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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Aren't activists usually trying to wield power by influencing majority opinion?

Not that I've noticed. Most of the time it seems they wield power in order to influence the the majority opinion. Even that isn't a must, they're happy to wield power and just censor their opponents if they can get away with it.

A trans activist might have a 100k follower twitter account where they post about how republicans are trying to ban trans people, being anti-trans is conversion therapy, etc. They're making arguments to an audience that agrees with them, and trying to both push that group towards political action and get more people to agree.

Forget about the the trans stuff then, this is much closer to the core topic of this thread. I don't believe this is how power works at all. I completely disagree with this. We've been taught this democratic model of power to give us the impression our opinions matter, and that we're participating in these big decisions. This wasn't done to teach us how the system actually works, it was done to pacify us. The WEF panel I discussed isn't talking about what arguments to best use in order to convince people in Singapore or Ghana that homosexuality is ok (it's actually quite remarkable how little time they spend on that no that I think about it. There's one part when the lady from the US talks how they won by switching the conversation from talking definitions of marriage to a 'love is love' approach). They talk about winning through influence in courts, corporations, media, and education, and using Quiet Diplomacy when public opposition starts to become overwhelming. The closest strategy to "getting more people to agree" is leveraging youth organizations, and that isn't persuasion as much as it's indoctrination.

if i'm a christian and someone brings up sexual abuse in the catholic church - "that isn't great, but it's rare" is correct!

But this is an argument the Catholics open with. They don't deny it to your face, and only later, when they're sure they're among themselves say "that isn't great, but it's rare". If they did, it would be completely valid to claim they're in favor of defending pedophiles. And even knowing there might be a "that isn't great, but it's rare" said when I'm not there to hear it, the implication of it being said only when I'm not around is that there's also "it's not great, but it's better than agreeing with a rightoid".