The Dutch

What I have never done is buy into the "civilised nation ... great social democracy ... reject America" bollocks of the Toynbee lobby. It's just a country that, on the whole, works very well, but then it isn't (AFAIK) massively overcrowded, so it can.

In general I've found Holland to be a pretty decent place, but then again I haven't been there for a while.

widespread liberal values, social democratic welfare system that generally works, high level of democratic accountability, internationalism, respect for arts and culture, 'Total Football' and beautiful Orange shirts Johan Cruijff etc, multilingual society, success at building tolerant pluralistic society given many religious/political divisions, more adult approach to drug policy (see below)

Destroy:

Smug 'we know better' attitude, uncritical/hypocrital support for state of Israel, influence and power of monarchy and taboo over criticising it, patronisation of Belgium, visceral hatred amongst many of Germany, bluntness/rudeness/arrogance, appaling sense of humour and lack of irony, rising levels of armed crime + A'dam becoming centre of european illegal arms trade, heroin users jacking up on your doorstep, low levels of female participation in workplace compared with rest of W. Europe. Intolerance of criticising lack of 'tolerance' (it happens believe me). Attrocious Dutch rock. The Shell Corporation.

i am sitting next to dutch people who are speaking dutch. one asked the other if he wanted a cup of coffee. it sounded like "cup of coffee" with a dutch accent. great language.

It's just a country that, on the whole, works very well, but then it isn't (AFAIK) massively overcrowded, so it can.

WTF it's one of the most densely populated countries in Europe!

caek that post looks a bit like an entry from truelad.com

replace 'people' with 'lads' and it could be a goer imo

the resemblance is more in form than spirit dyagtme

when i was in holland i kept doing double takes cos it sounded like people around me were speaking english, but they weren't

My next door neighbors are Dutch. They are some of the nicest people ive ever met. Based on that fact and the three days i spent in Amsterdam in 1990 that I lived in a purple haze, i am pro-Dutch.

i still want to know how they became the tallest people on earth? hash + cheese + horse meat? someone needs to investigate.

dutch people usually speak better english than most americans. we obviously need to import dutch people to teach americans english.

Yeah, the place is so flat there's really no advantage in them being so tall

Scandinavians speak better English than the Dutch tbh

montenegrins are the tallest ppl iirc

you can't really trust the internet, but everywhere i go says dutch first. and then sweden, denmark, etc. i wanna know what they did. probably better diet i guess. this from some website:

Statistically, the tallest people in the world, as measured by country are the Dutch. The average height for all adults for the Netherlands is 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m). This great leap in height is a huge change for Holland, where about 100 years ago, 25% of men who attempted to join the army were rejected as being too short, less than 62 inches (1.57 m) tall.

There are taller people belonging to certain populations within countries. This is especially true of the Maasai people, who live in parts of Tanzania and Kenya. But as a whole, the citizens living in the Netherlands are on average, the tallest people. Even people who have immigrated to the Netherlands from other parts of the world are taller on average than their racial groups in their countries of origin.

Standing next to the Dutch, almost shoulder to shoulder, are the Danes. Average height in Denmark is 6 feet (1.83 m). Americans, who once were the tallest people, have fallen in stature and are on average about 5 feet 9 inches (1.76 m) for men.

lots of milk. tons of milk. that's gotta be it.

thats cuz montenegro wasnt a country back then, but look at the section 'dinaric alps' here and they are the tallest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

there was a new yorker piece abt why the dutch were small but now they are tall (answer - fuck knows, they are well fed but so is most of europe)

i cant imagine diet is all that great in the largely impoverished mountain regions of FYU so fuck knows how tall they would be if properly fed

http://dollarsandsense.org/blog/2013/09/new-dutch-king-declares-end-welfare-state.html

That chair is too big for him imo

Whats goin on ladzh

"One officer also fired a warning shot from his service weapon after a group of police were surrounded."

I didn't even know they had armed cops

Dutch police are pretty hard core iirc

You can take the Dutch out of Burgundy but you can't, etc.

coppers have guns pretty much everywhere!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country

The situation on the ground from an expat buddy who lives in Amsterdam: "Hooligans are running amok! It's the first curfew since WWII, so it's brought out a coalition of anti-maskers and young adults who REALLY don't want to be home with their parents by 9pm...."

Lmao at this:

Netherlands on brink of 'civil war' as rioters strike again over COVID-19 curfew https://t.co/strxsQ1AmK pic.twitter.com/flssur3Bbj

— New York Post (@nypost) January 26, 2021

Just a bit o rioting youths lads

Anything more to it at all tho?

Seems a strange outburst but

lol that's uncomfortably close to 'Paris no-go zones set ablaze for second night in a row as Western civilisation crumbles'-style headlines.

That honorary Dutch anti-lockdown agitator Jan van Morrison will be enjoying this.

Anything more to it at all tho?

For sure. The night curfew being called into place was the final straw for an amalgam of anti-vaxxers, rona-deniers, disgruntled business owners, people who think their freedom is being abused etc. This group came together to protest the curfew. What started out peacefully (obv) lead to some rioting, but it was mostly groups of 14-25 year olds taking to the streets as well. Mostly, the riots are happening in deprived areas, though certainly not exclusively in more multi-cultural areas. The riots started on former island Urk, probably one of the most hated places in the country already - a curious mixture of hardcore protestantism, it's like the vatican of the Dutch bible belt, and coke-snorting, good for nothing youths who see their fishing trade being perpetually in decline. Then it crossed to mostly Southern cities, with again mostly rioting youths (the aforementioned rona-deniers had already withdrawn at this point, mostly). I think it's a rather unique cocktail of deprived areas, youth who already have less chances in society, weirdo conspiracy theorists and self-declared freedom fighters. Quite a colorful bunch.

One could say ten years of technocratic "I have no vision on the society I desire whatsoever and I'm damn proud of it" rightwing PM Rutte had kept a lot of anger under that had to come out at some point. And one would be right. The irony is that teflon Rutte isn't hurt by any of this, not in the polls at least. The blundering vaccination program, an endemic hassarring, racist, criminalizing approach of the most vulnerable of tax payers (something the cabinet stepped down for earlier this month): Rutte's even more popular in the polls than before the rona.

There's a lot more to it, a lot more angles one can approach this, but the above is ball-parking it a bit imo. But then the 14/15 y/o's looting are, in fact, just youths looting for kicks I'm afraid.

Thanks for the rundown. To the casual observer the Netherlands doesn’t seem like a country rife with social unrest, so this has been an eye-opener for ignoramuses such as myself.

The irony is that teflon Rutte isn't hurt by any of this, not in the polls at least.

This seems to be A Thing globally, really defying my assumptions about people's capriciousness and expectations w/r/t elected officials.

xpost LBI otm. Been living here two years now and love a lot about it. However...gotta say the govt’s incompetency with regard to preventing/fighting the virus as well as the weird Dutch refusal to accept that they as people can be wrong and fuck things up are pretty mindboggling.

Most definitely.

Pom, I think the erupting of growing social unrest has been an eye-opener to nearly everyone here, too! The political parties not excluded. While there haven't been any riots w/ more than 150, 200 people max (to give it some perspective: there's not thousands taking it to the streets) it's def a sign. And it's difficult to neatly sort and file these people according to their motives; it's, quite literally, a very mixed bag.

xp Capitaine, very otm about the latter. The chant most heard during the covidiots protest/rioting is "We are The Netherlands!". Which, err... "The people" feel "the elite" don't see/acknowledge/get "the people". But I don't know who "the people" are either tbqf.