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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is liberalism dying?
I see frequently brought up on this forum that Mitt Romney was a perfectly respectable Mormon conservative that was unjustly torn apart by the Left. In response to this, the Right elected a political outsider that is frequently brazenly offensive and antagonistic to the Left, as well as many (most?) establishment institutions. I am seeing the idea "this is a good thing, because if the Left are our enemies and won't budge from their positions that are explicitly against us, we need to treat them as such", probably expressed in other words.
This frightens me, as it seems to be a failure of liberalism, in this country and potentially other Western liberal democratic countries. Similar to the fate of this forum, where civil discussion was tried and then found to be mostly useless, leading to the expulsion of the forum to an offsite and the quitting of center left moderates like TracingWoodgrains and Yassine Meskhout, the political discourse has devolved into radicals that bitterly resist the other side. Moderates like Trace seem to be rare among the politically engaged, leaving types like Trump and AOC. They fight over a huge pool of people who don't really care much about politics and vote based on the vibe at the moment, who are fed rhetoric that is created by increasingly frustrated think-tanks and other political thinkers. Compromise seems to not be something talked about anymore, and instead, liberalism has been relegated to simply voting for your side and against the other side. To me, this is pretty clearly unsustainable, since the two sides seem to have a coin flip of winning each election and then upon winning, proceed to dismantle everything the previous side did.
We see this in a number of other Western liberal democratic countries. Germany and France both had a collapse of their governments recently due to an unwillingness between the parties to work together and make compromises. Similar states that seem to be on the brink of exhaustion include South Korea and Canada, though I'm told things are not nearly as divisive in Japan. China, though having its own set of problems, seems to not have issues with political division stemming from liberalism, since it's not liberal at all.
I am seeing these happenings and becoming increasingly convinced that liberalism is on its way out. Progressivism and the dissident right both seem to be totally opposed to the principles. This is a bad thing to me and a cause of some hopelessness, since America produced a great deal of good things during its heyday, and even still is doing awesome things. It is predominantly America's technology companies settling the frontier, and recently they've struck gold with AI, proper chatbots, unlike the Cleverbots of old.
Is liberalism dying? If it is, is that a good thing or a bad thing to you? If it's a bad thing, what do you propose should be done to stop the bleeding?
I suppose that depends on how you define of "liberalism". For my part I do not think that "liberalism" is dying so much as it is down in the 4th quarter and making what may be its final goal-line stand. Trump and his cabinet (Rubio, Hegseth, Gabbard, Vance, Et Al) seem to be the last defenders of the older, more vigorous variety, of Liberalism championed by historical figures like Adam Smith, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King and exemplified by fictional characters like Steve Rogers and James T. Kirk remaining in the public sphere. Whether they will succeed in keeping the play-off hopes of old-fashioned liberalism alive remains to be seen.
However, if you define "liberalism" as an outward appearance of politeness accompanied by deference towards "experts", "journalists", and other representatives of the priestly caste, I think I have to agree with @Tophattingson below; "liberalism" isn't dying, it is dead. COVID, or more accurately, the priestly caste's response to COVID, killed it. The Priests broke the terms of service and are now they are faced with a war of all against all.
Personally, I'm rooting for the goal-line stand and late game comeback
To expand on this, if you defined "liberalism" as a general agreement as that, it never existed outside of DC. No one (simplistically) ever won an election running on being the avatar of the experts and the neoliberal establishment.
I wouldn't personally root for a comeback of these folks who want all sorts of foreign adventurism and welfare + chaos at home. Instead I'd advocate for a new class of actual liberals to emerge. People that actually hold to the principles of Smith and Washington. A strong hand at the rudder, none of this chaos run amok at home, overseas we kill people who are bad, and most importantly, tears and people suffering the consequences of their own actions are not persuasive arguments in any context. A murderer who is upset he is on death row is ignored, an unemployed person without food is ignored, a country whos crop failed because they are too stupid to understand crop rotation is ignore, a person who can't build a malaria net is ignored.
That is liberalism.
The last man to win an election that way in America did so in 2020. Granted, the country was gripped in what can only be reasonably described as mass hysteria.
Joe Biden ran as a folksy old man who would govern in folksy old ways, and on the idea that the media would stop yelling at people so much. In no way was any of his campaign about technocrats. Was that fact obvious to those who were engaged? I think so, but it wasn't the marketing at all.
More options
Context Copy link
Did he really win though? or did the experts and the neoliberal establishment use the disruption and mass hysteria of COVID + BLM as cover to put a puppet on the throne?
Both. The demos still voted that puppet in.
Let's agree to disagree.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link