the-squirrels-death-2971538/

It would be interesting to know who the people are hounding this unaffiliated innocent, but I'd suspect the boy's club you mention are mostly happy to let their wives do the chiding.

And maybe that's all it is. Men know they can leave the small stuff to the ladies to clean up and the Internet simply opened the door to every level-one nudnik to run rampant.

My wife and 2nd daughter were aghast that this happened.

Cheers, then not all is lost. I wasn't trying to cast you into inceldom. Vaguely recognizing like shapes. Maybe that's uncharitable.

Jumbles, rumbles, and rambling:

Because it seems the evidence is mounting that there may actually be an out-group, largely composed of some type of woman that can't be identified or encircled; something like Vance's cat-ladies but not quite.

People make such identifications, but I agree it's difficult to land on any particular one. AWFL exists. I'm not sure it's accurate, because I don't know if white or liberal is necessary to yell-at-baby or badger an authority to Do The Right Thing. White women are the acceptable target of the day. There's a brand of white trash that's not really afraid to pull any lever, other than cops, to settle a grievance or perceived slight. Narcissists. The internet loves that one. Black women have a stereotype around around the kind of self-interested, righteous grievance balloon.

The lower class offender looks more like narcissism to me, whereas the higher class offender has more sophisticated (cultural, political) justifications for (what I consider) bad behavior. Perhaps that's the tie in to race. So, uh, are we just talking about intelligence? How are the Asian women doing out there compared to white women?

There's been an absolute increase in the number of jerks and a lot of jerk behavior gets covered in America by culture warring. Women more likely to utilize authority for little reason other than it's something to do-- or easily convinced it's The Right Thing to Do? Probably, yeah. Women more likely to yell at baby? Probably that too, but maybe because a man has more experience thinking of consequences when it comes to other people's kids. At least compared to pretty girls.

The prototypical Karen is the bored busybody. Karen adopts and uses the HOA as an extension of herself. Because. Type A Karen. If that is related to yelling at babies at a political event I'm not sure how. Maybe it boils down to 100 years ago the yell-at-baby girl would have had a husband drag her off before she could embarrass herself in front of the entire nation?

Don't get hysterical, darling. Protesting is uncouth.

And maybe that's all it is. Men know they can leave the small stuff to the ladies to clean up and the Internet simply opened the door to every level-one nudnik to run rampant.

A lower trust society, they say. If we want a more polite society we will need women to enforce it. Tying all this together feels like it is doing too much. But that could be my lack of imagination.

There's been an absolute increase in the number of jerks and a lot of jerk behavior gets covered in America by culture warring.

Hear! Hear!

With Peanut, a lady in Texas presumably sent the complaint to a lady in New York who sent the city services to take the squirrel out back and shoot it. Clearly that's just a coincidence...right? Or is there something darker in here. Like....is the Karen meme deserved and legitimate?

My day job involves handling a lot of regulatory compliance matters and fighting administrative accusations not entirely dissimilar to the P'Nut saga. In my experience while women appear to be slightly overrepresented among the public complainants that I ultimately find out about (which is a small minority of all complaints - my state regards the identities of complainants to public agencies as privileged), there's no particular trend when it comes to which bureaucrats are particularly censorious and which are more lenient. The culture of the particular district office or subunit appears to matter a lot more.

This makes sense. Most of these types of offices have a culture, often driven by one or two people, and that makes the overall consistency seem...inconsistent. Thanks for talking me off the gender-critical ledge.

I mean, it may well be that women over all are more likely to be nosy busybodies, or to go drunk with petty power. The old stereotypes of the gossiping shrew and harridan didn't come from nowhere, just like the male stereotypes of the sex-obsessed brute and violent thug didn't come from nowhere. But I don't know if the effect translates to the modern day, or if so how big it is.

And if it is an effect that is somehow historically out of proportion, what's the solution. Back in the day we built pyres, but that was barbaric, I'm sure all will agree. I guess forcing people to wipe their socials is our best analog.

But I don't know if the effect translates to the modern day, or if so how big it is.

