site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

and if any of the corporations tried to veer right-wing their employees are too left wing and would exit.

I strongly disagree with this prediction. The vast majority of people value politics very little in monetary terms. If the pay remains safe and secure, and the extent of labor remains static, people will stay whether or not the corporation celebrates Pride Month or Hitler Day. What actually happens is people who are money saturated (rich) take issue and start materially harming any right-wing business (see Twitter advertiser conundrum for instance) which has downstream effects on the labor pool (Musk had to increase hours and do layoffs to cope with the advertiser conundrum). Also a truly right-wing corporation would be sued under Civil Rights laws which would cause immense material harm and force reversion to leftism if the company isn't totally destroyed.

Some of your links seem at first glance to disagree with this. But what you have found is that among workers who are willing to make political donations in fields that discriminate against right wingers and right wing populations (white men), the majority of those workers donate to Democrats. You also posted an NPR link talking about how <0.5% of Disney's workforce in California took an authorized walkout to protest a bill in Florida. This reminds me of the astroturfed, performative high school walkouts after the Stoneman High shooting https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/stoneman-douglas-high-walkouts/