site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Black voters ain't got no time for no whitebread homosexual; dude literally polls at zero percent with them for 2028. He's electoral poison.

And you think they’ll vote Republican instead? Hitler with a D after his name would win the black vote by large margins. These are simply not malleable votes.

Trump did better among blacks because of young male defections against their elders. This isn’t something democrats can fix.

Hitler with a D after his name would win the black vote by large margins.

Blacks have no reason to dislike Hitler. On every edgepost about a modest austrian painter there are a lot of black guys commenting. Rarely disapprovingly.

Do I really need to sit here and explain why having little to no support or enthusiasm among one of your party's key voting blocs is a very bad thing, even if they don't outright vote for the other side? It really didn't even occur to you?

I find it hard to believe that most black voters would have an opinion about the VP nominee. Most people don't follow politics that closely. I recall trending Google searches about whether Biden was still running the day after the election.

Just don't send Pete to Chicago. Send him to do the Pride parade and shake hands with suburban moms. Send Kamala to talk to the brothas and sistas. (I don't think black voters like Kamala Harris either, but that's neither here nor there. They ended up sending Obama. With a bench that deep, who even needs the VP?)

Yeah so when your strategy regarding your VP pick is trying to keep one of your core constituencies from noticing that he exists, maybe there are better VP picks.

He's got zero percent of the first winner-take-all preference, yep. But his favorables are at +22 net, that's +39 and -17, with a whopping 45% "don't know" as I recently pointed out. So with actual polling data, it especially as VP it seems very tenuous based on the data to assume he'd be some kind of Black vote poison-pill, especially with a Black woman at the top of the ticket.

Edit: punctuation and clarifying:

That's favorables among Black voters specifically. The eventual nominee, Tim Walz? Among the same group of Black voters, +30 net, that's +49 and -19 with 36% DK. A little bit of daylight, but not an incredible amount - definitely not the kind of poison pill you describe. In fact, if my napkin math is right, assuming the same proportionality, if Pete had Walz's 36% "don't know", then his numbers would be +25 net, +45 and -20. That's only 1% worse (absolute) in negative viewpoints.

The numbers seem to clearly reject this idea, unless you make three very questionable assumptions: that massive numbers of Black voters didn't then know he was gay, and would also change their views unfavorably, and that this unfavorable swing would affect the entire Harris-Buttigieg ticket (in turnout or voting instead for Trump). Again, those seem very questionable assumptions.

Did Kamala have polling we didn't? Plausible. Seems unlikely.

Sure, whatever. Put him at the top of the ticket while you're at it.