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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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If you see a path forward now, your eyes are better than mine.

Thanks! Maybe you should invest in Lasik or something, friend. Alternatively...

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

As for this part:

Sure. And a couple years ago, the actions individual people chose was to tell lies to foment mass violence nation-wide, then fanned that violence continually and dropped the hammer on anyone who tried to resist. A massive amount of damage was done, and now everything is worse, and none of the people responsible suffered meaningful consequences. They did that because they thought it was in their interest. They'll do it again, because they still think it's in their interest.

I absolutely agree. It was awful, immoral, and absolutely destructive. The recent response to the Covid pandemic and the George Floyd situation were bungled unimaginably bad. Unfortunately for Covid at least, both parties were more or less complicit in fucking things up, at least on the national stage. On the local level conservatives made much better choices.

In my mind the obvious solution is to keep blasting the truth from the rooftops in places like this, and not let the people who pushed for these awful policies and disregarded our liberties get off scott free. It will take some doing and persistence to push through the government propaganda, it always does. But I'm encouraged by the fact that the Covid response has seen things like Musk taking over Twitter, and generally a much larger signal-boost of the wrongs committed.

If all goes well, this blatant corruption and evidence of outright lies by the elites during a time of serious upheaval will serve as a renewed beacon of the importance of free speech. If we do our jobs right in learning from the disaster, we can teach a whole new generation of people to keep the flame of liberty alive, and warn them away from the dangers of authoritarian governments, policies, and ideologies.

Again it won't be easy, but this is the path forward that I see, which it seems like you are too blind to even admit it's a possibility. I'm not saying it's the only path forward, or even the most likely. But for you to effectively say it's impossible is utterly foolish, and as @Amadan says in his other response, this type of rhetoric is exactly what will lead us to unnecessary bloodshed and war.

I like your thoughts elsewhere and you've helped me to become a more moral person with some of your other perspectives, so I hope I can convince you to lay down your sword and work for a peaceful resolution.