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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20907 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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Some people have enough heart to go around

Of course redditors would immediately understand the problem with this if after Dylan Roof’s shooting you had said “Damn. My heart to all White men today who will bear the racist fall-out of this mad man’s evil move” Most people just lack any self awareness or non-object level reasoning ability.

Edit: I know this is a lame boomerism “Imagine if the situations were reversed” but I can’t help it

"Another mass shooting, law-abiding gun owners hardest hit" is something that you do kind of hear in the right spaces, and is also pretty true...

Earnestly, it'd be nice to see the US improve vehicle-pedestrian safety standards more like those of Europe.

More tongue-in-cheek: we need to ban assault cars! Anything with a higher top speed than 85mph (fastest posted speed limit in the US), better zero-to-60 speed than a Honda Civic (7.5 seconds), or dangerous cosmetic features (spoilers, racing stripes, red paint). Or anything over 3000 pounds. Whoops, most vehicles fit at least one of those.

“Ban cars” or the like is indeed a common in-joke among crimethink corners of interweb whenever some Truck of Peace makes incidental contact with pedestrians.

For much of today, the top thread (other than stickied ones) on the New Orleans subreddit was calling for cars to be banned from the French Quarter.

To the extent it's lame, it's only lame because progressives insist it's lame, nor do they have a counter for it beyond "it isn't the same... because it just isn't, okay?!" and just-so explanations. A related example would be "one joke."

Even for chronic Problematic wrong-thinkers like me who are well-initiated and relatively inured to this stuff, it can be jarring to see what sentences look like when they get "find and replace"'d for Who? and/or Whom?

Here's another one:

To add, in light of this I hope that people will be kind to their Arab and Muslim neighbors in the NOLA area.

If the Dylann Roof incident had happened recently, without prompting it wouldn't occur to me to make Norm-pilled jokes along the lines of:

in light of this I hope that people will be kind to their White neighbors in the Charleston, SC area.

Yet people say this kind of feel-good, hugboxxy shit in earnest. Reality defeats parody.

A major problem with this madlib is that the second one about being nice to "white neighbors" is somewhat nonsensical because it is now unclear who exactly "people" are. In the one about Muslims, "people" is clearly everyone non-Muslim (probably mostly presumed to be white); but in the one about whites, it is exactly these whites who are the main target audience, i.e., normal "people". A better madlib might be regarding Republicans in the aftermath of the Charlottesville riots or police officers in the aftermath of some shooting controversy. For me, it is ultimately glib rather than pithy.

As I wrote, the second one would be a joke, but even if playing both statements straight I find your quibbling to be unconvincing.

A major problem with this madlib is that the second one about being nice to "white neighbors" is somewhat nonsensical because it is now unclear who exactly "people" are

Sounds like an isolated demand for gerrymandering. Why not "people" being everyone, or at least "people" being presumably white Americans as in your non-Muslim specification? I suppose it may indeed be too tall an ask for black or latino Americans to be "nice" to white Americans when it comes to crime, rhetoric, etiquette, net-tax transfers.

There are tons of self-hating white Americans who simp for non-Asian minorities, or at least those who exhibit racial out-group preferences.

To the extent it's lame, it's only lame because progressives insist it's lame, nor do they have a counter for it beyond "it isn't the same... because it just isn't, okay?!" and just-so explanations. A related example would be "one joke."

I have felt a bit "yeah yeah, same old hypocrisy as always" when encountering one of these situations in the past, but a) I agree that the complete neutering of it as a meme feels astroturfed, in the sense that I question the loyalties of those who are most vocally opposed to it and b) I have come to the conclusion that if I have to notice this shit, so does everyone else.

The reason "imagine if the situations were reversed" is lame is that it's impotent, not that it's wrong.

A dose of reality is never "impotent".

No, it’s useful to occasionally shake one back into objectivity and away from the prevailing frame.

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