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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Or the constant, real life, "diversity tax" he's paid, or seen others pay, finally broke through the cognitive dissonance the relentless drone of "diversity is our strength" imposes on him.

I moved away from a "safe" and "diverse" area. The reasons were many. Mostly having to do with the relentless background noise of low and high level crime. And wondering when I would finally draw the short straw. Maybe it was the gas station I always filled up at being robbed at gunpoint for the 3rd time. Maybe it was the shooting in the parking lot behind my townhouse. Maybe it was the playground I can see from my window, that my kid liked to swing at, always being full of "diverse" kids openly doing drugs after school let out, so I couldn't take her.

This was in a supposedly "nice" area! A historic part of town. They village center within walking distance of all this had farmers markets every weekend, and all sorts of bougie artisanal shops. And yet, the subsidized affordable housing nearby, in the name of "equity", cast it's long bloody shadow.

And every single time it's a "diverse" face. Every time. In an incredibly diverse area, where white people may be the slight majority demographic still, never once did I suffer, or was even inconvenienced, by any white criminality, or even witness it, or even hear a 3rd hand account of it. No white people ever tried to rob the bank I made my deposits at. No white person was ever caught breaking and entering. No white person ever randomly shot through the windows of townhomes as a gang initiation.

Sometimes they murdered their wives/husbands/fathers/mothers during lockdown. That was... odd... but nothing to do with me.

There are vanishingly few ways to contextualize these lived experiences. "Diversity is our strength" is not among them. Nor that it's all my fault, and the fault of "systems of whiteness", which just look like pro-social behaviors to me for the most part.

The only conclusion I was able to walk away from that experience with, is that multiculturalism is a failure. It just results in anti-social minorities politically, or literally, pillaging the pro-social majority. The only choice the pro-social majority has is to flee. But only because segregation is illegal.

I'm not sure what would help me draw a different conclusion. Every now again the usual sort of "diverse" person who gets excommunicated for being an "Uncle Tom" helps. But then how they get treated by their "side" usually does more to disabuse me of my hope than their reasonable common sense pleas to return to pro-social norms engenders.

I'm mostly left with the Briahna Joy Gray's of the world insisting, straight faced and deadly serious, that you have a moral obligation to allow yourself to be victimized by her tribe.

The argument that those two get in in the clip you lined is an excellent example of why shows like this are so useless. Once they state their own position, their cohost simply misstates it back to them. It's obvious that the conversation is going nowhere. What is the purpose of subjecting people to the rest of this?

I don’t think any of that has to do with Scott Adams. Man’s made quite a lot of money off playing an edgy counter-intellectual. This sure looks like more of the same.

That clip is debating "should lethal force be used to prevent theft of a car" (in the specific instance of a probably black 13yo).

Note that in the US, using lethal force solely to defend property is generally illegal! Although "In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force."

Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.

They are confused, but that's still what they're motivated by.

That's her context. Further context is that city has carjacking up multiple hundred percent, official government policy seems to be to let it happen, and other 13yo carjackers have murdered their would be victims. And increasingly the problems in DC are metastasizing out into the neighboring counties, with people attending venues in DC allegedly being followed out of it by carjackers and jacked in surrounding Arlington, Alexandria, Vienna and Reston. At least that I've heard of.

There is a social contract, where government is supposed to use it's monopoly on violence to keep the peace. If they are willing to abdicate that monopoly to anti-social criminals, it takes some serious chutzpah to whinge about the threat to civilization people protecting themselves from the criminality you unleashed represent.

Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.

Come on. And what was the ethnicity of that 13 year old carjacker? When we are discussing 13 year old carjackers in the US, we all know exactly what ethnicity we are talking about. Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden. Too much charity here

Brianna's activism isn't mostly for 'ethnic spoils for my tribe', it's mostly for 'pls stop killing us racists :(((('.

Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden

There's clearly a racial component, but people like brianna are more than happy to complain about police violence, poverty, or the opioid epidemic among poor whites, and try to help them with policy.

I think there's a thing here where, in order to 'fight the left' while still maintaining progressive moral values, people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil - so "white genocide", "black ethnic tribalism", "the left wants us dead", etc, even though those are not accurate. Considering the idea of 'should carjackers be killed', outside the context of 'if they are black' or 'if they are 13', is more useful - and brings up - is every life 'of equal value'? Where does the 'value' of human life come from?

