site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is a slow motion trainwreck. I found it interesting that Gab's Anthony Torba said that he found it useful in his goal of shifting the overton window to the right, but really I think this would just drain Trump of his MAGA base, leaving him weakened for a DeSantis run.

You know, unless its a classic Kanye stunt for publicity, which I rate is the most likely motivation here (70%).

Rolling Stone lol

That really is the perfect source to use to accompany this take.

I don't even know where to start. The whole thing has been a fever dream. You will never be able to convince me that the last ~week especially hasn't been a simulation being fed into my brain as it's dissolved in a jar.

I just took Torba's 'quote' from that article. I know I might as well be quoting NYT or Jezebel here.

I can assure you that there is a 0% chance that Kanye is just doing this as a stunt for publicity. The reported-on material consequences alone should get you down well below 10%. "What good is a publicity stunt when X", for about 15 different values of X. Following it unhealthily closely will get you all of the rest of the way to 0%.

And if your experience of this whole thing is primarily as an input into a Trump-DeSantis primary election horserace narrative, rather than both the Kanye-Fuentes axis and a Trump-DeSantis race being roughly equal inputs into what happens later, here's some light reading to start with.

You do you, but if Kanye is 100% all in on this rather than his usual 50% in testing and then pull out, I'd be amazed.