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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   33640 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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As a pretty average American compared to most of this forum, I'd be okay with you or anyone else living here only if you did most of the following: got married (ideally to an American), had kids, learned to hunt or fish, started going to church or at least showed up and participated in public events hosted by churches, took an interest in local politics, and participated in traditional civil religion ceremonies (e.g. 4th of July cookout), got and kept a stable job, and generally deferred to the local culture, social conventions, and moral code (e.g. no loud ethnic music or fireworks at weird times, no opening abortion or gender transition clinics, no complaining about halal/no vegetarian food).

If you don't want to do those things, I honestly don't really want you in my country at all, no offense personally. If you must come, I hope you stay in the rootless cosmopolitan containment zones (blue cities).

I think this is how many (most?) non urbanite Americans actually feel but as @WhiningCoil points out, even the reddest red state hobbits have been successfully trained by state education to crimestop when thinking these thoughts, so they make mouth noises about "illegal immigration."

Also, just curious, but since you are transhumanist (IIRC) atheist, isn't the social and political climate of the UK much more amenable to your beliefs and political goals? America has a large population of recalcitrant believers in the imago dei, including not a few members of the elite, who completely oppose transhumanism.

Also, speak English [or rather, the country's language whatever it may be] in public spaces. Yes, even when speaking to other people who share a different common tongue.

This may be so self-evident to some as to be not worth mentioning.

Cliques of people speaking a language you don't is demoralizing at best.

Good point.

Assuming you're American, would you speak Spanish to a fellow American expat in Mexico City? Or Thai to one in Bangkok? I read once that certain Aboriginal Australians would beat to death anyone who uttered so much as a single word of another tribe's tongue on their soil and expected everyone to switch languages even mid-sentence as they were crossing tribal boundaries, but in practice this is an impossible standard to uphold unless you are a hyperpolyglot or simply never visit non-Anglophone countries.

would you speak Spanish to a fellow American expat in Mexico City? Or Thai to one in Bangkok?

If I was emigrating to there, and it was a public space? Absolutely. Admittedly, that is one of my pushes away from emigrating to a country with a different language, as I am terrible enough at my native tongue.

Be aware that immigration != tourism.

Fair enough, I respect that. I just don't know how one would consistently distinguish between tourists and immigrants just from hearing them speak in public. The children and grandchildren of immigrants also lose their ancestral languages so quickly that it doesn't seem like that big of a problem in the long run.

I just don't know how one would consistently distinguish between tourists and immigrants just from hearing them speak in public.

You can have 2000 groups of ten tourists come and speak a foreign language for a week, and that ends up being roughly equivalent to 1 (one) group of ten immigrants who come and speak a foreign language. Exact numbers depend on age of incoming immigrants and such, of course.

The children and grandchildren of immigrants also lose their ancestral languages so quickly that it doesn't seem like that big of a problem in the long run.

This is true for immigrants who assimilate - which is precisely what we aren't talking about here.

As a pretty average American compared to most of this forum, I'd be okay with you or anyone else living here only if you did most of the following: got married (ideally to an American), had kids, learned to hunt or fish, started going to church or at least showed up and participated in public events hosted by churches, took an interest in local politics, and participated in traditional civil religion ceremonies (e.g. 4th of July cookout), got and kept a stable job, and generally deferred to the local culture, social conventions, and moral code (e.g. no loud ethnic music or fireworks at weird times, no opening abortion or gender transition clinics, no complaining about halal/no vegetarian food).

I was just about to say that I tick all of the boxes, except for ever being willing to be a devout member of a church, when I saw that you left open the option of simply participating in civic life.

I can genuinely say, with little doubt, that these are all things or practices I would be happy to do, or at least try, in the case of hunting (I fucking love guns, I want to turn a boar into pink mist with .50 bmg, I also have ADHD so I'd probably have to take meds in order to handle all the waiting around).

Abortion clinics? I'm for abortion being legal, and probably more pro-choice than most. I'm not in the business of opening them, I discarded the family trade of OBGYN.

As a psychiatrist, I also treat gender transitioning as something to be greatly skeptical of. I wouldn't be going around encouraging it, even if I don't really have an issue with trans people and try to be polite in their company.

So I can easily imagine myself settling into a small town, showing up to grill beef steaks with no issues, drinking beer and shooting the shit (and beer cans) with my neighbors and their kids while my own kids, the product of legal and ceremonial marriage, speak to them in English.

Also, just curious, but since you are transhumanist (IIRC) atheist, isn't the social and political climate of the UK much more amenable to your beliefs and political goals? America has a large population of recalcitrant believers in the imago dei, including not a few members of the elite, who completely oppose transhumanism.

The UK will jail you for burning a Koran, and will let the person who assaulted you while brandishing a knife go with bail. It's a state that does secularism entirely wrong, unlike the French, who have the right idea with lacité. America handles freedom of speech and religion far better.

I do not expect to have issues with religious people in the States. I usually keep my religious opinions to myself, except when I'm in an argumentative mood in an online forum with internet strangers. If they don't bother me, I won't bother them beyond not practicing their tenets.

Besides, the bulk of the atheist transhumanists live in the Bay Area. That's my first choice, though I like most of America and would be happy to live there (barring Alaska).

I fucking love guns, I want to turn a boar into pink mist with .50 bmg

I know you're being hyperbolic, but if you want to pass for being fully assimilated into American gun culture you have to be more nuanced than this. Full auto and .50 BMG are the types of things you do as a rental on a weekend to Nevada. You use them to obliterate a junk car or washing machine. Even with physician money it's just to impractical to do all the time. You'll almost never see this kind of thing at a normal range in the US.

More Platonicly American methods of hunting hogs:

  • Still hunting with a lever action rifle chambered in something like a .44 Remington Magnum
  • Night hunting with night vision optics on an AR platform, .223 Remington
  • Hunting from a helicopter with "Fortunate Son" playing in the background, probably .223 Remington again

I don't consider hog hunting to be the most American form of hunting though. For me the form of hunting that is most characteristic of the American ethos is elk hunting. Probably with something like a .300 Winchester Magnum or one of the other big 30's.

It was hyperbole. I would like to own at least 2 different rifles, probably an AR-15 chambered in 5.56, and a DMR in something like .338 or .408. If you can't tell, I like guns that go boom. I could tell you more about my aesthetics, I'd kit out the AR with Daniel Defense furniture barring a magpul MOE buttstock, Geissele match triggers, an LPVO with a mounted red dot. The DMR would (ideally) be a Mk-18 Mjolnir, because I love that gun, but I'd settle for a off the shelf AR-10 in 7.62x51 if I had to.

The 5.56 for plinking or at the range, the DMR for the hell of it. If I wanted to go hunting boar from a chopper with a Barrett, that would be a special treat if anything.

I suppose given that you are in the UK right now, I'll accept NATO nomenclature for caliber. There is something decidedly transatlantic about using millimeter based measurements to specify caliber over US customary units though.

I'll have to insist on you describing all charge sizes in the mass unit of grains before naturalizing to the US. Of course actually referring to the volume of a some particular brand of dipper and powder you used and not the actual mass.

If surrendering metric is the only option if I need to move over, then you'll never take me alive! I'll be dead and buried 182 cm below the ground before I cave in.

I presume I'd actually have to familiarize myself with bullet grain, it's not really knowledge I've needed. As a recreational shooter who isn't too invested in fantasies of standing with their rifle against the world, I presume I'd only need to dial in the gas block? I would prefer not to have my rifle explode and send me to the ER with a severed artery in my neck. Beyond that, I don't see myself ever needing to splurge for fancy bullets beyond the bare minimum, no black tips for me.

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