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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Wow. Trump Derangement Syndrome has killed Tenacious D. On stage in Australia yesterday, when asked to make a birthday wish, Kyle said "Don't miss trump next time."

Today, Jack Black cancelled their tour and appears to have killed the band.

I've found the reactions of intense disappointment that Trump wasn't murdered to be really disappointing but unsurprising. My parents (who I was with when it happened and I broke the news to them) immediately expressed disappointment that he was still alive. Watching people post these sentiments publicly online as if they are completely unaware that advocating for the assassination of your political opponents is really bad and completely unacceptable has left me amazed. How can people not realize that it's a bridge too far? They're literally saying that to preserve democracy, they need to assassinate the leading candidate, a level of cognitive dissonance beyond anything I've seen.

That said, I also find the current cancelations hilarious. The very people who are calling Trump "literally hitler" are now pearl clutching that it's not okay to try kill Hitler. The catastrophizing wasn't acceptable before either - maybe this snapped people out of their delusions?

I was surprised by my own reaction, too. I was a lot happier that he survived, and a lot more impressed with his immediate response than I expected to be. Trump grew in my esteem a lot.

When some random schizo tried to kill nancy pelosi and ended up severely injuring her husband, plenty of people on the right spread some bizarre spurned gay lover conspiracy and made fun of the victim for it. There were people on this forum taking it somewhat seriously. I don't think any side gets a high ground on this.

Centrists get high ground on this.

I've been consistently anti-violence, anti-terrorism, anti-riot, anti-extremism, etc, my entire life. Every gives centrists crap for not getting things done, but some things are better undone, and some better things would actually get done if it were possible to get more sane centrist candidates elected.

I have the high ground Anakin. Don't try it.

That is one of the satisfactions of being a centrist or moderate, yes. We may not get to enjoy the extremes of partisan frenzy, but the enthusiasm of the moment burns out, and the radical ends of the spectrum overextend and end up looking like fools, we're the ones left to nod knowingly and pick up the pieces.

I realise this comes off as rather smug, and maybe isn't that constructive, but I think there is some value in occasionally reminding ourselves of the merits of even the 'boring', conventional positions. "Actually Political Violence Bad" is not a position that's going to excite anyone, but it has repeatedly proven itself, and those who stuck to it even when it would have been easy to come off as edgy or cool by doing otherwise may deserve some praise for their restraint.

Not from me, probably, because I shouldn't praise my own group, but I'd argue that knowing when not to speak, when not to act, is a kind of virtue in itself.

To that I'd add the ability to condemn two things at once. There's always a strong temptation for partisans of one side or the other to say "but it's different when we do it". BLM riots bad, January 6 good. Cancelling the left bad, cancelling the right good. Extrajudicial violence bad for them, but good for us. But if you're in the centre and you're devoted to having principles... just say that it's all bad. Make no excuses. What they must not do, we must not do either. What we may do, they may do as well.

Centrism is only good if the center is good. A centrist was pro-Hitler, pro-Stalin, pro-Mao, pro-FDR, pro-Reagan, pro-war on drugs, pro-mass incarceration, pro-Iraq War, pro-KKK, extremely racists, extremely reverse racism. They were likely pro a lot of things I would consider good too.

It’s an intellectually lazy philosophy of not taking the time to think thru an issue and form an opinion. A lot of the time you are not able to form a wise opinion so it gets tough. Being pro-Iraq war seems reasonable then because Cheney did some so CIA games and laundered false intel to the American people that you couldn’t verify.

Centrism is just assuming the current Overton window is correct. But the Overton window moves and thus makes a centrists opinion incompatible with views a centrist would have had just a few short years ago.

What would you consider a moderate vs a centrist? A moderate being someone temporarily in the political middle, while a centrist is someone who chooses to be there? Vocabulary might matter here more than usual. I'm not sure I quite agree with your characterization of the philosophy, such that it is, as intellectually lazy, and think it describes some sort of mythical centrist that does not actually exist.

Like, isn't he just describing a regular person who calls balls as he sees them without bandwagoning too much? Someone cautious of getting too over-engaged in partisan passion? Additionally, merely being in the center of two extremes does not imply inaction, though some degree of approval of the status quo might be implied. Both extremes want action, so at least in some cases if you average the two, don't you still get action of some kind? Of course some political positions are a simple tug-of-war, but I feel like most are more like you're traveling on the freeway, and trying to decide which exit to take, or maybe that you're deciding where to eat and someone says Chinese and someone else says Burgers and you end up at a Japanese fusion place that isn't quite what either pictured but still tastes good. IDK, I'm bad with analogies but you get the picture. The idea is, a centrist option can still be an actual blended action, not just inaction due to indecision.

I think moderate and centrists are roughly the same and synonyms.

I have nothing against a centrists. You can live a happy life in country with bad government. You show up to work everyday, marry the cute girl, impregnate your wife a few times, and raise a few good kids. It’s a fine noble life.

But it does not give them some moral high ground on politics or an enlightened view. It’s hoping politics works out in a way that doesn’t ruin their life.

Not everyone needs to be airplane engineers. And know every intricate detail. You can still ride the airplane, but you are hoping the dude at Boeing is a good engineer.