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 -
Right-coded violence reasserts itself (?)
It's sobering, that this morning someone might have asked you "did you hear about the 40-year-old Iraq war veteran who committed a 'third space' mass murder over the weekend?" and you might have reasonably responded, "Which one?"
(Insert Dr. Doofenshmirtz meme here!)
Of course, like any normal American, the instant I heard that someone had shot up a Mormon congregation and burned their house of worship to the ground I
crossed my fingers and prayed the perpetrator was a member of my outgroupimmediately wondered if the shooter was a right-coded wingnut who somehow blamed Charlie Kirk's death on the Mormons.(I've never managed to determine whether Tyler Robinson and his family are actually Mormon, or maybe were Mormon at some point, but nobody seems to care; apparently all anyone else wants to know is whether he was really a gay furry, a groyper, or both. But living in Utah seems sufficiently Mormon-adjacent that a psychotic killer could draw the association.)
So far, no apparent Kirk connection! However the Michigan shooter indeed regarded Mormons as the anti-Christ. Perhaps that's the whole story: he just really, really disliked Mormons (sort of like everyone else). This makes Donald Trump's commentary interesting; the President immediately declared that this was a "targeted attack on Christians" and was met with an Evangelical chorus of "Mormons aren't Christians" (which to me seems a little tone deaf, under the circumstances, but times being what they are...). In any event this is probably the deadliest case of targeted violence against Mormon congregations since the 19th century.
(There was apparently a bomb threat in 1993 that could have been a mass casualty event, had the explosives been real. Other than that, I'm not an expert on hate crimes but Google does not seem to think that Mormons are very often the target of such things.)
The North Carolina shooter got less attention (he did not burn down any churches), but that didn't stop Newsweek from digging into some peculiarities of history:
This fellow has quite a colorful record, and part of that record includes the fact that
This reads like schizophrenia to me, but on balance it seems more right-coded than left-coded, concerns over "white supremacists" notwithstanding.
All this seems to have the usual left-coded social media spaces crowing; they have spent the past few weeks assuring us all that right wing extremism is far, far more common and deadly than left wing extremism. But to my mind, neither of these cases quite reach that "political extremism" threshold. The Michigan shooting appears to be genuine sectarian violence of a kind rarely seen in the United States, and the North Carolina shooting looks like a textbook mental health event. Nevertheless, I have no difficulty seeing these as right-coded, for the simple reason that they were carried out against minority groups by white, middle-aged, ex-military men. That's red tribe quite regardless of what their actual political views are--indeed, whether they have any coherent political views at all.
This got me thinking about all the other violence that I see as a blue tribe problem, quite regardless of its ideological roots. The obvious one that Charlie Kirk himself occasionally gestured toward was inner city urban gang violence; that is blue-coded violence, to my mind, though it is arguably "politically neutral." A couple weeks ago I suggested that we should be paying closer attention to the role that "Neutral vs. Conservative" thinking has to play in the national conversation on identity-oriented violence. This weekend's events strengthen that impression, for me. I do not really like the "stochastic terrorism" framing, particularly given my attachment to significant freedom of speech. But neither can I comfortably assign all responsibility for these events strictly to individual perpetrators.
I wish I had something wiser to say about that. I would like there to be less violence everywhere, but certainly the trend toward deliberately directing violence against unarmed, unsuspecting innocents seems like an especially problematic escalation, and one our political system seems to be contributing toward even when our specific political commitments do not. I don't know if drawing a distinction between "tribe-coded" and "tribe-caused" is helpful. But it is a thought I had, and have not seen expressed elsewhere, so I thought I should test it here.
As I felt when similar arguments were had about Kirk’s assassination, I don’t even really care about the act of violence in itself but the reaction. I’m not aware of any widespread right/conservative celebration of either of these attacks. As a consequence, even if they are in some degree influenced by right beliefs there is no real danger of organized support from the right or escalation beyond a tiny group of loner lunatics.
The left’s reaction to Kirk seems to indicate there is a very large base of support liable to offer funding/material support/legal support for left leaning terrorism, which poses a risk for this to expand beyond loner lunatics into organized groups of functional people like The Weather Underground
Not celebration, but there seems to have been a fair amount of "This is a horrible attack but it is important to remember that Mormons aren't Christians but instead a heretical sect etc." style of commentary, which resembles "This is a horrible attack but it is important to remember that Kirk was an anti-gay Christian nationalist etc." style of commentary that was read by many to be at least tone-deaf and possibly sort of celebratory/stochastic.
As a classic liberal, any kind of intolerance with an outgroup is very offensive to me. The entire “are Mormons Christians” sub-thread here is an example of that: It’s trying to make an entire group of people an outgroup, just as the illiberal left is trying to demonize Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian.
