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Wonder what the "political correctness is bad" "nobody is allowed to crack jokes anymore" "cancel culture is out of control" crowd will say about this one...
by paxys 1y ago
Wonder what the "political correctness is bad" "nobody is allowed to crack jokes anymore" "cancel culture is out of control" crowd will say about this one...
- account42 1y agoHopefully they will look into this further than the clickbait headline and find out that no, he was not denied entry for a meme.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoThe free speech crowd was never serious, they just want power and control over speech they don't like.
- jbm 1y agoI'm pretty sure there is a free speech crowd that was serious about this; I just don't think it's as big as it is portrayed, maybe 5% of the US population at most. No one likes Free Speech when they are on the receiving end, but you learn to tolerate it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yodsanklai 1y agoDon't worry, they'll find a way to justify it.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoWilhoit's Law "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
- aaronbrethorst 1y ago“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” https://plas.princeton.edu/news/2023/do-latin-america’s-top-prosecutors-have-too-much-power https://plas.princeton.edu/news/2023/do-latin-america’s-top-...
- JadeNB 1y agoMy favorite thing about Wilhoit's law, aside from the law itself in its elegant simplicity, is that it is by Frank Wilhoit, but not that Frank Wilhoit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit). Instead, it is from a one-off, though typically excellent, comment on Crooked Timber (https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...).
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoYeah, it's a pretty great coincidence.
- taylodl 1y agoMy favorite thing about Wilhoit's Law is I worked with Frank Wilhoit for several years and still occasionally meet up with him. He's one of the most interesting and insightful people I know. He loves phrasing things in an unconventional way to encourage people to think about what's being said instead of thinking about the next thing they're about to say.
- bediger4000 1y ago[flagged]
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- throwawayq3423 1y ago(it was never about free speech, it's about power and control)
- Analemma_ 1y agoA little while ago Scott Alexander did a lengthy post about how Curtis Yarvin, aka Moldbug, has essentially backtracked on everything he ever said about tyranny and these days gleefully cheers on all the things he decried in his early writing. Yarvin's response was, essentially, "You actually believed that I believed that stuff? lmao, idiot. This was about power and now we have it, piss off." Yarvin is unusually candid compared to most commentators and so I wouldn't expect a similar response here, but that's what's happening.
- CoastalCoder 1y agoThis greatly concerns me. I'm not a historian, but this reminds me a bit of the prelude to the French Revolution: a growing list of grievances against a ruling class by a population that feels abused, disenfranchised, and numerous. Even if one expects to enjoy a sense of Schadenfreude were such a revolution/slaughter to occur, our staples of daily life (food, medicine, electricity, fuel) are distributed over such a geographically large network, that almost everyone on the country would suffer greatly. I imagine.
- JadeNB 1y agoWhen I grew up, I found history boring, and didn't understand why we were made to study it. I'd like to think it's partly because I was taught typical jingoistic rah-rah US history, but that's at best only part of the reason. Anyway, even I, with my paltry education in history, can see the historical parallels. And here I am, versus an oligarchic class that had the opportunity for a world-class education, and surely knows at least as much history as I do. I wonder if they really believe that they've found the way to prevent the inevitable consequences this time, or if they just think that they'll have found some way out, possibly just having passed the buck to the next generation, before the consequences for them come to pass.
- nostrademons 1y agoYeah, I see a whole lot of media parallels to Nazi Germany, but the two historical analogues that really pop to mind for me are the French Revolution and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Both of which ended in slaughter - the Napoleonic Wars for the former and ethnic cleansing for the latter. People are crying dictatorship now, but I don't see that being the ending here; rather, I see it as being war and death on a massive scale. The other thing to remember about the French Revolution was that nearly all the revolutionaries who came to power during it were dead by the end of it. The folks who are crying "We're in power now, suckas!" are being extremely stupid. Power doesn't last long at times like this. The other thing that scares me is that the best place to be in all those historical times of crisis was an ocean away from the place where the crisis starts. But that doesn't work today; we have weapons with global reach that can level whole cities in 30 minutes. If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.
- jrflowers 1y agoProbably either skepticism that it happened https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369233 Or celebration https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369218 The whole “political correctness is so bad that we need to elect the current regime” crew only ever really wanted to feel aligned with power and are more or less indifferent to what that power does so long as they are periodically made to feel reassured that they are on the right side of it.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoEverything Trump does in the coming months will be met by his fans with either "fake news" or "we are better off with a king anyways."
