site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The effect of this is that judges are effectively elected to life terms. A judge not being retained is very rare, and has only happened once at the Supreme Court level since the current state constitution went into effect in 1968.

For all the efforts the GOP took to politicize a normally sleepy race, they successfully managed to whittle a 40 point Yes down to a 23 point Yes. This has to go down as one of the most underappreciated lead balloons in political history.

Well it seems like it was an uphill battle, but before trying a campaign how will the GOP know if there's a chance? It's hard to know how voters will respond, and presumably there was no way to know that it didn't go over well. But I see nothing wrong with giving it a shot.

This was an unprecedented gambit that took up most of the oxygen it what is usually an uneventful year;

So what? If there's nothing else that's important on the ballot in that area, then whose oxygen is being taken up? Should the GOP just hand over the election on a silver platter to the Democrats? What have they got to lose besides some campaign funds, and seemingly not all that much of them.

This was more of an idle observation than anything else, but to the extent it's a criticism, it's because they bungled the approach by initially hiding the fact that they were urging Nos for partisan reasons, as if they could trick enough people into voting their way. If they had come out and said that the court was too liberal and would remain liberal for another decade unless they could kick those three out and elect a few conservatives in a couple years, they might have been able to motivate some low-propensity voters to vote in an election they'd otherwise ignore.