or ‘Billionaire Haole Builds Underground Apocalypse Bunker On Island Chain Where Locals Find It Increasingly Difficult To Stay’
This is colonialism
There are now more Native Hawaiians living outside of Hawaii than within the island chain. This is not because they’ve been desperate to leave; for many, it’s because they have little choice in the matter.
He has a security team and every day I’m hoping one of them will just put a bullet in his brain. I’d nullify if I was on that jury.
I read an article a while back about Silicon Valley prepper tech bros and they were all discussing how to keep their security guards loyal after “the event” and the ideas were things like locking down the entire food supply and making them wear exploding collars.
Fucking hilarious.
I love how none of the options is “maybe don’t be an asshole”.
If they weren’t assholes, they wouldn’t need the security team.
If they were decent they’d unclench a few measly points of their vast wealth and pay their guards & other employees multiple times what they’d otherwise make. I’d seriously consider working security for a billionaire if I was making $500k+ for it. But most billionaires are known for being tightwads.
It’s toxic capitalism cosplaying as colonialism.
i.e. good old fashioned colonialism. Hawaii was originally annexed at gunpoint as a result of plantation owners conspiring with Congress in order to avoid high tariffs on sugar. Effectively, they wanted to expand and increase profits and the Hawaiian Kingdom stood in the way. Luckily for them, members of US government saw enormous military potential in taking the islands.
Is there really a difference between those two things?
Only in that the toxic capitalism can exist without colonialism. Also, colonialism at its height preceded modern capitalism.
In spirit, though, no. They’re the same.
That sounds like a sweet deal for the security detail. They get to be stationed at Hawaii, and if the apocalypse should ever come, they can just refuse to let the client come inside. They’ve got the guns and presumably all the technical expertise to run the place without him. He’d just be one more mouth to feed at that point.
My wife has a friend who worked for a few years in Hawaii. It got old very quickly for her. You have limited things to do and places to go when you have time off, and anything much more than local beaches or tourist traps will likely require airfare to another island or the mainland. And the cost of living there is quite high since pretty much everything has to be shipped in. Great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there…
Haole?
Hawaiian word for foreigner, white person.
Just call him an asshole so everyone understands.
I don’t think the term excludes that conclusion, but it’s broader.
I think indigenous Hawaiians deserve a special term to use on the people who colonized their islands.
Hawaiians have a few terms to denote whether someone is a local, a foreigner, etc. I’m about the furthest thing from a Hawaiian, so take my understanding of this for what it’s worth, but as sort of a general overview
Properly the word “Hawaiian” is only used to describe native Hawaiians
The term they’d use for everyone else who lives in Hawaii but isn’t a native is Kamaʻāina
Visitors, tourists, guests, and other newcomers would be called Malihini
Haole is a bit of a complex term that in simple terms can kind of be be understood to mean someone who’s not of native Hawaiian descent, especially a white person (you’ll sometimes also encounter things like “black haole” to describe black people.) The way it’s used can vary a bit depending on context and who is using it, it can be simply a descriptive term, or it can be pejorative. To fully get the sort of connotations it can carry, you really need to consider the whole historical context and the impact that Europeans and Americans have had on Hawaii, but in a way it’s sort of similar to how Wakandans in the Marvel universe refer to white people as colonizers.
So in the context it’s used in this article, you can kind of understand it as “white guy who’s perpetuating the legacy of imperialism”
So yes, an asshole, but a specific kind of asshole.
Interesting. It happens to be an anagram for ahole so I initially assumed it was a typo by OP. Glad my snarky comment led to me accidentally learning something of value.
This reminds me of the mansion on Haven Island in Hitman 2. Definitely evil lair vibes.