It’s human nature to separate people into outgroups and ingroups, but it’s a very unhealthy kind of tribalism which separates us when we should be together. Countless people have died in religious wars because of that kind of outgroup-vs-ingroup thinking, and I for one do not want to see us go back to the intolerance of the middle ages. And, yes, when the illiberal Left has real power, their intolerance can be just as deadly, as seen in how they cheered on Kirk’s death, and how they enabled and maybe even supported open riots during the George Floyd protests.
While I am sure that you will find some people for whom being Christian was enough to demonize him, I think the median lefty who demonized Kirk did not do so merely because he was Christian. Being Christian is not enough to become a target of the leftist cancel mob, thankfully.
A fighter on the SJ side of the CW who was also outed as being privately a Christian of some liberal church would likely not face much backslash if someone outed them.
Kirk was a fighter in the CW for the MAGA side. On virtually every CW hot topic, he vehemently argued for his side, using many of the techniques which make the CW so toxic. That was the reason why a large part of the left demonized him. Perhaps his religion was the cause of his political beliefs, or perhaps he was adopting religious as well as political beliefs for their CW expedience.
Imagine, if you will, a non-violent Muslim preacher waging the CW. Perhaps he is calling woman who do not cover their hair sinful, or calling for the legalization of polygamy, or preaching against the alcohol and pork industries, adopting Sharia law into the criminal code. He expresses the belief that America will one day be a Muslim nation, and bashes Christians and Westerners every chance that he gets. Probably MAGA would rather hate such a guy, if he was big enough to notice. Would it be fair to say that he is demonized by MAGA because he is Muslim?
Yeah but paradoxically this guy will be lauded by leftwing people despite them sharing way more of the same overlapping beliefs with Kirk than they would with hypothetical Mohammed Mohammed Mohammed
More options
Context Copy link
I question how contentious and controversial and combative Charlie Kirk really was with culture war (CW) topics. Yes, the illiberal left says he’s this horrible contentious person, but I don’t believe them. Let me explain why.
A few years ago, Richard M. Stallman (RMS) was dragged through the mud by the illiberal left. They came up with an entire Gish Gallop litany of reasons why he was a horrible person; since he did not believe all the doctrines of their belief system, they painted him a heretic.
People looked at every claim that was made against RMS and found them to be false misrepresentations. The illiberal left flat out lied when attacking RMS
Now, I haven’t looked at every single claim made against Charlie Kirk made in these Gish Gallops of attacks against him, so I will look at just one claim used to attack him: The claim that he advocated stoning gays.
This claim was made out of content; Charlie Kirk was making a rebuttal to the claim that “Love your neighbor” (Luke 10:27) means we must not consider gay pride marches sinful. He himself was not saying gay people should be stoned to death. This claim is so inaccurate, Stephen King apologized for making it
Point being, I know the illiberal left lied when they went after RMS. Based on the one claim I have taken the time to investigate, they seem to be lying again when going after Charlie Kirk.
My personal impression of Kirk is that he was a kind and caring person even when debating someone he strongly disagrees with. In this five minute video which I just linked to, he patiently listens to a pornography actress describing her open relationship and sexual lifestyle, making a empathetic comment that it sounds like she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father.
More options
Context Copy link
Kind of. All of these are serious beliefs that a huge number and I think an actual majority of Muslims hold. Being a Muslim and taking your tenets seriously pretty much requires this.
Likewise, if you are a serious non-self-contradicting Christian then you pretty much have to wage culture war on some fronts. That’s why it’s called a culture war - it’s a battle over whose culture can be expressed, when, and how, as well as a battle over whose culture dominates when there are clashes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And yet, divisions and categories exist, and are both useful and necessary.
The illiberal left demonized Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian, sure. They considered him and Christians generally to be enemies. Christians do not generally consider Mormons to be enemies in this way, any more than they consider Jews to be enemies. Religious differences can exist without holy war.
More options
Context Copy link
Brilliant. I am now a professor of every Oxford and Cambridge college, holding a doctorate for every subject on Earth. I also have full security clearance for every military on Earth.
For practical purposes, you do sometimes have to distinguish between who is rightfully in a group and who is not. You do sometimes have to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘not us’, and even ‘thinks they are us but they aren’t’.
While I have no strong feelings about Mormonism in any particular direction, and generally approve of some fuzziness here, to say that it doesn’t matter who is a real Christian and who has the sacred right to perform important rituals seems basically to be equivalent to saying that these things are meaningless, weightless, to be picked up and put down by absolutely anybody without consequence.
