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 -
This wasn't a problem for the vast majority of America's history. It's been an issue in modern times. The Left was fine up until either FDR or Great Society. The Right was fine until Trump.
FDR was elected in 1932. Trump was elected in 2016. That is an 84-year gap, during which Democrats accrued massive political capital via the public purse, and Republicans expended vast amounts of political capital trying (and failing) to restrain them.
What was the point of that effort? Why should it be continued? Obviously the democrats have not and will not agree that there is any need for restraint, and obviously a large portion of America sees nothing wrong with this attitude. Are they mistaken? If so, can you persuade them of this fact to a degree that will result in them changing their behavior?
Shit, where's the modern monetary theorists up ins? Aren't we due for a lecture about how the deficit isn't actually a problem, how the National budget isn't actually like a household budget, how debt isn't real?
Most of the rest of them are at least borderline trump-deranged, tribally, but I'll happily accept & promote a random one-off stimulus check to everyone. Though I'll save any attempted lectures (which take too much finesse for me to ever deliver convincingly) for those who seem to be honestly pained by their beliefs I think are mistaken, rather than wheeling one out for OP who is always just looking for a new 'republican bad' angle.
For this thread, I would just note that we had frequent economic depressions until FDR, and none since. So not only am I aboard the FDR & trump trains, I'm looking for which party will angle for that 'socially conservative, fiscally liberal' winning side in the post-trump future, and am happy to see others affirming that position now. I think the economic Charybdis looming serious disaster isn't being negligently forestalled at all, and is merely a mirage. To the extent that nationalists and reds at least go with your logic of not playing the losing game one-sidedly, then there's some hope of using the economy as a tool to fight off the actual cultural looming disaster.
For the record, I'll hear you out. MMT seems crazy to me, but I'm policy-starved, and politics runs on hope. If we're going to be acting as though MMT is true, I'd like to at least hear the optimistic case.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Republican party also gained quite a lot of political capital from their stances during this time. They were even able to effectively box Bill Clinton in and get him to balance the budget somewhat. These were popular measures that helped win Republicans elections, since there were enough voters who valued these things relative to other priorities to make it so.
Again, the idea that balanced budgets are political poison akin to cooperating in a defector's game is an overwhelmingly modern phenomenon based on how the electorate moved. The problem is the modern electorate.
The Republican party gained a lot of political capital through those stances... and then failed to fix the issue in any meaningful way, and then Bush blew the budget out on ruinous foreign wars, and Obama blew the budget out in the usual progressive ways, and now the stance itself is no longer credible. 2nd-term Obama was the point at which I personally committed to never caring about the issue again; fiscal responsibility sounds good, but you just straight-up cannot get there from here, and scarce political capital needs to be allocated where it might plausibly do some good.
How did the modern electorate get to be the modern electorate? Did 85 years of massive redistribution have anything to do with it?
The median voter's commitment to deficit reduction was indeed waning by the 90s, so the achievements of Clinton and Paul Ryan were short-lived. It was still alive to some extent which is how they were possible in the first place, but this was no longer the 70s or even the 80s.
Simple: The primary problem is that voters in both parties really, really love shovelling money to the Olds. The issue is Social Security and Medicare. D's like giving money to the poor, which disproportionately goes to Blacks, but that's not the primary issue. It's the voters worshiping SS + Medicare.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How has the electorate changed to make this the case?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
An interesting thought experiment. What if, after 1932, the Republican party was socially conservative but fiscally liberal. It might be that we are at the same position as our current timeline vis-a-vis the debt, but with much lower crime, multiculturalism, and degeneracy.
Assuming that spending is constrained by external factors, it doesn't make sense for one party to restrain spending so their enemies can spend twice as much.
Reminds me of the "good" kings throughout history who handed a giant treasury surplus to their successors only to have their successors blow it on extravagance and foreign wars. Today we remember Henry VIII, the spender and warmonger, not Henry VII, the prudent saver.
Although I'll note that Henry VIII's wars are one of the least remembered things about him, compared to his personal life, religious policy, or even diplomacy (Field of the Cloth of Gold). All that money culminated in... burning down Edinburgh, occupying Boulogne for six years, and selling that town back to the French. Almost as much of a waste of money as the Great Society.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link