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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Every human group in existence today owes its continued existence to the fact that its predecessors took land and resources from other groups

Just like you have rapists, thiefs and/or murderers among your ancestors (because everybody does), however murder and rape are still evil.

Now, I’m perfectly happy to discuss whether or not other, more recently-emergent models of geopolitical coexistence have effectively obviated the underlying logic of wars of expansion.

It's not about models of geopolitical co existence, they are just a result of modern democracy and the abolition of slavery. It makes no sense for the US to invade Canada, because what do you do with Canadian citizens? You can give them voting rights, but then it would be a merge more than an invasion; you can give them no rights, but then it creates a class of sub-citizens (it looks pretty unconstitutionnal); you can kill them all, but if you don't think it's bad then I don't know what will be (don't bother me with "we do none of the bad things the fascists did" if you don't believe there are bad things).

It’s very easy to say “fighting wars to obtain terriorItory is wrong” when you’re the United States, surrounded on both coasts by massive oceans, who defeated the last worthy competitor to any of its contiguous territory 150 years ago.

That is a good thing that we were speaking about the US invading territories, then...

The question is very concrete and clear: is it bad for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to threaten to invade several countries which until now considered themselves as US allies?

The question is very concrete and clear: is it bad for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to threaten to invade several countries which until now considered themselves as US allies?

I reject the premise: neither Trump nor Musk is seriously proposing a full-scale military takeover of any U.S. neighbors. Contingent on them actually doing so, I would judge it to be a bad idea for reasons completely unrelated to fascism.

Oh I don't think they do it seriously either, but the discussion started on the premise that it did.