Polls not only show this effect exists, but translates to a roughly 30 percentage point lead among young women.

The biggest mistake of modernity is that we don't treat the gossiping shrew/harridan with the same seriousness as the sex-obsessed brutes and violent thugs. In an age of equality they're both as destructive, but it's only the latter we deal with.

I would appreciate any links you have to hand on this; I'm trying to keep a better library of supporting evidence for my beliefs.

For a while now, I've had this growing knot in my guts whenever these types of things happen and the bad guys end up being women. I hate the knot because my brain says it's stupid to think women are somehow to blame for the increased pressure to root out anyone who's doing something wrong somewhere. But the knot keeps growing. I can't resolve the conundrum.

As just so theories go "women tend to eschew direct physical conflict in favor of other, less risky forms of social combat" isn't one I'd be particularly afraid to lose money on.

I feel no guilt in admitting that violence crime is a burden mostly-males impose on society, one that it can "unleash" through unwise policy. Unless women are a higher evolved being they'll have their means of wreaking havoc that we shouldn't encourage.

Here's a theory for you - blame cultural marxism....

... Okay, I'm intentionally being a bit obnoxious, obviously, but let me try to make a case here.

Here's one view: women have a lot of power, and women have always had a lot of power. In many cases, that power has looked somewhat different than the power that men have wielded. That's fine and normal. And in a healthy, functional society, gender roles and ideals and responsibilities evolve that take the natural human tendencies of both men and women into account and help temper reliably occurring problems in both men and women to keep their worst impulses in check and help them wield their various kinds of power responsibly, stably and pro-socially. All of this is the ideal, anyway.

But then, enter enlightenment ideals about legibility, equality, and combine them with post-enlightenment ideals about oppressor-oppressed dynamics. Now, the fact that lots of ways women wield power is illegible means it is invisible in political discussions. And an insistence on a sort of a priori equality between men and women means that even accepting that men and women might wield power in different ways is seen a suspect, like it's just a justification for women not having more legible power. And finally, an insistence on seeing things through an oppressor-oppressed binary means that even the basic idea that women might routinely and predictably behave in ways that hurt people, and those ways of being might need to be tempered, is no longer basic wisdom, but rather just one more way to keep women down.

That combination of world views arguably has a tendency of infantilizing women and stripping them of any real agency and responsibility, which over in reality ends up being a giant problem if they actually DO have a bunch of agency and power that actually needs to be kept in check sometimes for the good of broader society.

Anyway, that's one theory, anyway... something like that.

So...a traditional perspective like, "Rooster rule the yard and hens rule the roost." would dial this back? I suppose I could see it.

I think part of the furor is because it’s an abstracted cartoon version of other more serious government outrages. It’s George Floyd and the Waco siege in miniature.

It’s interesting to consider the motivations and incentives of the state employees here. I doubt the people who wrote the laws and procedures would act similarly, so what went wrong? Some possibilities —

  • The state hires people to euthanize animals. This may inadvertently select for people who enjoy euthanizing animals. The state should take steps to ensure that those they hire to commit necessary evils aren’t searching for evil thrills.

  • The state hires people to euthanize animals. Normal people do not like euthanizing animals. The state should ensure that they aren’t hiring morally-stunted people for the “do we kill the animal” job.

  • The owners make money on OnlyFans and also by recording their pets. They make decent money. The employee in charge of euthanizing animals makes less money and in a decidedly less fun way. Killing the owner’s pet is a way to piss off the owner, and the employee may be pissed at the owner because he makes more money more easily. The State should ensure that petty employees can’t take out their grievances on the subject of complaints. I actually think this is a huge part of all sorts of police and bureaucratic misconduct. Rapper has a nice car from rapping about drugs -> I’m going to piss him off because I hate him. State employees are humans and humans act on grievances all the time.

In case you didn't mistype that, please please please don't tell me how an animal sanctuary makes money on onlyfans.

As far as I can tell without subscribing, his OnlyFans is pretty vanilla gay4pay-themed male focus shots, and more credible in that sense than a lot of stuff directly marketed as bisexual. The pet focus is mostly made on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube, although he does have (a lot) of pretty distinctive animal-themed tattoos and there's some really thirsty shots in Instagram/TikTok stuff.

