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 -
Another interesting aspect of the Speaker fight has been an additional datapoint on Trump's slowly eroding influence. Trump has explicitly backed McCarthy, and while Trump's endorsement had once been enough to clear state-level Republican primaries to get his preferred candidates to the general election, it hasn't done much in this fight. Indeed, Boebert and Gaetz have been openly flounting Trump's wishes, with Boebert confirming that Trump had called her and told her to "knock it off", to which she replied in a floor speech that she thought Trump should tell McCarthy that he doesn't have the votes.
Trump has been unique in his ability to survive scandals that would otherwise sink mainstream politicians, with it becoming almost a parody that many political prognosticators constantly said Trump was doomed, only for him to float along like nothing happened after a week or so. But I think this caused many people to overlearn about Trump's resilience into essentially thinking he's invincible. In reality, Trump's clout within the GOP and the nation have been declining slowly but consistently. The high point was obviously the 2016 election, but he suffered a minor-to-moderate defeat in the 2018 midterms before being rejected by the country as a whole in 2020, and now it looks like he's slowly being rejected by the Republicans as well; not just the establishment (which has always kind of hated him) but even the far right is looking for other options. Smart money now thinks Desantis is about twice as likely to win the R nomination in 2024 than Trump after Trump's candidates arguably cost Republicans the Senate chamber.
the late flips happened only after personal calls by Trump himself with pictures/video of MTG holding a phone out at holdouts saying Trump was on the line
my prediction of the "concessions" are few, if any, of the rules changes are going to be passed and it's largely Trump's fault McCarthy is speaker
the fallout from Trump leaning so hard on the holdouts may very well plant the seeds to make your comment come true, but it's not true now
this is nonsense
trump ran better than the GOP throughout those races, trump's gop approval went up throughout his tenure
it's hard to overcome the sheer weight of charisma and charm that is Joe Biden and his 81,000,000+ votes, the most in history by quite a margin
"smart" money was wrong in 2016 when his influence was at its peak according to you, so given that you've surely bet the farm at these odds, right?
"arguable" is doing all the work in this sentence
something funny about pointing to the parody of "this is surely the end!" and then writing a post which is essentially, "but it's true this time!"
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Are you insinuating the results are fraudulent since no candidate had received 81M votes before? If that is your assertion, I'd say that's a silly argument since population growth naturally means the vote tally for all sides will naturally increase over time. Combine that with a higher participation rate (which has been on a slow, long-term upswing for the past few decades) and 81M votes is hardly implausible.
Again, I'm not sure what you're meaning is here. Political prediction markets can certainly be wrong, but typically not in ways that are obvious enough to bet thousands of dollars and feel safe about it. They went against Trump in 2016 despite him eventually winning, and I think they overlearned their mistake because they flipped to having a Republican bias in 2018 and 2020. If I had to guess, I think they've overlearned again in the opposite direction, as I'd personally say Trump has as much of a shot at the R nomination as Desantis does, but I'm not confident enough to "bet the farm on it" as you say.
It's hard to offer definitive prove since we can't rerun the election, but yes, Trump endorsed candidates in the primaries that were more towards the fringe in many states. Those less centrist views almost certainly cost them a few % in the general election, and in close states like GA and PA that was likely enough to tip the race.
I'm not saying this is the end, I'm saying it's another barometer of Trump's slowly declining influence. Trump certainly still has at least a moderate degree of say in the Republican party, and it's practically guaranteed that he'll at least be competitive in the Republican nomination race, although he's definitely not a shoe-in like he was in the 2020 R nomination.
I would insinuate the results are fraudulent because a lot of evidence of irregularities has come up since then, but practically it is a useless discussion because the Republican establishment is not interested to rock the boat, and the rest have zero power to do anything about it. The sacred cow of "there's no electoral fraud" is not ready to be slaughtered yet. In any case, Republicans knew the rules of the game - including the fact that whatever cheating is going to happen, it's going to happen. They were either unable or unwilling to prepare and resist it - the buck for it, as for everything else, stops with Trump. Whether we should interpret it as "country rejecting Trump" or "Trump being bad at winning in the game of politics" is everybody's choice, the result is the same.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link