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 -
New poll on Trump and Epstein:
This, along with Operation Warp Speed, is the only time they are willing to break with Trump. The heart and soul of the thing seems to be conspiracy beliefs.
Trump said:
Maybe the reason Trump doesn't understand why it keeps going is because he doesn't have an inferiority complex about class that drives him into fantasy about elite pedophile rings.
I'm struggling to wrap my head around this. Not the fact that this is the thing that seemingly broke his base, but that so many people, including liberals, are shocked that this broke his base.
"He lies all the time, why should this be the thing that makes them change their minds?"
Are they this bad at modeling the other side? I'm not on that side and I can model it.
The old chestnut about the American right vs left is that they hate each other because the left thinks the right is stupid. Team Red is used to taking those sneers from the overeducated professional class, and let's face it, certain ideas from the wonk class tend to disproportionately negatively affect Team Red anyway. Then along comes Trump, with his "poor man's idea of what a rich man should be", telling them literally everything they already believed - that they were getting fucked, that they were getting a raw deal, that the wonks sold them out and they're corrupt. Of course he got elected. They tried to kill him!
The excuses made around the Epstein mess are whoppers of such tremendous scale that they signal Trump, and by extension, his administration, think the population of America, including his base, are so dumb that they struggle with object permanence. What did you think his base was going to do? They're used to being called stupid by the people who hate them. What they didn't expect was being treated as stupid by the guy they helped put in office as an act of revenge against the people who hate them.
I'm gobsmacked at it myself. An even halfway competent liar would have made some excuses about it being useful as international blackmail (something the more realpolitik-minded would respect if the concessions were good enough). Alternatively, release doctored files that are not obviously doctored; if they could edit Epstein's jail camera footage in an act of blatant gamesmanship and have it not be revealed as obvious until recently it would be trivial to placate a majority of people who aren't so deep in the conspiracy hole they're halfway to Australia. Never in a million years would I have expected a response like "the evidence doesn't exist, Pam is doing a great job, why are we still talking about this?"
There's a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin tells his mother that aliens have landed and that she needs to go out to confront them while he guards the cookies in the kitchen. Her response is perfect: "Calvin, just how stupid do you think I am?" Hardcore salt-of-the-earth dirt and potatoes Red Tribers pride themselves on seeing the world as it is, unlike the idealistic Ivy Leaguers/Tech-utopian Tribe who see the world as they wish it to be. 'Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining' applies; the same thinking can be applied to the disaster over immigration and almost every other cultural flashpoint.
This reminds me a lot of the Korea Park Geun-hye scandal. What killed Park in politics wasn't the fact that she was corrupt, or that she was giving political and pork barrel kickbacks to people she was in cahoots with. What killed her was the reveal that she was in thrall to literal cultists and possibly of unsound mind. The Trump base doesn't care too much that he's corrupt, or lying. He could even have been named in the Epstein files repeatedly. He could even have released them and nobody would have cared as long as what was in there was sufficiently incendiary that it took down half of Capitol Hill! But to lie so comically badly that it reveals that Trump thinks you're stupid, just like all those Blue Tribe assholes... what the fuck did people think was going to happen, that this would become another case of Teflon Don?
Of course, I could be totally wrong and the last few credulous people in America that totally believe Trump when he says there's no evidence and take him at face value can only come to the even worse conclusion that the DOJ filled with people he handpicked is completely incompetent, and man hung himself/a woman is serving two decades of jailtime on charges that weren't real.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link