First link about this I clicked on reddit was commenting on the size the owners appendage...which he displays prominently on his TikTok (along with the squirrel)

Fun fact: Onlyfans wasn't originally intended to be a porn site, but rather something like Patreon where any sort of content creator can set up shop and get fans to send them money for content. They just didn't ban porn, so much like the fabled no-witch-hunts-ever utopia, it's got seven zillion pornstars and three principled civil libertarians (and an animal shelter, apparently).

I actually didn't know that, thanks. Always thought the name was just cutesy to make banking easier.

I'm very familiar with my three principled libertarian friends on the site though: Mr. Hands, Mr. Feet, and Mr. 14-really-is-prime

An addition:

The government hires people to do various jobs. Government jobs do not tend to pay as well as similar jobs in the private sector, but are known to have better work/life balance, better job security, and great retirement benefits. Thus, government jobs tend to select for a more ... relaxed ... type of person than the private sector.

One of the functions of government workers, especially in animal control functions, is to respond to public complaints. This involves a lot of work and disruptions to normal in-office routines, and thus is disfavored by the type of people who tend to take government jobs. However, because public anger is one of the few things that can get government workers in real trouble, such complaints must be visibly and aggressively addressed. On the other hand, the person being complained about has nothing to offer the government workers.

Therefore, when the state agency got multiple anonymous complaints about P'Nut, they were incentivized to take serious action to (1) demonstrate that they took the public complaint seriously, (2) generate as little additional work on their end as possible, and (3) avoid receiving any further complaints on this subject. They had no incentive whatsoever to give a damn about P'Nut or his owner, and likely negatively predisposed towards them because they're the reason there was a complaint in the first place.

Easiest way to solve the problem is to find some pretext to seize and dispose of the subject of the complaint - P'Nut.

The whole thing ws wild to me because I used to run a Twitter blog for an anthropomorphic squirrel character for a board game IP I was developing. Crazy squirrel memes were my bread and butter, but not enough bread or butter to see the game to market.

Anyway all these memes popped up on my substack feed and I felt like I had truly missed my moment.

A conservative Substacker (John Carter Warlord of Mars) who I take with much salt, pointed out that aside from the real tragedy of euthanizing peoples' pets (this has happened before) is that this type of government action reveals the depths to which safety-ism will take us while simultaneously whistling past the graveyard of Big Problems. The border is a mess, but there's always time to activate half of a town's civil resources, kick down their door, harass their wife and kill their pets because...something, something rabies. (Squirrels don't get rabies and if they do they don't pass them to humans--research from the game dev, 'natch).

It's unfortunate this happened and even more unfortunate it happened now because it's a case egregious enough that most should note it as over-reach. Instead it's, "just those crazy conservative screwballs taking things too far again." RIP Peanut. #NeverForget

While raiding the house might have been dumb, and tbh probably was, I’m pretty sure that the euthanasia was due to some kind of standard policy for animals that bite an officer, and this is a facially reasonable policy that probably shouldn’t apply to squirrels but nobody drafting it considered that the animal biting an officer would one day be a squirrel.

I wouldn't take that bet, because these rules are written with coons, rats, bats, sacks of ferrets, angry geese, and other troublemakers in mind. The weird cases are heavily overrepresented in scenarios where you end up saying "today didn't go at all well, we'd better make a department policy about purse-carried mongooses"

I suspect that a large majority of officer-biting animals are dogs, and so squirrels are a weird edge case of something common enough to have a policy over.

Yeah. You don't get weird new policies added for dog-bites-man stories, even when it might be a good idea. But you get a horngry weasel down your pants one time and suddenly you're in an OSHA brief.

While raiding the house might have been dumb Kind glossing over the important part. Why rip apart hus house for hours? Why grill his wife over her immigration status (especially in ny)?

This seems personal and very heavy handed, and should be investigated.

Why try to hand wave it away?

