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I want to talk about the AI video that Trump reposted, where he is flying a plane with 'King Trump' on the side, wearing a crown, dumping a payload of feces on a crowd of No Kings protestors in NYC.
Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...
Ultimately as a Christian, I find this sort of blatant hatred and mockery of the outgroup quite disturbing. I understand that staid, boring, conservatism has lost majorly over the last few decades. I understand that the right needs some vitalism, some dynamism, some sort of way to act in an agentic way that isn't just mindlessly opposing whatever progressives are doing at the moment, and then slowly backing off and letting progressives have what they want over the course of a few years.
However, I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. At this point, while Trump definitely is effective at rallying the base, I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting. It's hard to countenance not just the outright hatred of the outgroup, but the sheer crassness that is presented here.
Not just that, but why would he egg on this idea that he wants to be king? It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.
Anyway, the current coalition of the right, where Christian or even just classical conservatives are sort of holding their nose and voting for Trump, seems increasingly unstable to me. I suppose we'll see how things end up.
From the last few years of Motte and Twitter discourse, I think the answer you will get is obvious:
His supporters don't care. He fights, he makes libs cry, and traditional, "respectable" conservatives are now seen as cucks who conserved nothing and are committed only to losing politely. MAGA cares absolutely nothing about propriety or decorum, because that's a chump's game, and any discussion that veers in the direction of "What happens when the other side does this?" will get a hundred stories about how the other side is worse anyway, the other side has been defecting forever, and only after we crush them and make them lick the soles of our boots might they learn to behave and restore a kind of equilibrium.
I don't think the analysis is correct, but I can see the crude, vitalist appeal of President Shitpoaster. What I think will actually happen is one of two things: (1) The darker suspicions of Trump's foes are true, and MAGA really does think it's going to remain in power permanently, one way or the other. (2) The Democrats will return to power eventually, this will be remembered, and yes, it will be tit-for-tat and we spiral into ever-worse decay.
Either way, I foresee no positive endgame.
Yep, this basically sums up discussion of this on TheMotte. It saddens me but this is just one of those things where people are just so solidified in their opinion there is really no new argument or event that could change it.
If you wish to argue by appealing to a general principle, what is the proper way to rebut such an argument if one disagrees that the principle is generally held?
I too am saddened when people are so solidified in their opinion that there is really no new argument or event that could change it. I am more saddened, however, when I see people who appear to believe that mountains of evidence they don't like and can't meaningfully respond to should spontaneously evaporate so that it can stop impeding the arguments they would prefer to present unchallenged.
On this subject in particular, a few others have offered the best insight available, and I'll reiterate it in my own words:
People who are upset by this appear to want the old sociopolitical system, wherein there was a strict division of labor between the people who cranked out images of shit being dumped on the hated outgroup by laughing cartoons of tribal champions, and the actual tribal champions who directly benefited from those images while standing solemnly before a podium in a very expensive suit extruding the blandest possible word-product into an array of very official microphones. If one is going to argue for this previous system, one should argue for it as it actually was, not as it might be imagined to be, particularly in the imagination of the side employing a large majority of the old shit-pouring cartoon experts.
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting, there was an article I read that offered an interesting nugget; the author, a professional journalist, had of course heard (and only heard!) about the shooting the day it happened. When her kids got home from school, she went to talk to them about it. By that point, of course, her kids had not only heard about it, but had already spent the day watching close-up slo-mo video of the moment of impact, the spattering fountain of blood, the crimson-soaked security detail struggling to load his body into a vehicle... she described a fundamental generation gap, where the experience of the event was sanitized on her end and far more visceral for her children, simply through their respective approaches to media technology, in a way that she probably should have seen coming, and maybe should have done something to prevent...
Food for thought.
Nigga, this is just going through the exact motions Amadan outlined. I get it, libtards started it by employing legions of late night comedians and entertainers to metaphorically pour shit on Republicans for years except (duplicitous as always) they his behind a veneer of civility while their Hollywood Jews did the dirty work for them. Trump isn’t doing anything fundamentally different, he’s just more crass and if anything the crassness and directness of it is a virtue, there’s an honesty to the directness of it.
