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 -
Revisiting Vivek Ramaswamy's Christmas Rant: One Year Later
The tome in question, in case you need to refresh your memory. One hundred and twenty five million views. This single tweet tore open a gash in the Republican coalition that has yet to heal (though I don't want to overstate the counterfactual impact here, this particular fault-line was inevitable).
Looking back, it is clear now that the controversy was never just racist shit-flinging. There is a real philosophical conflict underlying the backlash. It is perhaps most elegantly stated as a variant of the Euthyphro dilemma; is our culture good because it is American, or is it American because it is good? Vivek is a functionalist. If an aspect of American culture is non-functional, then it should be replaced. His opponents in the comments are overwhelmingly essentialists. Americanness is an ontological property that is good because of it's essential nature as American. In this context, the idea that someone might choose to discard prom queens or jock sports fandom is a threat to America itself. Of course, this begs the question, who counts as American? And we end up with the "Heritage American" discourse that has been popping up lately.
Vivek’s big issue is he’s lived a sheltered life. He’s never been with normies. 95% of the people in any country are just too dumb to win as strivers (Israel excluded). Promoting striving culture is just bad politics because 95% of the voters can’t win that game.
I don’t think striving culture makes countries rich. I think the best scientist just enjoy being scientists and are having fun. It’s not grinding for them. I think few professions benefit from striving culture. The only potential exception being medicine.
I don’t consider myself a striver. I did do math problems for fun growing up. I went to math tournaments. Why did I do it? I was having fun.
Vivek is the only Republican I would vote against. The vision for the party he has is a cancer and it’s worth giving Dems a little more power to destroy him.
It’s stupid to let Vivek run in Ohio because I highly doubt I’m the only one in the base who vote against him.
He's also just really scuzzy, even by the low standards of Ohio politicians. Musk can make these sort of arguments stick by pointing at one of several giant factories. Vivek can point to... failed biomedical stuff in an even-more-scammy-than-normal field, a politically-focused investment fund, and partial ownership of BuzzFeed.
None of it's clearly fraud, or illegal, or even likely to get the New York AG going after him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he loses more Red Tribe support than Jay Jones lost Blue Tribe support.
I just don’t see who in the Republican Party that Vivek appeals to. He seems to believe in blankslatism which is very unpopular in the high IQ parts of the GOP. He made fun of football and cheerleaders so I don’t think he’s cool with the blue collar guys. He’s not Christian. I will be completely honest that I don’t think someone can be American without conversion.
Who’s his voter base? Boomer neoliberals? I thought they all became Democrats already.
I think you’re hitting the core here.
If Vivek moved here, converted to Catholicism, named his kids Sean and Brad, starter personally going by Jim and became an obsessive football fan, maybe I’d buy it.
Because that’s basically what my ancestors did. They changed their names, punished their kids if they tried to speak the old language, named their kids almost comically American names, and just thanked god they were allowed to be here. They wanted to be American not lecture Americans on how to be better.
Four generations from now if some Vivek descendant wants to “rediscover their roots”, then fine. But America does have a culture, actually, and if you want to be an American the good news is they you can! You just have to actually do it.
Shouldn't he be converting to, like, Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or something? Catholicism is the religion of low-skill immigrants trying to replace the founding stock of America.
I think the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism. I don’t really think there are any “serious” Protestants left.
If Vivek “converted” to some pointless Evangelical mega church, it would just feel hollow and unserious.
Catholics (and I include the orthodox in this) have basically just won. Protestantism isn’t taken seriously anymore, and so a “conversion” to Protestantism would similarly not be taken seriously.
I don't know what you mean by "serious" Protestants. There are clearly plenty of Protestants who are serious about their beliefs. If you mean that Evangelicals are tacky and unintellectual, I won't argue, but I don't see why that would make it unserious (plus, I think the main difference between megachurch evangelicals being tacky and Roman Catholics having ornate gravitas is about 1500 years). I'm also unsure on the role of the internet in this - Evangelicals started on their current trajectory well before the internet. And, of course, Evangelicals are not all American Protestants.
I don't think it's true that Protestantism isn't taken seriously. Rather, Protestantism lacks the centralized hierarchy, unified style guide, and Ancient Traditions^tm of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which puts it at a disadvantage with people who really like those things. The aesthetics/values/ideas of American Protestantism (especially capital-L Liberal Protestantism) are heavily conflated with general American aesthetics/values/ideas, and, much like American culture as a whole, lives in an eternal present. The power of Catholic identity is not that it is inextricably tied to America, but that it isn't.
What I mean is they Protestants are not intellectually serious, and that most of the claims keeping people in their church don’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
“The Church is hiding the Bible from you they don’t want you to read it only WE have the true words of god!” was a convincing argument when it wasn’t easy to find out that this is just very literally not true.
As far as conversation to Protestantism being unserious: not only could I become a Protestant tomorrow if I wanted to, I could become a Protestant pastor, and so could Vivek.
Vivek Could announce tomorrow that he is starting a church, could call it a “Christian” church, and go around trying to convince people in Ohio that he’s a very serious Christian if some kind.
But this would all take 5 minutes, and be meaningless.
If he wanted to become Catholic, there’s a process to it, he’d need to get his marriage convalidated, baptize his kids, etc. If he wanted to become a priest (to contrast this with the seriousness of becoming a Protestant pastor), it would take him around a decade of philosophy and theology classes, he’d need to leave his family, etc.
That’s the point I’m making. It Vivek went through OCIA, got confirmed, convalidated his marriage, went to mass at least weekly, and baptized his kids, I think people would see it as more likely to be genuine.
If he showed up at some mega church or revivalist thing a few times and bought a Bible, I think it would read as performative.
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