Then why the raccoon? There was also a case where something similar happened to lady with alpacas (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/geronimo-post-mortem-results-alpaca-b1916386.html granted in the UK...but basically the same mindset). I also think that there are many cases where officers are bitten by dogs and cats where the animals are not euthanized. The problem is that the policy of euthanasia is running cover for the deliberate mishandling of the animals. It looks and smells like Molochian malice to this homo.

Edit: I suppose you may choose not to euthanize a registered pet who's up-to-date on their shots. So maybe the law is enforced judiciously.

There’s probably a specific carve-out for licensed and registered pets with documented vaccines, if there’s any exclusions at all. I would actually expect that a huge majority of dogs which bite police officers in the process of serving a warrant are shot on-site, and nobody cares very much because they’re dangerous ill trained dogs owned by criminals. People who license and register their pets and keep documentation of rabies vaccines, as a rule, don’t have police in their business.

I think this case is more of an exception due to the victim being oddly sympathetic than to the state being abnormally vicious.

and nobody cares very much because they’re dangerous ill trained dogs owned by criminals.

Dogs who bite people who attack their owners are well-trained dogs.

And people do care, at least to the extent that they make fun of the police, when the police shoot a chihuahua because they were "in fear for their life".

It's one of the biggest libertarian "viral moments" I can remember. Not only is it terribly authoritarian, it's a ridiculous inversion of priorities and waste of resources. We can start talking about euthanizing squirrels over "rabies" concerns after the government has successfully euthanized every rat in NYC. And treating a squirrel as some kind of dangerous exotic pet makes zero sense. There's a long American tradition of owning pet squirrels; Warren Harding had one named Pete living with him in the Whitehouse. This whole thing is just quintessentially un-American.

He deserved to have his feral disease ridden animals taken because he is a degenerate pornstar and vain social media publicity seeker. This non story is total brain melting slop.

I'm sure every animal department has stupid policies where they needlessly kill tame housebroken foxes and let feral pitbulls continue to eat toddlers: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/

  • -20

This comment is bad. It contains no insight, analysis, information, or content except the fact that you evidently don't like the guy and don't care about dead squirrels and wanted to express it in a belligerent fashion. You could have just not commented on a story you don't care about, or you could have put some minimal effort into explaining why you don't think it's a story worthy of discussion (though generally we take a dim view of telling other posters what they should or shouldn't be talking about, since obviously plenty of people did think it was worth discussing), or you could have added some content (like details, with links, about this individual and why you think he's unworthy of sympathy and therefore no one should care about his squirrel). Instead you just decided to uncork and spew. We do not like it when people do this. You have a history of doing this. Stop it.

I think he is making an argument. It's a bad argument in my view, but it's an argument accompanied by some sort of reasoning. Not going to win a quality contribution award, but not in violation of the rules either IMO. He is inviting a discussion and responding.

A plain reading of my comment is clearly that this policy is eminently reasonable, these things happen frequently and are mundane, and this story's notoriety is unrelated to its merit, but the man involved is flooding social media for personal gain. That's not enough analysis for a reply to a thread?

Your link suggests sarcasm, though this showed up in my filter feed.

Even if the owner murders babies I don't see how that justifies killing the squirrel. Seems like an unrelated issue.

Animals are property.

This guy says law enforcement spent five hours ransacking his property. And destroyed some of it such as his pet squirrel. That's the problem here. The anarchotyranny of a government with no time or resources to deal with shoplifting and car break ins, but apparently lots of law enforcement resources to crack down on unregistered squirrel owners.

So should we burn down murderers' houses? What's the point of destroying property as punishment for a "crime" (which in this case is not actually a crime and which no one has been convicted of yet)?

The squirrel bit a guy I think. If a murderer built a house that tries to punch your balls every time you walked by I'd probably want to demolish it.

it apparently bit an officer when they were in the process of seizing it. The same as incarcerating someone for resisting arrest without any other charge raised.

If the cops show up to my house for some stupid reason and want me to go sit in the squad car while they do whatever, and I thrash and kick and headbutt one of them like a BLM protester then yes, I do think it is fine to punish me for that, even if the original reason they were there didn't pan out. If you're more libertarian and completely disagree that the state and its agents should have some good faith wiggle room for mistakes or best practices that fine, but there's no sense in us spending 8 comments to reach that impasse.

