site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

When you are weak it is best to avoid antagonizing your enemy.

Granting for the sake of discussion that Reds are "weak", it seems to me that all Red Tribe victories in living memory have come from actions generally characterized as antagonistic, and no valuable victories have ever been delivered through actions generally characterized as cooperative or conciliatory. Further, given the state of the culture war, it's hard to imagine how this could possibly be otherwise. Many, many Blue Tribe actions, especially in the last decade, seem to me to be strongly antagonistic to the point where a response is fundamentally necessary to retain even a modicum of legitimacy for the existing system.

The worst case scenario is that the bureacracy would just say "no" to Trump's orders, precipitating a constitutional crisis.

What's driving your definition of "worst case", here? Worst case relative to what?

I believe the current system has been engineered by Blues to be incapable of providing redress for Red grievances. It doesn't matter what elections we win, what laws we pass, what norms we follow, what processes we engage with, the output is always failure for our goals and values and victory for those of Blues. If that is the situation, then how would precipitating a constitutional crisis make things "worse"? We've already seen the normalization of organized political violence nationwide, universal violations of fundamental human rights, the partisan weaponization of the security services, and the complete collapse of rule of law. What would a constitutional crisis add to those problems?

I am perfectly willing to see Trump die in jail. Trump is by no means irreplicable, and his value as a martyr could easily exceed his value as a President. It seems obviously worse to me to see the numerous catastrophic abuses committed by Blue Tribe be cemented into durable norms, as was done with their abuses in previous generations. Playing nice for fear of the consequences of conflict is exactly how we arrived in our current predicament. It is past time to fight fire with fire.