site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

JD Vance was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and references Scott's Gay Rites are Civil Rites. It happens at 23:45. As TracingWoodgrains says, the Eye of Sauron approaches.

I apologize if I can't add much more insight. Are there going to be left wing smear articles explaining the evil Rationalists that have the ear of JD Vance? Or is there so much chaos right now around the election that this will get passed over, widely unremarked upon?

Threats to our community aside, it's pretty awesome that a VP candidate referenced one of Scott's articles.

Edit: Andy Ngo is boosting this part of the interview, focusing on the trans children discussion, without commenting on the article.

He says it's actually the Russians funding the German Green party, not even hedging or speculating.

Greens were pushing for no fossil fuels, of which Russia is the default European supplier. Greens were pushing for continued war in Ukraine. These are policies that benefit the US.

Surely he knows this. I can't think of it as anything other than a blatantly dishonest narrative in the usual vein of 'Europeans are incompetent, not pulling their own weight, Russians doing with them as they please, they need a savior, that's us (again!)'. Genuinely infuriating. Sobering, too.

He wasn’t saying they were the sole source of funding.

Moreover, he made the point that the Greens attacked nuclear while trying to replace with wind and solar. But as a result they had a base power problem so turned to natural gas thereby benefiting Russia.

It isn’t quite the Baptist and Bootleggers combo but similar.

Can you explain how the green policy helped the US?

The European gas crisis more than quadrupled the US LNG export business, which started as a subsidized foreign policy tool and suddenly became very profitable (the ports were super expensive and were not competitive with pipeline gas before). 60% of US LNG now goes to Europe, totaling more than we send to Mexico and Canada via pipeline.

Biden just ended all new LNG export construction for "environmental" reasons, hugely enriching the existing owners (the government's partners) by granting them a monopoly.

So in one move they made Europe more economically and politically dependent on the US, paid off the party's cronies, gave their green wing a fake win with some payouts, and put an entire security-critical industry under the thumb of the party. It was a stroke of absolute genius.

And the most impressive part is how long range the plan was. Iirc the government started those then-unprofitable LNG export terminal partnerships over a decade ago, all for this moment when the strategy to split the EU and Russia came to fruition.