When someone claims a leftist is doing "blood libel", most of the claim's power comes from claiming they hate white people or are malicious somehow, as opposed to a subtle claim of hypocrisy. And I'm claiming the application isn't particularly fair, but even weaker than when the leftists do it.

It would be very easy to ask those questions! For some reason, they don't get asked

Well, those questions have been asked in influential works of moral philosophy and politics for centuries. But the ways they're answered generally don't justify shooting carjacking black 13yos.

"Carjacking" is a form of armed robbery. Whether there is justification for shooting an armed robber while he is committing armed robbery is something that has very often been answered in the affirmative in politics.

I think the topic was karon blake's shooting? And he doesn't appear to be armed.

Although my last paragraph in GP is ... rather poorly phrased, to the extent it's basically meaningless. What I meant is that, if all lives matter equally (but at the same time each life is unique and incomparable because trading one life for another is bad), it's difficult to justify killing someone for a crime that doesn't involve killing others (as a non-armed carjacking probably wouldn't).

'ethnic spoils for my tribe', it's mostly for 'pls stop killing us racists :(((('.

False claims of being killed, are called "blood libel", when the defamed group is Jews. It is considered not in anyway lesser form of antisemitism than advocating for a Jewish quota.

This claim is a particularly absurd, as it inverts of the reality of interracial murder: there more Black-on-white murders each year, than white-on-Black.

people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil

Not twist, apply to all groups equally, instead of picking and choosing which races getting persecuted counts as "racism".

There's a difference between the claim being incorrect, and the claim being an accurate description of why brianna and liberals do what they do. They aren't motivated by ethnic spoils! They're motivated by a desire to stop poor, oppressed, forced-into-crime-by-poverty-and-racism black people from being killed.

How would you tell the difference?

Most liberals, being white, aren't motivated by selfish ethnic spoils for blacks. Things like 'not using racist language that might hurt black people' are well explained by 'really worried about people being hurt by racism in unfounded ways', and poorly explained by racial spoils.

So that leaves black people - what are they motivated by? Probably a lot of poor black people are partially motivated by something that's closer to 'ethnic spoils' - like, vote democrat for welfare (A liberal would say: yeah, if you're poor, you're voting to alleviate poverty, how is this bad??). If you're a petty criminal, you'll probably prefer dems who aren't tough on crime. But Brianna "earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School", "Gray supported Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign and joined his 2020 campaign as his National Press Secretary", "Since Sanders' 2020 Democratic primary campaign ended, Gray returned to her role as contributing editor at Current Affairs in addition to co-hosting the Bad Faith podcast with former Chapo Trap House co-host Virgil Texas". She's stewing in the same left/socialist ideas all those white people are in - she supports Black Lives using the exact same rhetoric, and in the exact same ways, that high-status white socialists do.

from whining's post, on brianna: "that you have a moral obligation to allow yourself to be victimized by her tribe"

That it's "her tribe" isn't particularly relevant here. American ethnicities are complex historical accidents - nothing's innately black about defending a criminal underclass, and white criminal underclasses have exited at points in history. Nothing really stops libs from defending a hypothetical italian mafia in a country where POCs are the model minority.

Most liberals, being white, aren't motivated by selfish ethnic spoils for blacks.

Again, how would you know? There's definitely nothing contradictory between these two things. If you buy the "original sin" approach to racism, giving ethnic spoils to other group fits right in.

So that leaves black people...

Nothing you wrote answers my question: how would you tell the difference, if that is what she actually wanted?

Isn't being able to rob cars without risking getting shot a form of ethnic spoils?

If shooting a car-robber makes one a criminal, what should be the appropriate punishment for such criminals according to Briahna? Restorative justice? Immediate cashless bail? Benefits like in Richmond CA?

I think the implication is that Brianna being black is a main driver of her support, like, if she was born Indian or White, or if she was Black but hispanics were the primary "poor race forced into crime by socioeconomic factors" group, she wouldn't make a big deal about it. But when we see Brianna's white friends, or harvard-educated friends, be similarly outraged about BLACK BABIES being killed, that doesn't work? What does the word 'ethnic spoils' mean? I'd expect it to either imply a person is 'nepotistically' attempting to help their co-ethnics (falsified by black wokes being about as mad as white wokes), or that the wokes are giving 'spoils' to an ethnic group in a direct, political-machine like exchange for support (but 90% of blacks aren't criminals, this works for welfare but not 'no kill black kids').