More comments

The squirrel bit a guy who was trying to take the squirrel away. If there was a car that could punch your balls when you tried to steal it, a lot of people would probably want one.

The squirrel only bit the guy after they entered the house and tried to take the squirrel, which should have never happened to begin with.

So what is the reasoning behind infringing on this guy's property, then?

Probably that the animals spread disease and rabies and are more likely to bite their owners and have to be put down sooner or later anyway. Not sure though, the justification might begin with the negation that he was the right to own this specific property.

the animals spread disease and rabies

Source? Evidently the state does not know that, they killed it to test it for rabies in the first place.

There were so many other ways to address the issue available, and they availed themselves of none but the most direct and violent one.

If there's a violation of the law, send the guy a notice to appear or otherwise drag him into court unless he gets paperwork in order. I understand the government can't 'ignore' a well-documented violation of the law but we'd expect them to use the lightest hand possible when enforcing said law unless there was some massive public interest at stake.

To make an absurd comparison, its like burning down the Branch Davidian compound rather than arresting David Koresh while he's out on a jog.

To make an absurd comparison, its like burning down the Branch Davidian compound rather than arresting David Koresh while he's out on a jog.

I think the true absurditity is that this is not a particularly absurd comparison, this is just Democrats and the deep-state playing to type.

Speaking of playing to type, the director of enforcement for the Department of Environmental Conservation who ordered the hit is apparently named Karen Przyklek.

Karen Przyklek

It's a squirrel. If it was beaver there may have been some mercy in her soul.

The government regularly ignores well-documented violations of the law, particularly where those violations are non-violent (e.g. speeding, immigration, drugs). Given that the government doesn't have the ability to enforce all the laws all the time, it makes sense to deliberately ignore inconsequential violations and focus on consequential ones.

I think it says a lot about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the PMC in general and the Democratic party in particular that armed insurrection, and the burning of minority nieghborhoods can be dismissed as "inconsequential" or "the cost of doing buisiness" while possession of an unlicensed rodent is somehow a bridge to far.

I'll clarify that in this case "well-documented" means "the guy was literally an influencer and published his videos to millions upon millions of views."

So in a sense, this is like if some person kept posting videos of themselves speeding at 10 mph over the limit and posting them for all to see. If the state ignores that they're almost condoning the behavior.

And yet the ATF is not breaking into the houses of children with glock switches.

Driving safely while going 10mph over the speed limit is a behavior the state should condone.

If you can drive safely at 10mph over the speed limit, then the bastards posted too low a limit. (Uncontested freeways are arguably an exception - although the Germans have demonstrated that German drivers driving German cars don’t need speed limits)

Fine, 15, 20, I'm just saying, if somebody is consistently flouting the law to thousands of viewers, it isn't surprising the state is going to get involved.

The judgment call is making sure the intervention is proportional, I guess.

Given that the government doesn't have the ability to enforce all the laws all the time, it makes sense to deliberately ignore inconsequential violations and focus on consequential ones.

No, this isn't how it works. Given that the government doesn't have the ability to enforce all the laws all the time, it makes sense to deliberately ignore violations which will take a lot of time and resources to remedy and focus instead on easy ones. This is why we get anarcho-tyranny - people trying to get away with laziness and justifying it with moneyball-esque "efficiency" metrics.

It "makes sense" from the government's perspective to do what you're describing. It "makes sense" from society's perspective to do what I'm describing.

Unfortunately "society" has little oversight over how government actually functions on a day to day basis, as things are currently constituted. I wish it were different, but I feel that it's important to recognize where incentives and structures pull actual day-to-day functions away from their idealized/theorized function.

At the risk of being tedious, what would make even more sense is to just not make laws about things that you're actually willing to ignore the vast majority of the time. Perhaps Squirrel Law isn't actually something that needs to be on the books at all.

I completely agree. Laws ultimately rest on the threat of violence and there should be as few of them as possible.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats