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 -
Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead late yesterday night as they were walking just outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. The Capitol Police have identified the suspect as one Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Reportedly, Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” as he executed the couple, who were engaged to be married.
I have been meaning to write a “Civil War vibe-check” top-level post. My intuition was that the danger of such a nightmare scenario was receding, having peaked twice, with the mass-shooting at the Congressional baseball team practice game, and the George Floyd Riot/January Sixth Riot forming a stockbroker’s double blow-off top before a consistent decline in risk.
Recently multiple events have made me question this. The Zizian cult killings, the suicide bombing in Palm Springs over the weekend, and now this, make me feel like something is perhaps coming. Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.
There is no actual population mass willing to engage in active actions that exists to delegitimize external authority beyond their local sphere. There are cheerleaders for violence like Black Lives Matter, pro-palestinians, Jan 6 (though the motive was seizing power rather than juvenile chaos) that will celebrate violence that reaches escape velocity but are largely unwilling to travel outside the start point of violence to continue it. There are local resistances like CHAZ, Black Hammer, Koresh, technically the various Mormons, that carve out a local territory for themselves and attempt resistance against state authority, but they seem content to self implode rather than actually wage violence against society. And of course you have all criminal gang wars that exist in the space between state capacity and extractable resources, where violence is waged against each other in lowsec but never attempting to attack the state.
In none of these circumstances do we see, at least in the USA, any appetite for mass movement of violence that would see either armed revolution or enforcer defections. The Days Of Rage of the SDS in the 70s was perhaps the last time the intelligensia thought they had the mass of society on their side that simply was waiting for the chosen ones to lead the way, and they got smacked down by reality when not a single normie joined their revolutionary uprising. Even the Black Panther Party failed to significantly mobilize the Black Middle Class who were still extant (this Black Middle Class now has turned into normie whites, living entirely seperately from their co-ethnics).
The above impression of equivalence between leftist and rightist violence is due to categorization of intent, not scale or capability. Should rightist violence truly emerge, it will utterly dominate and show the hollowness of leftist rhetoric. Leftist agitators are keyboard warriors happy to cheerlead the violence spilled against their enemies, taking credit for the violence being proof of their ideologies salience when convenient and staying silent when not. The vanguard of revolution is happy to proclaim their inevitability and act as such, despite their subreddit members not being able to leave the house to get a sandwich let alone lead a charge.
But at the same time, is it not true that the fighters of the Syrian Civil War were an utter minority compared to the total population of the country? And yet now the old government is gone and the country may well be in utter chaos that dwarfs the civil war.
What I'm saying is, don't discount the potential of the left in inciting a civil war, the critical mass needed for a social breakdown may be smaller than you assume.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link