If shooting a car-robber makes one a criminal, what should be the appropriate punishment for such criminals according to Briahna? Restorative justice? Immediate cashless bail? Benefits like in Richmond CA?

sure, libs are hypocritical and dumb, that doesn't mean their motivations are 'ethnic spoils'

I don't remember the exact quote, but she makes a point that joyriding is a common, and rather innocuous activity.

I doubt that a white liberal would claim that.

I saw similar claims from black twitter users that a cop should not have shot a black teenager(?) that was actively engaged in stabbing another teenager(?) because knife-fighting is a rather common and harmless activity that young people engage in. I doubt that this is a viewpoint that makes white people comfortable.

The way American media presented it was by cutting the bodycam video at the point where you can see the black perp dropping the knife. If they thought that knife-fighting was a harmless past-time that would not turn down their sheepish viewership from supporting BLM, why did they cut it?

My understanding of the white support of BLM is that they have a poor understanding of the actual violence cops have to deal with in the US. If they are advocating for violent criminals to be straight up released, they are not asking for that in their own neighborhood.

Here's an example

But when we see Brianna's white friends, or harvard-educated friends, be similarly outraged about BLACK BABIES being killed, that doesn't work?

They're insulated from black violence. Sure they'd love to see fewer black babies harmed, in a vacuum, until these black babies are literally holding them at gunpoint, then they'll demand the police, or the federal marshalls

Federal Judge Susan Dlott wrote the book on racial profiling in 2002.

“There’s three black men with guns at our house,” Dlott told a 911 operator after she escaped the home invasion and ran to her neighbor’s house one mile away.

That’s Racial Profiling 101: Identifying the criminals by race, as if that had something to do with it.

Some of these people don't see themselves as white, and see themselves as on the same side as the blacks, which is why they are demanding ethnic spoils. Demanding ethnic spoils for another tribe is performative, a form of Law of Jante, but for the blacks like Briahna, it is straight up 'taking what's ours'.

Not that all blacks necessarily believe that, but that's a commonly observed sentiment, and it's not like American culture in general provides any sort of pushback against the idea that 'blacks are owed everything'.

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even though those are not accurate.

Hold on, is inaccuracy grounds for dismissal? In that case why hasn't "'pls stop killing us racists :((((" been roundly dismissed?

Grounds in what sense? There isn't some lib in this conversation whose hypocrisy is being exposed by differing standards here. Why should I lazily believe dumb ideas just because people I dislike believe dumb ideas?

Are the people you dislike libs? And by that do you mean left wingers?

My political views are, in an absolute sense, far-right - I just care a lot about detail, so I can find disagreement with most points, including ones that point right.

Inaccuracy is grounds for dismissal for my views, even though it isn't for the left-wingers, and no amount of me disliking them (in a political sense) should change that.

You made a distinction between liberal and left wing in last week's thread, is the main reason why I asked for clarification, although I was/am confused about your political alignment, and because of that same post.

It is unusual for a far right winger to so eloquently and accurately model left wing philosophy - none of the left wing motters objected to it, and it's not like them to leave a strawman of the left standing - while also strawmanning the right. Yeah, you said reactionary isn't the same as conservative, but you also set up a dichotomy presenting a sort of reasonable, rational version of left wing philosophy vs the absolute least reasonable and rational right wing philosophy. A right wing philosophy which has never been espoused on the motte, one you brought in from the stupider corners of the internet either to make the right look dumb or to make the left look good.

To be clear, knowing left wing philosophy in itself simply implies attention to detail, it is the dichotomy which makes your far right status incomprehensible. Are you just so deeply immersed in left wing culture that this stuff is invisible to you? This isn't meant as a dig, that's actually something I had to deal with in the past myself. I don't think you are a cuckoo, because it seems to me you have too much self esteem to waste your time pretending to be right wing to trick nobodies on obscure debate forums, but I do think there is a reason others consider you suspicious, and it's not paranoia.

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If this is true then you're the kind of far-right winger that sets Hlynka off on rants about how you're essentially a Democrat. Like, what kind of non-leftwinger doesn't know that the response to BLM was ALM, not some vague opposition symmetrical to the one towards "It's ok to be white"?

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Even though I’d seen that clip before, I had to turn it off less than two minutes into it because every time I watch it the urge to [fedpost] becomes overwhelming.