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 -
The moderate left exists to provide reputational cover for the progressive left and the moderates are too cowardly to stand up to the progressives. Biden bails out the teamsters as an expensive reward but also issues communiques with language about birthing persons latinx, opens the border for millions of illegal migrants while pretending that border encounters are what people care about and threaten title ix trans compliance for school funding. The nonwoke left is now viewed (rightly) as hypocrites pretending to champion Common Sense things but actually are just going to run full tilt into progressive cause celebres immediately.
The problem for the nonwoke left is that the extreme far right is now back in play thanks to the tarring of everyone unwoke as a nazi. Partially though this can be attributed to woke tactics being employed in new battlefields where previous rules limited employment of such tactics. If wokes want to play race essentialism, then whites are happy to play that game too. Once you westerners are done with bronze league white-black racism you can play in gold league balkan racism to get your toes really wet before diving into asian ultraracism.
This sounds like the horseshoe version of the progressive complaint that centrists provide cover for the far right. But no. The moderate left exists because they have their own policy goals, and a democratic system often involves allying with people whom you don't entirely agree with but can tolerate to an extent. This is true for the right as well, which is why Mr. "Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office" is now playing second fiddle to the guy he once insulted.
But again, my point is the consistency. Does the right exist to provide reputational cover for every crazy Republican, up to and especially Trump? Do you also have to answer for everything your side does, and abandon your beliefs if someone odious holds something vaguely similar? Because that's the same argument progressives lob at me whenever I argue against wokism.
Many on this forum have said they flat-out don't care about the right's excesses but the left's are so egregious that nothing could top it. If I say I believe that I believe the right's excesses are actually pretty damn egregious, does that give me license to just dismiss any complaints about the wokies with "I don't care?" No, it wouldn't. It would just prove there's no point engaging with me, because I'm just a partisan with no principles.
Why is Trump supposed to be the crazy wing of Republican? The wokes being called crazy is a result of the moderate Democrats not wanting to be associated with them, but Trump being deemed crazy is purely the result of outgroup slander. Honestly, I'm a much better example of a crazy right-winger than anyone in the current administration, and as to whether the right exists me to provide reputational cover - I dunno no man, half of them are doing some weird "neener-neener" bit about the YR kids getting fired, can you provide a similar example from your side?
I don't know about you personally, but hasn't the majority of the left, in fact, taken that license?
Disagree. Even from a right-wing perspective, he lies habitually. Republicans may be protectionist, but his trade policy constantly changes. He's weirdly deferential to Putin (whereas the median Republican might not want to get involved in Ukraine but still admits Putin is bad), and his Ukraine policy is incoherent whether you think we should be involved or not. There's pretty much everything relating to RFK. He's pardoning corporate fraudsters. People are completely silent on his own blatant lawfare.
Sorry I'm confused what point you are making here. Could you rephrase?
The more charitable interpretation is they consider their bad apples to fall under the lizardman constant, similar to the responses I'm seeing regarding the right. But let's say yes anyway, because that is my criticism of the left. That they do so is in fact what I think is why The Motte hates the left so much. So why would you do it yourself? Yes the constant refrain is "Why should I better than my opponents, when that will only result in losing?" My point rests in how exactly one keeps score. It's relatively fine to say, "I'm keeping track of the bad things both sides do, and I think side X is worse." It's another thing to say, "I'm going to keep counting the score of my opponents, and stop counting my own." At that point you've decided you want to keep your head in the sand and have become just a rage reactionary. Your opponents are fully justified then in playing dirty, because you're saying you can be as corrupt as you want and it doesn't matter.
...and let's not forget, winning the Republican primaries with 80% of the vote.... Whatever you think of him, most Republicans either aren't all that bothered by it, or think the Neocon wing is worse, therefore it is them that are the "crazy Republicans", not Trump.
The kids from Yong Republicans got fired for making edgy jokes. If the right existed to provide cover for "crazies" like that, their messages would never get leaked in the first place, but if they did you'd see a unified front of Republicans actually covering for them. What you see instead is a significant of infighting between the "muh principles" wing of the Republican party (represented for example by James Lindsay or Seth Dillon) and the "don't do cancel culture against our own people, ffs" (for example Matt Walsh). I don't think there was an example of a similar amount of infighting on the Democratic side over one of it's subgroup saying something offensive to conservatives.