As a matter of fact, I do go to different churches and jump between churches, to maximize my social circle and friendship groups. [1]
For me, being “Christian” is, yes, letting people know I love God, [2] and it’s also a simple way of expressing to women I may date that I have strong values about when a relationship should become sexual. Mormons, Catholics, and Protestants all agree that sex is reserved for a lifetime commitment. [3]
[1] It’s not really possible to do that with Mormon churches, because they assign which ward one goes to.
[2] Talking to Mormons, my general impression is that the exact nature of God is more open to debate than it is with other sects. Day to day Mormons don’t preclude God being a singular (or triune) being but it’s a philosophical conversation without absolute answers. They tend to not universally believe anyone can become a God the way, say, Catholics universally believe Jesus is God.
[3] A lot of people ignore those moral standards even if they regularly go to church, yeah, but at least the moral standard is there in a way it isn’t with progressive groups.
That sounds like, ‘I don’t see Mormons as an outgroup’ rather than ‘I find it offensive to distinguish the outgroup’ though. The defining lines seem to be still be there for you (must love god, must treat sex as a lifetime commitment in principle) and indeed the latter potentially excludes not a few of the Christians I know who are broadly pro pre-marital sex as an inherently good thing.
If you are not personally interested in arcana about lines of apostolic succession then fair enough. I’m pretty lax about most theology - probably too much so. But clearly to many people it does matter.
More like I think people who drink excessively (i.e. drink to get drunk), use drugs, and engage in promiscuous sex are engaging in a lifestyle which leaves them feeling very empty and lifeless. My issue with the illiberal radical Left is that they not only enable but encourage [1] that kind of behavior.
[1] In the linked article, the writer full on enables if not encourages promiscuous sex for women, then blames men for the bad feelings that result from that kind of behavior, one of which is being paranoid about the guys they’re having sex with.
I think the link is wrong. The article I got was about phone cables.
More options
Context Copy link
Right -- they're your outgroup. If they started to describe themselves as "classical liberals", you'd balk: you've just called them the "illiberal radical Left", which contains just as much condemnation and othering as "Mormons aren't Christians!"
I agree with @Corvos's take: my view on what you've written is that religious distinctions aren't very important to you, and you don't believe a person's choice either way on the matter makes much difference to the outcomes of their lifestyle. So long as they avoid drinking excessively, using drugs, or engaging in promiscuous sex, of course.
But Nicene Christians of the sort who would say "Mormons aren't Christians" disagree with you: they believe that following the LDS faith to its endpoint leads to eternal conscious torment, or in other words is a lifestyle that "leaves them feeling very empty and lifeless." You can disagree with their point of view on this, and perhaps you should, but that's their point of view which motivates their feeling.
You're frustrated that people are writing online articles encouraging women to have promiscious sex, and see that as harmful... well, the LDS literally sends its young men to go door to door actively encouraging people to become Mormon! If you believe that's a harmful path to go down, as many Protestants do, you would feel the same level of concern about it. They'd argue that abstaining from promiscuous sex, drinking, and drugs does you no good, if you don't have the right set of beliefs. You disagree, and invert the importance, but that's not their view.
Furthermore, plenty of people disagree that excessive drinking, using drugs, or promiscious sex leads inevitably to lifelessness and emptiness. To make that determination, you have to actually take a step back and look at evidence, listen to anecdotes, read statistics, as I'm sure you've done. But because the truth claims of the LDS and Nicene Christianity are cosmic, we can't use the same kind of empiricism on them, and so people who believe these things are important rely on their own epistemological standards for what's cosmically true: sacred texts, ancient creeds, community consensus, personal testimony -- all of which are vitally important both for Nicene Christians and the LDS. When people say, "Mormons aren't Christians", they're making the exact same claim as "the radical left is illiberal," applying personal values and epistemology to a category problem.
Classical liberalism did not emerge out of a sudden singing of kumbaya, and many of the world's most fruitful democracies have histories as twisted and bloody as the religious wars that led to religious tolerance. You can handwave away that similarity, and say that of course the democratic revolutions in France or America or the English Civil War or the revolutions of Latin America was violence that led to good things, but the people who killed the Huguenots and the Calvinists who stripped altars in grand riots believed they were doing the very same thing: eliminating pathways that lead to feelings of emptiness and lifelessness in the long run. You can believe they were horribly mistaken about this, and many people do, but simply saying "these feelings historically led to violence, therefore I am revolted by them," seems to miss the point that the classical, classical liberal archetypally holds a musket pointed at the head of an aristocrat.
I think the important thing isn't to refuse to draw category distinctions or recognize outgroups, but consists of how you treat them. Even in the moral teachings of Jesus, he presupposes that one will have enemies -- "a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household" -- but that one should love them and pray for them and do right by them. I don't agree that refusing to do the former automatically achieves the latter.
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