- xnx 1y ago> only ever really wanted to feel aligned with power The polite description of bootlicker
- recursivedoubts 1y agoi think political correctness is bad and that this is bad (and that the meme is very funny) too
- mellosouls 1y agoAs did JD Vance who retweeted them himself.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoWhile he oversees a government that enforces punitive actions on speech. Guess which action is more important?
- randallsquared 1y agoHe oversees almost nothing. The VP has no constitutional powers except to tiebreak the senate and succeed the president.
- tclancy 1y agoAnd yet coming out against this would carry significant weight.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoHe was picked specifically because he will never go against his boss, for any reason. That's why he is there.
- throwawayq3423 1y agoThat's like saying Stephen Miller has no power. Technically no, but he is running the show. Him and the people that backed him are the machine behind of all of this.
- happytoexplain 1y ago
- sillyfluke 1y agoThe "real" Mads Mikkelsen should fly into the US with the meme on his phone and post the bald JD Vance on his social media before his flight. He'll have the honor of being the second Mads Mikkelsen to be deported by this snowflake administration.
- ortusdux 1y agoI fully expect to see this image on a shirt the next time I'm in line at security.
- mellosouls 1y agoIn my case they will condemn it if it is true, while asking for more evidence than this single-source report so we can establish that is the case.
- Ar-Curunir 1y agoDid you hold that attitude while complaining about cancel culture? Or is asking for more evidence something that is only necessary when it happens to your political opponents?
- mellosouls 1y agoI'm a man of the left who thinks cancel-culture stinks and have campaigned against it for years, including warning those on "my side" (who you wrongly call my political opponents) that one day the boot would be on the other foot. I condemn cancel-culture full stop whether its the right-wing mcarthyism of the fifties or the leftist bullies of the last decade. Do you?
- mellosouls 1y ago(Update) The claim is rejected by the US department concerned. See eg https://usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/06/25/tourist-denied-entry-us-phone-search-vance-meme/84342280007/ https://usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/06/25/tourist-de... Whoever you believe, it turns out that knee jerk reactions are rarely useful in stories like these.
- jasonwatkinspdx 1y agoBased on decades of experience with my family: it's only political correctness when other people do it. When they do it, it's just common decency, common sense, family values, etc. And as far as the original story, individual border agents should absolutely not be doing this to people because they have a meme on their phone, doubly so one where Vance shared a version of it himself. There is straight up no justification for this. Dark days for the values the US professes to represent.
- hermanzegerman 1y agoWhat values does the US represent?
- mensetmanusman 1y agoYou will only get edgy responses, most can’t comprehend what to think when people acting under a system of values fail to reach their proposed ideals.
- jasonwatkinspdx 1y agoSupposedly freedom of speech for one. Hard to see that as being real today.
- happytoexplain 1y agoFreedom seems like the obvious example here, unless I'm not catching your meaning.
- 1y ago
- noobermin 1y agoThis meme "what about cancel culture" is no longer an interesting point anymore. Certainly online, most of Trump's fans don't care. Just stop taking these kind of conservatives you don't know personally seriously and just assume bad faith by default.
- platevoltage 1y agoI've stopped taking these kinds of conservatives that I DO know personally seriously.
- whateveracct 1y agolegalize comedy!
- adamtaylor_13 1y agoSince most of us are rational, logically consistent people I think we’d condemn this as outrageous. Like any rational free-thinking American should.
- happytoexplain 1y agoI disagree that "most" of the people in the ideological camp the parent is alluding to are rational and logically consistent.
- jimbokun 1y agoI hate censorship in all its forms. And it should surprise no one that the Trump administration have matched and exceeded the Biden administration's levels of free speech infringement.
- jrochkind1 1y agoThey're gone, they don't exist anymore. Turns out they were fine as long as it was fascism.
- bjourne 1y agoThey usually resort to legalisms for cases like this: "The guy wasn't an American citizen so first amendment doesn't apply. The border guard was ENTITLED to harass him. America #1!!"
