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As many of you know, I am not a Rationalist. My skepticism of Rationalism emerges in a variety of ways, but none are more striking than the feeling of bizarre disconnect when observing the Rationalist tendency to focus on systems, on rules, on formal structures as though they were some durable expression of baseline reality, as though they were dispositive in and of themselves. "well, this is the rule, so this should be the outcome".
This being the Culture War thread, a lot of what we discuss here orbits around questions of Law, procedure, or organizational norms. The problem is that law is not dispositive. It is not the motive power driving our society, or even the steering wheel. In some cases it is the bumper sticker, and in others it is the exhaust. In most ways relevant to our discussions here, it simply does not matter, and if you cannot wrap your head around this, I contend that you fundamentally misunderstand the Culture War itself.
Today's example, via the National Review:
Sing it with me, all together now: The last several years are best modelled as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble. From the Blue perspective, legally redefining Red Tribe parenting as child abuse is certainly a pretty good way to hurt the outgroup, and options for retaliation are limited and costly. The algorithm is working! And for those who might have concerns, never fear: Guzman's got you covered.
...I'd love to blame Blue ideology for that last paragraph's worth of mealy-mouthed horseshit, but honestly, I think we all can recognize that Normies shall inevitably Norm. Still, not great. I didn't bother to hunt down her full statement; let's tell ourselves she actually laid out a thoughtful argument about how society requires compromises and hard choices, gestured at trans suicide rates and some impeccably replicated studies showing that confirmed gender identity leads to better outcomes, and then the mean ol' National Review edited all that out to make her sound like a [DATA EXPUNGED] ...less ...persuasive person. Maybe that's even true! Let's not check.
...It bears mentioning that those student walkouts were almost certainly partisan political actions organized by public employees. Red Tribe doesn't get to do student activism in public schools, and it certainly doesn't get to use schoolchildren as political props. This is in fact a perfect example of why the actions they're protesting are needed... but I digress.
This proposed law doesn't matter. It doesn't matter even a little bit, and not just because it hasn't passed yet. It's very clearly a violation of religious freedom so it should be flatly unconstitutional, but of course the Constitution doesn't matter either. None of the surrounding legal, procedural, or policy questions matter. None of it matters. Not even a little bit. These things aren't the engine. They aren't the steering wheel. They're the bumper stickers, and they're the exhaust. They are the effect, not the cause. If this law is struck down, another will replace it. If this law passes, the core issue will not be resolved. The Constitution should prevent this, but it won't, nor would amendments help.
The cause is the Tribes, Blue and Red, and their manifestly incompatible values. Blues/Reds do not Like Reds/Blues. Contrary to arguments presented here for years, we do not share values, moral intuitions, a workable understanding of The Good. The Culture War is not about mistakes, and people are not going to come to their senses any minute now and realize all this was just a whole heap of silly goosery. The Culture War is a conflict. We cannot all get along, because we have lost the fundamental capacity to agree on what "getting along" consists of. We can't agree on what constitutes murder, rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, what constitutes crime, what constitutes Justice. These are not the sort of disagreements a society can have, long term. Something has to give, and probably a lot of somethings.
Laws, norms, procedures, all of those are well downstream of Culture, of social reality. You need everyone more or less on the same page before you can even attempt law; trying to keep law together in the face of mutual values incoherence is... well, it's real stupid, and it's never going to work even a little bit. If you can't get people to agree on central definitions of murder and child abuse, how the Sweet Satan do you expect to run a justice system, a legal system, an election system, much less adjudicate free speech?
This law isn't being proposed because it solves a problem. It's being proposed because Blues hate Reds and want to harm them. That tribal hatred, by no means unique in its character and very much reciprocated by Reds, wants to Do Something About The Bad People. If we held the population constant and completely replaced our entire political system, someone very like this woman would be proposing some action roughly analogous to this law, because that is how tribal hatred works. The hatred itself is what matters; the specific grooves and canals it is channeled through, the details of procedure and custom, norms and institutional traditions, codified policies and so on are irrelevant. This concentrated, willfully malignant essence of humanity, cannot be constrained by ink on paper or dusty tradition. It finds a way. You are not going to prevent that by asking it politely to please not.
