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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32276 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Well, that's interesting. Just a moment ago you were saying

Europeans do a lot of ethnic strife, it's why they sorted themselves out into ethnostates defined by the predominance of particular ethnic groups.

But now apparently that's not a problem. We can have the Irish and English put aside their centuries of grievance. The Serbs and the Croatians can join hands as brothers. The Germans and Italians who we fought the bloodiest war in history against can be our countrymen and our comrades in arms.

Tell me, how did we do it? How are we able to look past all these different ancestries, languages, cultures, and histories to create peace and harmony between these different groups? And why does it stop working when someone is brown?

We can have the Irish and English put aside their centuries of grievance. The Serbs and the Croatians can join hands as brothers. The Germans and Italians who we fought the bloodiest war in history against can be our countrymen and our comrades in arms.

Given that the same thing happens in Canada, the US, and even most of Europe, I don't think the variable doing the work here is "Australia". Certain cultures, among them the Europeans you have mentioned, produce adaptable emigrants. Australia has a well-established, well-integrated Lebanese population not because they are Australians, but because the Lebanese seem to do well wherever they go. The Cantonese do well in Britain because the Cantonese do well everywhere.

Market-dominant minorities, westernized elites from the Commonwealth, and immigrants from first world countries integrate well in all western countries.

Because it's very easy to blend into a new culture when you already look like that culture. How is this difficult to understand? You will never have to be confronted by the skin and eyes and hair of people in history books and portraits and statues, and be reminded at every turn that this country was not built by people who look like you. The only way to stop being reminded of that is to resent and fulminate against the history books and statues, or to mangle them to soothe the beholder's sense of alienation.

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