My point as always is that there is value to norms. Even if the norms seem paper thin or hypocritical I believe they are better than nothing. There are just proper ways a president should behave. I believe there is serious value in having a degree of ritual and civic religion. It is always possible to construct a plausible sounding reason why your enemies really started it, your enemies are actually so much worse than this, blah blah blah. It has to stop somewhere else escalation begets escalation. I know everyone will tell me this isn’t an escalation because libtards have already done a million worse things, but that’s exactly how escalation works and can always be justified
There are values in norms, but when one side gets to display a (mock) severed head to great applause, and responds to objections with "What? it's just a joke! why are you lot so sensitive, why are you always over-reacting?" then I think the erosion of norms set in.
Yes, Griffin got consequences for that, but there were defenders for it (and she seemed to learn nothing from "I torpedoed my career with a dumb stunt" by repeating it). I think the problem is that politics is pig-wrestling, and the mud is just getting deeper.
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Actually, no, it wasn't. I raised a general point on the meta level, one that I think is reasonable to ask and really could do with some effort in answering:
Or to put it another way for you or @Amadan or @ThomasdelVasto or anyone else interested, if the sort of argument Amadan describes seems bad, what would a better form of argument look like, in your view?
...and then on the object level I raised a separate point about the division of labor model versus the current jack-of-all-trades model. I made no argument that jack-of-all-trades is better, only noted that if one is arguing against it, one should do so honestly.
In any case, if that's a discussion you'd like to have, I'm all for it, but the way it doesn't start is this:
That is not my argument, and I don't appreciate you implying that it is. I am fully capable of speaking for myself, and do not require your assistance in framing my sentences. We actually have a specific rule about this:
I think you can probably find at least one mottezan who would endorse each individual sentence you've offered there. I decline to answer for all of them in aggregate.
There is not, however, infinite value in norms, and many people, myself among them, believe the old system was worse for a variety of reasons quite apart from "dirty work" done by "Hollywood jews". The old system insulated our politicians from accountability on a scale that was appallingly unacceptable, because the formalized channels allowed a small set of elites massively disproportionate control over what the public at large knew, understood, and thought about. This had woeful consequences, such that enough of us rebelled to burn the old system down. You may disagree with that decision, but you would do well to engage with why we made it if you want to convince us that we've made a mistake.
But again, the argument is generally not that ritual and civic religion do not have serious value. The argument is that they do not have enough value to offset the abuses the old system enabled and continues to enable.
The "somewhere" that it has to stop is the grave. It can stop short of there, if enough people on each side recognize value in doing so. And yet: "give me liberty or give me death".
Many people on both sides believe that the principles at stake here are worth fighting and even killing over. Too many of them concluded this for the old system to survive, and so it has been gutted and is currently bleeding out in a ditch. I am not sorry for that, because I hated the old system with a passion words cannot adequately convey, and wish only that it would die faster.
This is a discussion forum. If you want to discuss why I believe what I believe, I'm happy to discuss that with you. You are certainly correct that many people here disagree with you on the value of the old norms. You are probably correct about the general shape of many of their arguments. But here's the thing: if their arguments don't persuade you, that doesn't mean they aren't persuasive. Maybe they're unreasonable. Alternatively, maybe you're unreasonable. If you want to discuss it, discuss it. If you want to take a "moral stand" and then complain when others object without substantively addressing their objections, it seems to me you've misunderstood what this forum is for.
I'm not trying to suggest that Trump is anywhere in the same league as Lincoln, but it is interesting how closely the contemporary complaints about Lincoln and the nascent Republican movement mirror those about Trump and MAGA today.
He is shrill. He is crass, He is uncultured. He is not even a proper gentleman, he is a backwoods bumpkin who grew up in a log shack. Electing him would be an insult to the institution of the presidency, and make an already tense situation worse.
Republicans in turn would point to the Caning of Charles Sumner and the ongoing civil unrest in the Kansas and Missouri territories claiming that the Democrats have shown zero interest in reigning in their violent fringe while the Whigs care more about losing gracefully while getting fat off the public trough than they do tackling the serious problems facing the nation.
