site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Huge news from South America today.

A single judge in Brazil has not only blocked X in the country, but is requiring Apple and Google to remove VPNs from their phones, and is imposing a $9,000 daily fine (basically a year's salary) for anyone in the country caught using a VPN.

Elon Musk attracted the ire of this particular judge, Alexandre de Moraes, when he posted about the judge's previous autocratic attempts to silence free speech and to jail opponents of the current regime led by Lula da Silva. The legal system is very strange in Brazil, and apparently Supreme Court judges have huge unilateral powers to try cases and enforce laws as they see fit. This particular judge has done so thousands of times.

Now X is banned.

With dissent being silenced, and a corrupt socialist in charge, it seems that yet another Latin American country is set on the path to tyranny.

I used to despair that not only we're losing democracy, but The West in general is also trending in a similar way although slower. The entire western hemisphere seems to be becoming like Brazil, bit by bit, all sort of places that I used to admire in North America and Europe gradually resembles me of my own country. There's soon gonna be no champion of Free Speech, Small Government and so on in the global stage.

This reminded me an old article from Foreign Affairs called The Brazilianization of the World. It is a little bit more lefty critique for my taste, but some passages are eerie:

In political terms, Brazilianization means patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption. Rather than see these as aberrations, we should understand them as the normal state of politics when widely shared economic progress is not available, and the socialist Left can­not act as a countervailing force. It was the industrial proletariat and socialist politics that kept liberalism honest, and prevented elites from instrumentalizing the state for their own interests.

The “revolt of the elites”—their escape from society, physically into heavily guarded private spaces, economically into the realm of global finance, politically into anti-democratic arrangements that out­source responsibility and inhibit accountability—has created hol­lowed-out neoliberal states. These are polities closed to popular pres­sures but open to those with the resources and networks to directly influence politics. The practical consequence is not just corruption, but also states lacking the capacity to undertake any long-range developmental policies—even basic ones that might advance economic growth, such as the easing of regional inequalities. State failure in the pandemic is only the most flagrant recent example.

Brazil’s ignoble history of irresolution and indeterminacy, cou­pled with a dualized society in which hustling is essential to survival, gave birth to Brazilian cynicism. Increasingly, the West is coming to ape this same pattern. Not only does there seem to be no way past capitalist stagnation, but politics is characterized by a void between people and politics, citizens and the state. The ruling class’s relation to the masses is one of condescension. Elites call anyone who revolts against the contemporary order racist, sexist, or some other delegitimizing term. They also advance outlandish conspiracy theories for why electorates have failed to vote for their favored candidate—most visibly with “Russiagate” in the United States and beyond. This phenomenon, dubbed Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome, only breeds further cynicism in Western publics, who are increasingly taken with conspiracy theories of their own. This is another Brazilian speciality: in a country with very low levels of institutional trust and plentiful examples of actual conspiracies, conspiracy theories flourish.

Revolts against the establishment, when they aren’t driven by QAnon-style derangement, wield the weapon of anti-politics, where­by not only formal politics, but representation and political authority itself are rejected. Anti-politics tends to result in either a delegitimation of democracy itself, leading to authoritarian rule, or it prompts technocrats to learn from populists, returning to the scene promising an end to corruption and real change. The result is the same sort of distant, out-of-touch politics that prompted anti-political revolts in the first place. Brazil’s history from 2013 to 2019 is this dynamic presented in pure, crystallized form. But the same pattern is visible in Italy’s Five-Star Movement, the anti-corruption protests that led to Viktor Orbán’s ascent in Hungary, Trump, and Boris Johnson’s technopopulist attempt to defuse Brexit.

I am from Eastern Europe and I was born into socialist country and lived my childhood through the tail end of communist regime and then the newborn democracy. I disagree with the author that this is the result of some neoliberal capitalist plot, this pervasive feeling of frustration, political apathy and resulting cynicism was defining feature of late-stage communist regimes as well. I'd say it is the feature of out-of-touch bureaucratic regimes, all too quick to use force to save their pretend legitimacy. Everybody shouts the slogans and lies and everybody knows that everybody knows it's all a farce. Actually it is even worse than that, if somebody has some ideals or expects some decent behavior, he is laughed at - especially if something wrong happens to him. It is certain level of schadenfreude - you stupid naive moron, you thought you could have some hope? You got what you deserve for not being as cynical as me.

Corruption is no longer viewed as something wrong, it is basically the normal way to live. Everybody knows that some professions are underpaid, that some palms have to be greased so it is absolutely normal that your doctor asks for a bribe, if only because he also has to bribe somebody else in order to keep his license. "Patrimonialism, clientelism, and corruption" is the oil that lubricates the whole machine, everybody understands and accepts it. Everything is so bleak, people find solace in their private spaces - their huts where they can escape for a brief time and forget the drudgery and hopelessness of their situation with elephant doses of alcohol. Yeah, it is quite depressing and I always get this feeling if I watch some local movies from 70ies and 80ies. You can almost feel it through the screen.

Have you considered that the problem is simply low human capital and an elite culture that developed around exploiting the low human capital through low margin extraction?

Brazil’s average IQ isn’t that low.

"Free Speech" is used by socialists and all kinds of demagogues to fool a 83 IQ poor population that they'll "solve all issues" as long as you give them power

Yeah, I'd say he's considered that.

blessed with good weather, natural resources

That's a bit of a stretch.

How so? Most of Brazil has magnificent weather.

But is is the sort of weather that is conducive to being a developed country? Meaning a weather not characterized by extremes?

Brazil was the 4th largest agricultural producer (in dollar terms) in 2020, so the weather is good enough for that at least.

Isn't a significant part of the country a) practically impassable rainforest unfit for agricultural use b) similarly impassable arid grassland and scrub, which is also of little use?

Brazil's the size of the continental US and Mexico combined. Consider the "impassable" areas like uninhabited Alaska.

Except our version of the Amazon - the Mississippi basin - has incredible natural soil quality while as I understand it the actual Amazon does not.

In general, the problem in Latin America is that high inequality means the rich are typically comfortable enough not to mount decisive action against the left (which comes with nasty stuff like risking their wealth, their lives, their retirement in Miami etc), so there’s no real opposition other than some atrophied principled conservatives and some crazy weirdos, especially once the left cements its power structure in the military.

Rich American rightists fight more and harder (even if not enough) because there’s nowhere more suited to their politics on earth, certainly in the rich world.

My wife is from Latin America but also has a Spanish passport, and we’ve debated on and off again about moving to Spain with our family if things truly got out of hand in the USA.

I take her point into consideration but my response always boils down to “If the USA turns to shit, there’s nowhere really to retreat to.”

My children are American. Hopefully my children’s children will be American, and their children, and so on and so forth.

Although battles may be fought elsewhere, the war for the future is here, and nowhere else.

What would even be the point of running?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats