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I wrote last week about how my circle was reacting poorly to the Trump win, but also how their reaction wasn't as bad as 2016. My latest update is, it's still pretty bad, probably worse than it was last week, but still not quite as bad as 2016. But I'm starting to get that feeling again like I'm the crazy one, simply on the basis that everyone I know in meatspace seems to think a complete disaster has befallen us. Furthermore, I think I need to retract my previous statement that my exposure to this strong sentiment is because I went to a very leftist college. I'm now seeing a lot more of this from people who I know outside of that school.
I have a number of people posting multiple times per day about some kind of issue du jour, ranging from high school boys chanting the Nick Fuentes thing, to screeds about how people will (literally) die due to Trump being in charge, for whatever reasons. And I spent the weekend with family and friends who wouldn't stop talking about it, also. It was a lot of signaling and complaining and without any real acknowledgement that over half of the country voted for Trump, including huge gains in lots of minority groups, and that maybe that means something.
So far, from a personal standpoint, this is not off to a good start, and I worry this next four years will be as personally trying as the previous four, with regards to my ability to keep my cool and not feel like a crazy person when surrounded by those in my life and their insistent attitude about Trump. Personally this is starting to make me want future Democrat wins, but not because I believe in the Democrats. If the dems win, my life mostly stays the same. If the Republicans win, my life gets worse just because people around me can't deal with it. But I also can't bring myself to really take these people's fears seriously, since I do feel like this chicken little routine happens every time a Republican gets elected (from my limited experience), without the Republicans even doing anything that bad.
Are other people also seeing an escalating level of this sentiment? It seems maybe like the anti Trump machine had some rusty gears and a slow start, but it's starting to get going again.
I (as a very liberal person who detests Trump but sometimes also find the reaction to him unhelpfully hysterical, or at least unfocused in how it's hysterical) found this post from George Saunders to be quite helpful: https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/a-slightly-altered-course
Quote:
This mirrors my reactions to the election and in its curiosity seems more constructive than just hysteria posting. Would it help to share it with your circle??
Can you steelman the "democracy in peril" argument? As far as I can tell, it's really the core scissor statement of the mainstream-left-versus-alt-right divide in Western countries. People on the left side seem to hold it to be so self-evidently true that you cannot disagree with it in good faith, while it is in equal measures self-evidently false to the point that good-faith agreement is inconceivable to those on the right. I personally always have figured myself broadly closer to the left than the right (if perhaps coping that the race/gender collectivism social justice movement is a temporary aberration), but with one's position on this statement now being treated as a shahada by both sides I find myself driven into the arms of the right wing simply because the left-wing position strikes me as too insane to accept. Unless "democracy" really is code for "whatever my allies want", how can you justify iterated statements that amount to "giving the majority what it keeps voting for is a threat to our democracy"?
If anything, it seems to me that the opposite sounds plausible: democracy as I understand it is threatened by political insiders collectively pulling all stops to prevent giving the majority what it wants, even if this requires wrecking a considerable amount of systems and societal machinery as collateral damage. What is actually the notion of democracy that is imperiled by the right, rather than the left?
(To forestall a possible line of argument, I do find it plausible at this point that, say, the German AfD, if it got into power, would engage in some sketchy reprisals against left-wing institutions, such as pulling funding from nonprofits. Even if on its own this would be a concerning move, I find it hard to put causal blame on them for this, given that the other parties were openly saying since day one that they would sooner ban the AfD than let them get into a position where they could implement their voters' preferences. Something like pointing a gun at someone and then saying that you were right about them being violent all along when they try to wrestle it from you.)
I don't know if I can do justice to this request right now but I'll try briefly to at least copperman the 'democracy in peril' argument. I think we have plenty of evidence that Trump admires dictators and wants to become one and will work towards becoming one. Will he do this systematically and openly? Well no, both for characterological reasons and because it would be self-undermining for him to be seen to be doing this. But if opportunities to take more power come along or can be engineered he won't hesitate to seize them, and he is in a position where he is likely to get these opportunities, especially as he has built a following who trust him above anyone or any organisation. I find it likely that – in the event he's still alive and energetic – he'll be the real power behind the throne of the next Republican candidate to an extent we've never seen before (Putin/Medvedev style). Most of his voters will actively want this arrangement.
I don't really want to get into evidencing all of this – I would be supplying tonnes of quotes of his, that you're likely familiar with already and that Trump's admirers can just choose to say are meant non-literally. To people like me and I suspect George Saunders, Trump comes across as a creature who is transparently knowable. There is no mystery. You can follow his thought processes and drives exactly and see where they'll take him, and you can observe that he's not subject to political norms that do hold other politicians back. (Now it's very interesting that at least lots of his voters appear to either not mind this, or to see something else in him, and does this fact give me pause? Sometimes, but ultimately 99% of people I esteem and respect in the field of ideas/politics/philosophy oppose Trump so this makes it pretty easy for me to conclude that his supporters are the ones with faulty judgement.)
An additional dimension is that 'democracy is in peril' is not only about elections. It's also about the ability of ideas to face off against one another in a somewhat mutually comprehended arena. Trump and/or his followers endanger this because they have special abilities to believe in lies (and I do see this as a collective and advantageous 'ability' rather than simply a failing). Of course people in this forum just think Dems lie more cunningly, whereas Trump's birtherism or election-denying is to them more honest, because less legalistic and more bald-faced. So again, I am not going to try to provide evidence, but this is the gist of my case.
So why didn't he become a dictator during the first four years he was president? I've never heard a good response to this one. He was already president for four years, and yet we still have democracy. He's a known quantity.
Consider the following: I am a Trump supporter. Based on the above, I presume that you would thereby see my judgement as faulty. But the feeling is not mutual. I don't see your judgement to oppose Trump as incorrect; I just think you're a different type of person than me and you have different values, so of course you would think differently. You see me as faulty, whereas I just see you as different; and difference is not in itself a bad thing. Does this fact give you any pause?
I think the left has had a profoundly more deleterious effect on intellectual discourse over the past 10+ years than anything Trump has ever done.
I don't think the left is bad because they lie. In fact I don't think of them as being particularly untruthful at all, not anymore than the right is anyway. If I had to enumerate all my complaints with them, "lying" would not make the list. Rather, I think they're bad first and foremost because they can't tolerate dissent.
A couple of things to this:
(1) It's hard to become a dictator in the US, would be one huge reason. When people are worried he's going to 'become a dictator' there are a lot of steps that would need to happen, only some of which he has any control over. The right war, the right resistance, the right economic resentments etc. He's not likely to declare himself dictator against the popular will, it's far more likely he'd subvert normal democratic norms and processes by consent. (2) When people find Trump's dictator-forward attitudes alarming, it's not only because they think there is a practical danger of him subverting democracy. It's that it feels like an offence against the office, akin to having a new vicar appointed who is loudly atheist. (Which actually I would like, but you get the analogy.)
I mean, yeah, correct, this is one difference between right and left. A huge part of the pain of this election is (a) feeling a degree of judgement towards the electorate, but then also (b) feeling terrible about this because it seems to confirm the right's stereotypes of the left as being judgemental.
I think the right's self image of being very tolerant of different opinions is massively exaggerated though: there are tonnes of people on the right who absolutely revel in liberal tears and obviously loathe their political opponents. You say you just see me as different but in the end our ideas are probably incommensurate so if you are going to impose your beliefs on mine (as is the right of those who win elections), how do you feel okay about it if you don't think your ideas are superior but just different? Do you just see it as a valid exercise of your tastes?
Sure. But it seems like this is just bolstering my case. Yes, it is hard to turn the US into a dictatorship. That's why he wasn't able to do it in his first four years. We can extrapolate that he probably won't do it in his second four years either.
I don't disagree. Especially if we take a broad historical view. Going back not only through the religious right of the 80s and 90s, but going all the way back, through the centuries of western political thought; if we polled most people who could at all be classified as "rightist" throughout history, "tolerance of dissent" would probably not rank highly as a political virtue for most of them. And the right is no stranger to moral judgement and condemnation, certainly. I don't deny any of that.
Ultimately the only person I can speak for is myself. The views I have expressed here are not universal among "my side", although they are not wholly unique to me either.
The terms "left" and "right", although convenient, may not be the most accurate terms for our current political context. Perhaps "woke" and "anti-woke" might be better?
Oh sure. Some amount of animus towards your political opponents is natural and unavoidable. I get angry at people, I find myself wondering why they have to be such NPCs. But I think all of that is still importantly different from thinking that your opponents are evil. Evil is harder to come back from; there's less chance of redemption. It seems unclear how one could sincerely wish for there to be any space for "evil" to flourish in the world. If possible, I'd like for my opponents to have a space in the world where they can be happy and live their lives according to the principles they believe in. I just want them to do it away from me.
I don't think there's much that can be said in the abstract here without a concrete example to work through (what am I imposing on you, by what mechanism, etc).
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The right pandemic that resulted in people's rights being infringed upon all across the world?
I think if Trump didn't use covid to significantly expand his personal powers, he's pretty harmless.
I don't see how covid presented much of an opportunity for Trump to cement his power. It was a hot potato he had to handle and made life more difficult for him.
Why not? It was an emergency that people were willing to give up their individual liberties for. It'd be easy for a dictator to pull a Palpatine and grant himself emergency powers to do all types of mischief.
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