This event is not surprising, and as some of you are no doubt aware, none of what I've written above is even close to novel. I and others were predicting shit like this as far back as early 2016. If you couldn't, and especially if you are one of the OG Blues or Moderates who scoffed or harrumphed when we predicted it, well, is this sufficient to demonstrate the point?
A brief coda, if you'll allow me. A month or two back, we had an excellent thread about drag, kids, and the slur "groomer". A lot of the blues and moderates argued that "groomer" means someone actually trying to prep a kid for sex with themselves or a specific other person, and so applying it to teachers and other authority figures was an instance of The Worst Argument in The World, and so should be frowned on.
I disagree. "Groomer", as I understand it, is a person who's making a covert attempt to directly modify a kid's sexuality in unhealthy ways. I understand that many people here disagree with this definition, but there's something you should understand in turn: when people like me use the term "groomer", we are not saying "I really don't like this person." We're saying that we consider the people so labeled, the officials supporting them, and the section of the public providing their ideology to be a direct, serious and immediate threat to our children.
Perhaps you find that irrational, inexplicable. After all, they're not breaking the law, right?
Well, whatever, the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Remarkably absent from both your post and the replies are the fact that Republicans control the Virginian house of delegates and the governorship, so this has about as much chance of passing as the Illinois bounty law. Even if Democrats had slim majorities in both houses and the governorship, I'd be shocked if something like this could pass. The far end of trans rights is generally a losing issue for democrats and, by extension, taking children out of their parents control makes the majority of people in both parties uncomfortable.
The virtuous cycle of Conflict theory:
Step 1: Find blue person doing bad thing
Step 2: Equate blue person with entire Blue tribe
Step 3: Claim entire Blue tribe wants to hurt me and mine
Step 4a: Spend a lot of time on the internet talking about igloos <- You are here
Step 4b: Hurt blue tribe
It may be difficult to believe, but some people genuinely care about the wellbeing of Trans kids and think they're happier living as their chosen gender. I would be absolutely shocked to find that Guzman is so monstrous that she's primarily motivated by a desire to cause you suffering, and even if she were, the idea that the broader Trans movement was conjured up to harm you both beggars belief and smacks of hubris. Your attraction to Conflict Theory isn't for the truth value, rather you need it to justify your own behavior and hatred:
You'll reject any arguments I make to the contrary that Blue tribe is Out To Get You while ignoring or defending any Red tribe transgression. You've surrounded yourself by yes-men who will trip over themselves to fellate you regardless of what you write, and be outraged that my reply is anything other than happy seal noises.
According to your model, half of your fellow citizens represent a serious and immediate threat to your children. So, what comes next? No more AEO excuses for hinting darkly rather than speaking clearly.
The thing about you and @FCfromSSC is that you have both earned respect as representatives of polar opposites of the political spectrum, and that being the case, watching the two of you go at it is kind of like watching a prizefighter match.
That said, there is still no fighting in the war room, gentlemen. IOW, there are rules.
This is over the line. I mean, you're not wrong! Write a long red-hot accelerationist post and watch the upvotes climb, and yup, you definitely got a bunch of outraged reports for arguing with him. But calling everyone who agrees with him "yes-men who will trip over themselves to fellate you" is just culture warring right back. "Everyone who agrees with you sucks" (literally) is not exactly keeping the antagonism in check.
"What comes next?" isn't an unfair question, but posed the way you pose it, it reads less like an attempt to genuinely understand a point of view than an invitation to fedpost. "Go on, tell me you want to kill me, I dare you!"
Less of this, please.
Are you describing FC's post as accelerationist?
It's a fair cop, based on previous conversations.
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Thanks for the reminder. I promise upfront not to argue with you, but if you're willing to indulge a question I'd appreciate it.
From my perspective, I hold my tongue on a lot of snarky one and two line posts that strike me as culture warring. 1 2 3 4 5.
Not to complain or cry that they should get warnings and/or bans, but my impression was that we were thunderdoming it. Are you willing to comment on whether from your perspective the mod philosophy is the same as in the Old Place or if there was a deliberate change early on to retain users?
From my perspective, we have not really changed our mod philosophy. We might be modding a little more lightly, but that doesn't mean it's the Thunderdome, and being antagonistic and unnecessarily inflammatory is still frowned on. And just like in the Old Place, "you modded this comment but you didn't mod that comment" does not necessarily mean that comment was A-OK.
Thanks.
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