- dfxm12 1y agoNothing, because they don't care about jokes, political correctness or cancel culture. They care about fascism and grabbing more power for themselves.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoEvery generation has its "free-speech advocates" moaning, "you can’t say anything anymore." The current panics: political correctness, cancel culture, jokes under siege, has the usual suspects asking, "What will the free-speech crowd say about this one?" This is a perfect example of Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence and the violence of the arbitrary. The uncomfortable truth is, for many the thrill isn't in enforcing fair rules, or even unfair ones. The thrill is in the power to enforce arbitrary rules. The point isn't who gets punished, it's that someone can be, at a moment's notice, for no coherent reason. And the joy is in unpredictability, in knowing they can shift the rules under your feet and there's no one appeal to. This is the logic sitting beneath every hand-wringing editorial and rage-bait thread about "cancel culture run amok." The goal is sovereignty, not consistency. It's about who gets to draw the lines and when they can redraw them. Arbitrary enforcement isn't a bug. It’s the feature. The clever "gotcha" crowd falls flat when they imagine that, by exposing contradictions, they'll force a confession, a moment of logic, an admission, and surrender. But that moment never comes. When the point is arbitrariness, contradiction isn't a failure. It's the currency of power. Pointing it out only proves you're not the one with power. What will the "PC culture" critics say? Probably what they’ve always said. Remember, it's not about the arguments. It's about who gets to arbitrate, who gets to punish, and who gets to laugh last. It always has been.
- extr 1y agoAI slop
- kelseyfrog 1y agoYou're tilting at windmills, friend. Was there a point you agreed or disagreed with?
- beepbooptheory 1y agoYes, we hear versions of this conceit a lot, but how does it play out? Like where exactly is this arbritrary power exercised in your mind? Where is the payout? In each discrete call out or critique? Is the world in your view just full of a million tyrants fighting for various fiefdoms, or is there just one collective bad faith actor here? How can you marry here both the overarching individualism which would make this rendering possible with collective phenomena we actually see with this stuff? This really is just what we have been hearing from the cultural right for a long time, masked as a kind both-sides/human-nature take. It sounds good, in that it gives something like general principle to subsume all the instances. But it just doesn't really make sense in the actually existing world. How could any given side even know they are the new hegemon, the new line-drawers, at any given moment. At what point are they rewarded with regard to the influence they wield? What does it even look like? Do you have examples? Sovereignty implies a concentration of something like power, but your very point here seems to decentralize sovereignty to the point of it being unrecognizable as such. Its like taking something very individual and trying to stretch it across everything in awkward way. Just simply: how does this actually work? When does whatever side thats on top actually get to feel good, actually get to be the sovereign?
- blueflow 1y agoProbably "Haha, our champion won. At least yours didn't."
- micromacrofoot 1y agoThey don't care, there's no compass, it's only I win/you lose. I have a sibling that's deep into this, he would say "haha owned"
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- orangecat 1y agoWonder what the "political correctness is bad" "nobody is allowed to crack jokes anymore" "cancel culture is out of control" crowd will say about this one As someone who would be closer to that side than the opposite: this is terrible and unacceptable. (It is not that hard to have actual principles)
- brewdad 1y agoIt may not be hard but it does seem rare these days.
- docmars 1y agoAs a deplorable myself, I disagree with this decision and think it's ridiculous - but I do find the nature of it quite funny still. Also remember that JD Vance himself has plenty of air time laughing at these memes, and they aren't considered threatening like calling out Biden's cognitive decline with memes making fun of it. The overall response to memes of this nature are very different on either side. One side wants to censor the entire internet and penalize people for daring to share something politically incorrect, while the other caught an outsider who may harbor threatening sentiments about our nation, with the intent to harm - although I sincerely don't think that's the case here. Part of the irony here is that you'll more likely find a right-winger with more JD Vance memes on their phone than this guy. The mass-censorship has a much deeper weight to it than inconveniencing 1 tourist, and I think it's a little surprising this needs to be explained.
- xnx 1y ago"The left wanted to make comedy illegal. You can't make fun of anything... Nothing's funny"
- thaumasiotes 1y agoProbably "what's the connection?" In this case, we have a report that someone was denied entry over an image of JD Vance. From the same report, we have the facts that JD Vance approved of the meme the image was taken from, using it himself; and that the image provoked border control agents into interrogating the person about his ties to "right-wing extremism". Not usually something you'd expect from someone about whom the only thing you know is that he appears to be criticizing right-wing politicians. It seems safe to conclude that politics weren't a concern. If you wanted to diagnose what happened, this looks more like the agents were looking to turn people away and seized on whatever they thought they could make work.