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 -
A moderately interesting interview with Eric Trump just dropped in the FT. (Limited-use gift link - the article is paywalled but may also be accessible on a 5/month basis with free registration)
The headline is "Eric Trump opens door to political dynasty." It isn't explicit, but applying bounded distrust it looks like the FT reporter raised the issue and Eric responded mildly positively. It is consistent with the Trump family's general approach of keeping the idea of an illegal 3rd term and/or a dynastic successor in the public eye while maintaining plausible deniability about actually doing it.
I don't find Eric's denials that the family is making money off the Presidency interesting - the Mandy Rice-Davies principle applies. Eric is lying here and the FT makes this clear to a reader who is paying attention while avoiding words like "lie" and "falsely". It is an interesting example of a political reporter trying to write about a lying politician without engaging in either hostile editorialising or "opinions about shape of earth differ" non-journalism.
If I had to guess, Eric is positioning himself, personally for a future move into politics. Over the last few years Eric has been running the Trump Organisation while Don Jr and Barron support their father's political operation. With Barron taller and more talented, but still a long way off 35, Don Jr is the obvious dynastic successor at the moment. But the bit of the interview about a Trump dynasty is explicitly about the idea of Eric and not Don Jr being the politician.
You can just post the archive link for people who don't want to pay. I don't know why more news sites haven't cracked down on it yet, but it's a trivially easy way to pirate most articles still.
I don't see what's particularly interesting about the article. The family is obviously directly profiting from the presidency, and here Eric gives non-arguments that the family would be richer if it didn't get into politics (perhaps true, but not a germane rebuttal). As for the "political dynasty" stuff, what makes Trumpism so unique is the cultism, and that almost certainly dies with Donald. Maybe Eric could scratch out a future riding on daddy's coattails like a populist version of Jeb Bush, but people like JD Vance and even still Ron Desantis are more well positioned to lead that movement.
The cultism, indeed. Imagine thinking a President was practically the Second Coming, and deifying him in art, or admitting that you wept with joy when he was elected. That'd be crazy.
Well, okay, so that was Obama, not Trump, but still. Pretty crazy! Or do you perhaps mean something different by 'cultism'?
When Obama was elected I met an older white woman who wept tears of joy and said he'd come to do the work of Christ.
I'm sure there's old people who wept for Trump, too, but Obama's religious significance was a core part of his campaign and presidencies; the left worshiped him.
Any claims of MAGA "cultism" fall on deaf ears without a good explanation for why MAGA -- who routinely argue with Trump, even publicly -- are cultists without addressing the Obama elephant in the room.
Even Biden, to a lesser extent, but mostly due to relation to Obama as VP.
Maybe for a short while but left-wing opinion turned cool on Obama surprisingly quickly, and the 'anti-imperialist' Chomskyite left never liked him. As early as 2009 not-exactly-radical-lefist Bill Maher said that:
More importantly, I think the election denial/J6 clearly puts MAGA a class apart from any other modern American political movement in terms of cultishness.
No, it endured his entire Presidency, and even beyond it. While there's a slice of the left that dislikes Obama, it's not at all mainstream opinion.
Definitely not. Challenging elections is simply what one does in such a competitive system -- there are entire Reddit communities devoted to conspiracies about 2024, you know. And J6 wasn't even the worst mostly peaceful protest at the Capital, let alone remarkable at all compared to the Burn, Loot, & Murder riots. Indeed, J6 was actually uniquely acceptable compared to other protests, given it actually directed itself against the ruling elites rather than terrorize innocent, unrelated people in cities across the country.
Being very critical of Obama wasn't mainstream among Democrats, but obviously being critical of your own sitting President is generally unheard of these days. How many mainstream Republicans criticised GWB? Left and right factions of the Democrats criticised Obama to what I would consider a normal degree for a sitting President - there were Blue dogs who attacked him semi-regularly and some progressives who did the same.
That most obvious bellwether of mainstream liberal opinion, the New York Times wrote an endorsement for re-election in 2012 that was very enthusiastic, yes, but very conventional and offered such qualifications as
Elsewhere, the NYT editorial board was sharply critical of Obama on all sorts of issues all the time. There are too many to list here but here are a few from various points in his Presidency:
Deepwater Horizon:
Libya:
NSA:
2011 Budget:
Privacy Bill:
I can't quite tell if you're joking. On the one hand, we have the sitting President of the United States alleging that millions of votes were cast fraudulently. On the other, we have "Reddit communities". I wonder, might there be a slight asymmetry between these two things?
This is such a strange rendering of the riot in abstract terms. Indeed it was directed against ruling elites, but unfortunately in this case those elites were democratically elected representatives of the people certifying a fair election, and the rioters were targeting them because the process had failed their cult leader. Good job for those J6ers that the same election riggers who had the power to magically turn the result against Trump didn't show up for 2024 (or 2016), I suppose. Perhaps they overslept.
Not a one of those criticisms of Obama is more severe than criticism I see of Trump.
No, though feel free to look back on Russiagate if you want similar elite conspiracies. There are plenty of Democrats decrying the election, just like with Gore, just like with the next election they'll lose, too. The only reason no Democrat President is pushing this is that there's no Democrat President, period.
And Trump is the democratically elected representative of the country, yet people still rioted against him -- only the left destroyed innocent people's property, lashing out in blind rage at the fact their cult lost. The government is not more sacred than the people it rules. We are citizens, not subjects, and not lessers.
The ability to rig an election does not mean a guarantee of success; elections have many moving parts. This is why it took 2020, and sweeping, unprecedented changes to the voting process, to properly fortify the election.
And of course, once that context couldn't be repeated, Trump won again. Fortifying an election, and loudly bragging about it, makes it easier to counter the second time around. The Trump campaign was much more aggressive this time around, to their success.
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