site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Okay, so you claimed Abbott wins because he packages rightwing ideas better and then your excuse for why multiple other candidates in the statewide elections did better was that in addition to all of Abbott's votes they got the "crank" votes too?

If that's the case, why wouldn't Abbott appeal to "the cranks" since it demonstrably would have made him perform better? You claim he packages right wing ideas better for a bigger audience, but then "the cranks" do it demonstrably better.

Given your claims about Mastriano which you didn't support and are now sliding on to making new claims about other people, I'm going to just ignore the newest claims about the "cranks" unless you support them. It looks like gish galloping sniping which you back off whenever someone confronts you about them.

The PA GOP is a disastrous joke of group which failed miserably, the way they run elections are an embarrassment, and despite this now being multiple elections with similar results of PA GOP failure, trying to blame the newest round of failure on this batch of candidates when the entire slate across the state did poorly is a bad argument. The National Party blowing more money attacking their own candidates is just a cherry on top showing the problem is far more than candidate quality.

yes, I think that a hedge fund manager would do substantially better in a general among working class voters than a literal muslim blue tribe carpet bagger.

McCormick did the worst with working class voters in the GOP primary, but he was going to motivate them in the general (and without any Trump rallies)? No he wasn't.