I imagine there is an alternate timeline where moderate Democrats did more to police their extremists or the Whigs showed more spine and as a result Abraham Lincoln never became president. Is that the better timeline? I do not know.
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I'm not sure I understand the question. I have staked out my position before: we should not go accelerationist and try to purge each other.
My argument has clearly lost to the accelerationists on both sides who want to purge each other. I'm being descriptive here, not making any (useless) prescriptions.
I think people are piling on you for being right, but... seriously, what is the alternative here? Lie down and get ground down more and more? The purity spiral goes ever upward. People just want to draw a line in the sand and say no more, cross it and we'll shoot you. I don't think that's an accelerationist position so much as an ultimatum.
Of course, it then loses its effect given that the lines keep being crossed and not enough people keep being shot, so the normie appetite for political violence is somehow much, much less than people profess it to be.
I'm gagging for an alternative, because American purges and culture wars promise to be ruinous beyond their borders. But hey, the same could be said about their economy.
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I think the problem here is that your (possibly yours personally, but definitely my political opponents) ritual and civic religion is directly contradictory to mine and so why should I not want to tear it down and replace it with my own?
Yes. When one side or the other is so beaten down they accept defeat. That’s when it will stop. That’s how wars, even culture wars, work. And then it will start again at some point in the future, either near or far, about the same or different things.
Or we’ll all be AI serfs. I guess that might be enough to finally beat that dawg out of humanity.
Because while you're in the process of attempting to do this (poorly, not because you're bad at it, but because the other side will try and stop you) China builds the factories that build more factories and then drone-spams so hard you lose naval control over the key shipping lanes and then lose power projection abilities and then lose status as the world's reserve currency and then get to live without all the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower.
Also there's no guarantee your system won't also be full of problems once it's settled and starts rotting, as all systems exposed to entropy and human nature do.
"You should go commit suicide, or let us shoot you in the head if we get particularly bored, because if you don't America Will Be Destroyed!" isn't nearly as compelling an argument as you seem to think it is.
(Alternating between "America must be destroyed!" and "you're going to destroy America!" is even less compelling—but that's neither here nor there...)
That isn't my argument? I wouldn't even vote Dem if I was American.
My argument is both sides of America have gone full retard, are ripping eachother apart myopically while the credible threat of losing global hegemony looms.
My further argument is "nuh uh they started it/are worse/make me really mad" may be true but fundamentally don't matter in the broader context, which exists regardless of your feelings towards it.
It's literally the definition of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks, and not only is everyone focused on the chairs, they're screaming that half the crew are worse than you while everyone works together to unlock as many water tight bulkheads as they can. Maybe you're right about them, but you're still sinking!
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To what extent does Red Tribe get to live with "the fun benefits of being the world's sole superpower" while ground under the Blue Tribe's boots?
A world where "China builds the factories that build more factories" et cetera, et cetera, and America is no longer on top, but Blue Tribe is destroyed is strictly preferable to one where "the world's sole superpower" is under firm Blue control (and used to further crush Reds).
For that matter, the breakup of the US is worth it if it means the Blues are destroyed.
I won't go so far as approving a mutual annihilation outcome, but any scenario where Red Tribe still exists to some degree, but Blues have gone extinct is ultimately acceptable.
Brother W.H.A.T.
Have you ever purchased any item that was manufactured overseas? Isn't it nice how cheap they are? They're cheap because the USA ensures global commerce is smooth, very smooth. They're also cheap because the USD is very strong because the USD is the reserve currency.
Do you have any investments? The strength of the USA equity market is in part due to its status as a global superpower.
Do you enjoy anything paid for by the government? Like roads, electricity, massive defect spending on factories and bridges. The USA is able to run obscene defects due to the USD being a reserve currency generating strong demand for it, reducing inflation.
Do you have a 30 year fixed mortgage? Same mechanism there. Did you grow up in a house that had one? Massive W for you guys.
I could go on...
I'm not saying the blue tribe aren't nightmares, I wouldn't even vote Dem if I was American. But let's not be dishonest here, if you live on American soil you enjoy massive benefits as a result.
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That means letting your enemies possess a superweapon
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