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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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I think it's fair to say there's no anti-left mod bias, but it's certainly a very right-coded space in terms of the culture war.

I think part of what makes it seem more leftist in polls than it actually is is the fact that there are quite a few older former leftists who believe in things like socialised healthcare, a cradle-to-grave welfare state, etc, etc, but have cultural views formed in the 90s or 00s and consequently oppose modern identitarianism very, very strongly.

That's roughly where I identify, but the thing about the Motte is that it's a cultural war space, not a policy discussion space. I suspect on policy issues the membership skews a fair bit more left. We definitely have some very strong libertarians who are all for as few taxes and as few government services as possible, but I think there's a reasonably large population of 'I like my healthcare free, just like my speech' Mottizens who would argue for single-payer healthcare, higher welfare payments, etc, etc. Of course, the reality I might be fired from my job for refusing to call someone 'ze' (thankfully not in our office as of yet, but we've had a helpful instructional email from corporate HQ over in the US about neopronouns from a middle-aged white HR lady) is also something I'm very much against, so if we only ever talk about the latter I find myself in the same place as reactionaries in opposing it.

If this was a forum about how to deal with monopolies or on the virtues of re-zoning low-density areas in the inner city I think I'd find myself very strongly on the other side of the debate much more often. It's just that we don't really talk about those things here.

but it's certainly a very right-coded space in terms of the culture war.

Well, the original poster is the one who inherently gets to set the framing of the argument. So, if the post is reacting to some event, it's more likely this framing is closer to the [assumed median of opinions considered right-wing]. And it's easy to see why- people just don't post "well, they're trying to take your kids away for XYZ" yet frame the argument as something they agree with when they actually don't, revealed by how they subsequently reply.

And it's certainly not impossible to argue against framing, but it's more work (and you get boo-lighted anyway); so even if we assume that "people who put in the work to justify their arguments" is equally distributed between [people more likely to post opinions considered left-wing] and [people more likely to post opinions considered right-wing] it's going to be [opinions considered left-wing] on the back foot of the debate most of the time.

Perhaps "high-decouplers exist on both sides of the aisle; the ones on the left are just more likely to lurk" is what the poll tends to be getting at more? (Remember, the general rule for Internet communities is that 90% lurk, 9% comment, 1% post; something that held true for the old subreddit, too.) People who understand that certain [left] framings probably describe real things, but are used in exactly the opposite ways they claim they are (for example, "intersectionality describes something real, but women were never, in aggregate, the oppressed gender") is not actually something that defines one as right-wing (unless it's being described by the left-wing).

I think part of what makes it seem more leftist in polls than it actually is is the fact that there are quite a few older former leftists who believe in things like socialised healthcare, a cradle-to-grave welfare state, etc, etc, but have cultural views formed in the 90s or 00s and consequently oppose modern identitarianism very, very strongly.

So they're not right-wing, but they are conservatives. Which is... well, kind of what the median conservative looks like ("liberals driving the speed limit" and all that), but it also betrays the fact that neither of these words are actually clear descriptors of what they're typically used to describe and almost by definition come with value judgment baggage. Avoiding that is generally why people hang out here, though, since if you're going to post what is functionally "leftists, reeeeee" you at least have to put in the effort; this isn't /r/CultureWarRoundup.