Well, I think you're wrong about who is hated and why. I don't hate the people who say "who cares" about their crazies, I hate the crazies. The people who say "who cares" only start being annoying when they acting outraged over me saying "who cares" over my side's crazies, and thus demand that I hold myself up to a standard they never followed themselves.
To be honest I don't really want to keep score for either side. Historical memory is good when someone starts acting like whatever media-invented outrage is unprecedented, but my goal in punching back isn't equalizing of scores, it's deterrence. If I'm reasonably sure I'm not going to get sucker-punched again, because I taught a belligerent a lesson that I can hold my own, I don't need to leave him with the exact same amount of stitches he originally gave me. But we're nowhere near this point, I don't even see the other acknowledging they did anything wrong, let alone incapacitating their crazies so it doesn't happen again.
All I can tell you is these are the things that seemed to make the right upset when a Democrat was doing it. To the point that from this side it looks like them being mad when a Democrat did it was outrage bait.
Point of order: it's not my view that your average Dem/Rep voter is covering for crazies. It's something that in my view gets thrown at me by members of the right when I say I vote left because I think the right is worse. That said, the left is perfectly willing to cancel its own, just not generally at the behest of the right (and yes, the right do try to cancel people for non-"turnabout" reasons). Not entirely analogous I admit, but I remember Al Franken. And yes people on the left have in fact been fired over Kirk comments. Or here's an old issue I remember about a lefty making an edgy joke about Africa.
This ties into group culpability. I had a rather long back and forth with JarJarJedi not too long ago. One of the things I'm reminded of is Trump canceling the student visas of people who protested Israel, on the logic that members of said protest harassed people. Whether the person whose visa was cancelled was one of the people harassing was irrelevant. Where I'm going with this is that many of the arguments made require group culpability in order to make sense. Someone can say "I don't believe X" and then support a policy that relies on it, and at that point I would say they're in denial about it. Note that this is a generic comment, I don't remember everything you specifically have said.
That's not how politics work. By and large it's somebody punching in your general direction because they feel someone punched in their general direction. It can hotter or colder, but it will never stop and never admit wrongdoing. They don't care whether you think they did something wrong, they only care either if they think they did or, rarely, if a critical mass of the public thinks they did.
What do you want me to say, "first time?" I remember when the war in Iraq was the most important issue ever, right up until Obama got elected. Or the surveillance state. Or antisemitism. People do this stuff all the time, and the idea that the Republicans are worse than the Democrats in that regard seems baseless. What's more, if we accept this argument it would mean that Biden and Obama are the Demicratic crazies.
I know. You were trying to show how, if we take the right-wing arguments seriously, it would mean that the broader right-wing is there to cover for it's crzies, the same way they accuse the left of doing so. My point is that this argument doesn't work, because there is no symmetry in the conduct of the two sides.
Not only is it not entirely analogous, most of these examples are missing a critical component, other than the cancellations over Kirk, these are examples of the left cancelling itself for things offensive to other parts ot the left, not the right. Even the Kirk example is missing the other component of left-wingers jeering at the left wingers that just got fired.
I'm sorry I'm not seeing how anything in this paragraph connects to whether or not people of the Motte hate left wingers for saying "who cares" about their crazies.
Deterrence works almost exactly like that in war, and war is part of politics. The mechanics might be a big different during timesnof peace, but I'm not seing any fundamental issues with it working there as well.
Isn't that literally what you asked me to do earlier?
Doesn't have to be the first time to be true. Nor does it have to be exclusive to one party. But I'm not just talking about parties in general, I am referring to The Motte community. I certainly remember all the talk about lawfare.
Hold up, there's a hidden assumption in this. First you said Republicans are not in solidarity because otherwise it wouldn't have been leaked. But then you pivot to saying the Young Republicans were fired because the left demanded they be fired. Why do I have to grant that the left was the determining factor in them being fired? You yourself pointed out that that there are some on the right that have standards, and I don't think the left really has influence over an explicitly right-wing group.
