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naraburns  nihil supernum  5mo ago (text post)   27920 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Realistically, what, if anything, is going to change from a culture war perspective because of this? Will the DNC conduct an election "autopsy" to determine what they got wrong here? They outspent and our raised Trump, a convicted felon with a negative approval rating, and still could not win. Will the Democratic party take a hard look in the mirror? Will the Republican party completely abandon moderates/the establish in favor of the winning populist rhetoric? Will nothing change at all?

I think Trump winning is a huge victory for wokeness and a huge loss for liberalism, just as it was in 2016. Trump in office will give institutions the excuse they need to clamp down on dissent. Speaking on issues like free speech and meritocracy will become impossible, since the #Resist movement will occupy 100% of the airtime for the next four years, and anyone making the slightest criticism of leftist idpol will be labeled a Trump-supporting fascist. Young white men will be demonized at levels never seen before. Meanwhile Trump/Vance will likely erode civil rights and liberal values from the right, with things like porn bans, social media IDs, religion shoved into schools, etc. Basically, it's joever.

The level of vitriol I'm already seeing from my boomer democrat family members is even bigger than 2016 or Jan 6. Living in the blue bubble for the next 4 years is going to be hell.

Back in 2020 some people here tried to say a Biden win will the blue tribe to de-escalate, only for all the things you're warning about here to happen anyway. They'll keep on clamping down on dissent no matter what, they're doing it even in countries with no Trump. The idea they'd go easy on us if we let them win is hard to take seriously at this point.

Well from my point of view, things did dramatically de-escalate with Biden. But I think what I'm trying to say is that it's easier to critique idpol leftism when idpol leftism is explicitly in power. Trumpism is a backlash to idpol leftism, and is therefore perfectly optimized for providing it endless outrage to feed on. Trumpists and SJWs are having a conversation that I have no interest in participating in, I want to have a different conversation. If I'm over here arguing with a leftist that we should strive for equality rather than equity, it really doesn't help if a Trumpist starts yelling about how both equality and equity are for cucks. That just causes the leftist to stop listening to me.

That just causes the leftist to stop listening to me.

Maybe you should try cutting a deal with the Right instead?

Progressivism lost its mind in 2014, and their excesses have done significant damage to our nation and its institutions. Maybe it's time to cut the crazier fringes loose, rather than bankrolling them at every turn. And if you can't do that, why should we on the Right consider you distinct from them?

Maybe you should try cutting a deal with the Right instead?

Well I might have thought that was possible back in 2016. But the right are moving away from liberalism, not towards it. In 2016, Trump held up a rainbow flag, and now in 2024 his campaign is at least 25% about how transgenderism is destroying womens' sports. There was a brief time during G*mergate when we had a liberal backlash against wokeness, but the anti-SJW movement has long been replaced by unironic family values christian conservatism. On the other hand, it seems like more and more democrats are waking up to the flaws in the idpol system.

Trump held up a rainbow flag, and now in 2024 his campaign is at least 25% about how transgenderism is destroying womens' sports.

In what way is that against liberalism?

Well personally, I don't think MtF trans people should compete against women either, but it's not a political issue. It should be decided by individual sports leagues.

A minor criticism, even though I sympathize with your views: what stops individual sports leagues from just all agreeing to lump transwomen in with ciswomen anyways, and leading to a sort of "market failure"? These kinds of organizations are probably prone to follow-the-leader, which is something that happens in the corporate world across many specific kinds of markets, and many sports leagues are basically just corporations anyways. I happen to agree with the take that market failures may often need government correction to cut through market actors' inability and lack of motive to solve market failures.

Womens' sports leagues are an explicitly political creation, so their policies are a political issue.

There's things like college sports where a women's divisions were established by a supposedly-liberal state decree in the first place (Title IX, I think). What's illiberal about enforcing that they remain women's divisions?

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To a first approximation, liberal = trans because "my body, my choice". "Bad for society, thus should be prevented" is usually the illiberal take.

Sure, you can have a liberal "my body, my choice" based argument on transgenderism, but it's about adults making their own decisions about their own bodies, not about abolishing sex-segregation in sports and all other spaces. Somehow liberals managed to go on a couple centuries without arguing for that, until like 5 minutes ago.

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