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 -
Define the terms please. There's a version of this I might agree with, if for example by Conservatism you mean it's Boomer implementation, but that's not a problem of Conservatism qua Conservatism, that's a problem of Liberalism writ-large.
What? There may have been a time that political thinkers would sell you dreams of a shining future, but currently the entire political spectrum is based on "my life sucks, boo out group".
Isn't this completely false? Last I've seen they had trouble attracting young women, with young men flocking to the in droves.
"Droves" is an exaggeration - Trump won 18-29 men 49-48 per the 2024 exit poll, which is about the same margin he won the electorate as a whole by. He does better with the middle-aged than the young among white men and women, though not among ethnic minorities. The gender gap is only marginally higher for the young than the middle-aged and only marginally higher in 2024 than 2020 - the massive youth gender gap reported e.g. here didn't show up at the ballot box. What did happen is that Trump lost the youth vote (of both sexes) less badly than the Republicans normally do in a close election.
The place where right populism really is an old man's game is the UK. Reform's vote is younger than the Conservatives, but not by much.
My read is that the MAGA is in the middle of the pack in terms of right-populist movements ability to appeal to young men. Looking at the exit polls for the 1st round of the Polish presidential election, the total right-populist vote (PiS+Confederation+Crown) is flat by age but the young voted for the kekkier right-populist parties whereas the old voted for the more traditionalist PiS. The 2024 French legislative elections showed the Left winning the youth, RN winning the middle-aged, and Macron's party winning the old. The same picture applies to the 2025 German elections.
SSCReader said it was 56%?
That's fine. I just have issues with calling that "greater problems attracting young people".
Depends on the exit poll. You can find 56% (Guardian), 52% or 49% depending on where you look. I took the high end because if that doesn't count as droves then neither does any lesser number. You could split it and say it is roughly 52% plus or minus 3 maybe.
Really we'd have to define the terms of what does greater problems and droves mean before any of the numbers can tell us anything. For me "droves" would have to be over 60% at least and consistently getting under 50% would be greater problems attracting X. But that's really just squinting at it and going off vibes. One could make reasonable arguments for very different numbers I am sure.
More options
Context Copy link
My source is the CNN exit poll as reported on Wikipedia. I'm happy to defer to someone with a better data source.
The Catalist report has a reputation for being more accurate than exit polls, but the free online version doesn't include the sex/age crosstabs. Matt Yglesias did a Substack post based on what is presumably the paid version of the report and says that the big picture was a mostly-uniform swing apart from the big swing to Trump among Hispanics and (to a lesser extent) Asians.
I don't think we disagree here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump got about 56% of men under 30, while Harris got about 59% of women under 30 (55% Harris to 42% Trump overall for 18-29, because more women vote than men). But the young men were most concerned about the economy, so it's hard to tell how many are going to the right vs how many were just voting against the current party because the economy sucked. Presumably some of those 56% will shift back if the economy sucks again in 2028, but we can at least say that they are willing to vote for Trump/the right, even if some of them weren't specifically flocking to the banner. Trump was up from 36% in 2020 to 42% of 18-29 in 2024, so there was certainly a swing.
However as I pointed out previously Bush got between 45% to 49% of the 18-29 vote when he won in 2000 and 2004, so Trump hasn't got back to where conservatives were a couple of decades ago. How that vote shakes out in 2028 is probably going to determine if we can see a long term swing rather than a single election cycle swing.
That's all fair enough,but given those numbers I think it's also fair to dismiss the claim that they're having trouble attracting young people (men in particular), unless some kind of supporting argument is provided.
I would say it's fair to say they are still having trouble attracting young people overall. Even Bush at his best with the post 2001 bump couldn't break 50%, (I think Reagan was the last conservative to do so in 1984). It's also fair to say they aren't having trouble attracting young men specifically and that Trump appears to have reversed that trend somewhat.
I suppose it depends what you mean as "trouble attracting". Not being able to get a majority of a group for 50 years, maybe qualifies? I'd suggest the claim Democrats are having trouble attracting men is true for similar reasons. They haven't got 50% of men (though Obama in 2008 got close), since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You don’t actually believe that’s true, do you? Like, clearly there are many people — people well within the mainstream Overton window of the two major American political parties, and certainly those within the mainstream of other Anglosphere countries — who do not fit this description at all. One could point to the “Abundance Democrats” and the “Tech Right” as two ascendant factions made up very largely of successful, optimistic, non-resentful individuals.
I haven't observed either to be a coherent concept. Someone recently gave Elon as an example of the "Tech Right", and he's pretty quick to complain about he's outgroup the last time I checked. As for "Abundance Democrats", are they the ones constantly blaming "NIMBY's" for everything? Also, neither one of them is particularly credible in their promises of a brighter future, though I suppose that's another topic.
You claimed that
Even if you can find example of the people I’m pointing to saying their outgroup sucks, you’re still missing the “my life sucks” part. Elon Musk’s life manifestly does not suck, nor does he appear to be under any illusions that it does. To the extent that he criticizes his enemies (political or otherwise) it is because he believes they’re making America worse, or making the world worse; he definitely doesn’t seem to be claiming that they’re making his own life worse. (Except for maybe on the trans issue specifically, given the way it has impacted his family life.)
Similarly, the main figures in the “Abundance Democrats” — assuming such a faction does indeed exist — focus their criticism on “NIMBYs” — again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that such people exist and are reliably identifiable — because they believe that such people are actively preventing American society from addressing a major issue that is negatively impacting the lives of many people. Notably, though, the Abundance Democrats are largely financially successful people who can currently afford housing without too much difficulty. (Or who live in subsidized housing, as students, academic faculty, etc.) The housing crisis isn’t wrecking their lives, and they’re not motivated by personal grievance. They do genuinely appear to want to fix a problem, even if that problem isn’t a problem for them specifically.
What, "my cars are not selling because of vandalism and smears against my company triggered by my political activity" does not count?
Does Trump's, or Vance's?
You're the one that posited their existence!
Yes, that's what "my life sucks" meant in TheDag's reductive summary.
Correct, I was asking you to accept that position as well, at least for the sake of argument.
Correct, that definitely does not count as “my life sucks” in anywhere near the same way as Oliver Anthony style “I’m personally oppressed and downtrodden, and it’s my outgroup’s fault” populism.
I don’t think so. I think there’s an important qualitative difference between populist “rage and vengeance” grievance on the one hand — which is what the OP is attributing to Anglophone conservatism — and the technocratic/futurist “we’ve identified the problems, and it’s time to let smart and successful elites determine how to fix those problems” institutionalism of the factions I identified.
I wish I knew who the hell that was. Anyway, since we agree it's not about Trump, looks like w agree OP's thesis can be dismissed.
How can I determine that this is, in fact, the case, rather than it being a Russell's conjugation?
Literally the guy the OP was mostly about. You know, the guy referenced several times by name in the post you replied to.
So? That was from Keith Woods' post, who isn't here to converse with (to my knowledge), while TheDag also cited Trump, a far more well-known figure. Is there a particular reason why I must now educate myself on some dude I never heard of, instead of responding to the broader points using the person I have actually heard about as a reference?
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link