As for the Kirk example, your "critical component" was never mentioned before. I grow a little tired of the whole, "My example was on a Tuesday, yours was on a Wednesday so it doesn't count." Comparisons are never exact, deal with it. Also, I posted Kotaku because that was the link I had, but the people who would jeer at it would not be found on Kotaku.
Debatable. And there are people on the left that call out the left. The Harper Letter crowd for instance. Hell, Obama himself has called out progressives for some of their behavior.
I'm saying that "the left" is treated an amorphous blob. And yes, the right is too by the left, but they're not here right now. I'm saying that in order to say that "John Smith" should have his visa canceled because "protestors" have committed harassment is to say that the way for the left to not deserve this is to police their crazies. I'm using this as an example of how people might not think they are doing something when in fact they are.
War involves people dying or the threat of dying. Politics involves a pendulum of the people who temporarily lost coming back into power and often just undoing whatever the other person did as much as they are able. None of your deterrence is actually hurting people outside of making them angrier and more motivated to act again. Political arguments don't really have the power to really act as deterrence.
In which part? Because overall what I'd say I want is for people on the Motte to stop and think, "Would I accept this line of reasoning if my opponents used it against me? Or would I try to find some excuse to invalidate it?" Again I do this too, but I'd like to think I try.
I thought you specifically mentioned "the median Republican" in your argument, so I'm a bit confused why this is suddenly about the Motte community. Again, I'm pretty sure we're a much better example of crazy right-wingers than Trump is.
No, I said they got fired for saying things offensive to the left. Your examples would be akin to me saying "look how good the Republicans are in policing their own crazies, they fired this guy for being too permissive on abortion, and that guy for being in favor of no-fault divorce".
Well, this is from my original comment:
and this is after you asked for clarification:
Maybe it was communicated poorly, but "was never mentioned" seems like a bit too much.
I actually sympathize with your frustration about this, but I don't see an easy way out of this bind. Indeed, comparisons are never exact, and sometime bad-faith actors latch on to any difference to pretend an example or analogy does not apply. On the other hand, they also sometimes try to gloss over critical differences in order to pretend that two very different things are roughly the same. I don't know what to do about it other than to hash out which is which in a conversation.
That doesn't bother me, but I just haven't seen the jeering at all, let alone at the same volume. When Jimmy Kimmel got cancelled, the left rallied around him, and as far as I can tell kept mostly quiet about the people who said something egregious enough to get fired for good.
That still works more in my favor than it does yours, if we're debating whether or not it's bad to say "I don't care" to the excesses of your side. That thesis only works if it's reasonably certain that the sides are symmetrical, if it's merely debatable, then well... my mind is open, but you'll need a bit more to convince me to care.
Obama made a single (a few?) speech(es?) that went over about as well as led balloon, and as for the Harper Letter:
Oh wow, looks like the Neocons are not only the crazy-wing of the right, they're so far off they're actually left-wing according to you.
Look, there's other strains of evidence for the right policing itself more than the left that don't boil down to the observer's bias. The right has more diversity of thought within itself, as per actual studies and their endlessly memed graphs, so it will contain more loud disagreements.
That's an odd thing to say "I don't hate people who say 'I don't care' I hate the crazies". If you're referring to the original thesis of "the broader left exists to cover for it's crazies", that's not treating the left as an amorphous blob, that's pointing out that it's moderates refuse to do anything tangible against their crazies.
That can be true even in war. 9/11 didn't do much to directly hurt the USA, and for that matter neither did the American invasion of Afghanistan do much to hurt the Taliban. Now, I will agree that in times of peace, and within a nation the dynamics are somewhat different, but not completely so. There's a reason for why conservatives were looking for ways to get a Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, and didn't just pack to court the moment they had the chance.
I mean, right here, in the very sentence after your question? When I said "I don't even see the other acknowledging they did anything wrong" I didn't see "acknowledging they did anything wrong" to mean anything other than "they would not accept this line of reasoning if my opponents used it against them".
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