Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.
The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.
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It's gonna be the latter. They simply have no incentive to do any soul searching anymore. The party was in tatters in 2024, now the GOP has sawn off its own legs with a chainsaw.
Unlike 2016, 2020 and maybe even 2024, the GOP cannot escape the "racist party" brand. Groypers are no longer an embarrassing subset of Trump supporters in the distant boonies of the internet. Watch the Dems capitalise this "I told you so" and inject every future piece of cultural output with a primer on "how not to be racist!"
Oh, come on, the GOP has always been "[ontologically] evil party" as compared to the opposition's "stupid party".
The reason the Dems get away with it is that they take care to only perpetrate the kind of racism that's popular. Which is how the party of KKK-style white supremacy seamlessly transitions into the party woke-style white supremacy (and gynosupremacy, and homosupremacy) without ever being properly held to account for either.
The reformers, on the other hand, tend to be accompanied by reactionaries who liked the old racism ('stop, go back' is also reform), which results in the new-racists being able to claim those that created the conditions such that old-racism could transition into new-racism are all old-racists.
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In which reality were they able to escape the "racist party" brand in 2016, 2020, and 2024? How do you even want to escape it when the people who brand you are calling "there is only one race, the human race" a racist slogan, and "be less white" workshops "antiracsist"?
Oh no, will they continue doing what they have been doing without interruption for over a decade?
There is "racist", then there is racist. The difference lies in whether normie voters find those accusations credible.
The GOP convincingly argued that woke activists had rendered the word practically meaningless. When everything from immigration restrictions to perfectly innocuous statements about affirmative action could attract the accusation, it became relatively easy to dismiss the charge as ideological overreach. You bring up perfectly fair criticisms of that rhetoric. My point is not that Democrats have been saying the same things for ten years. It's whether the conduct being criticised, and the public's willingness to believe the criticism, have changed. "Racism is based" is simply not a winnable position in a culture that prides itself for its multi-racial heritage. You could get away with it if you delivered on the economy though. Now it's a double whammy.
I kind of have to press X to doubt on this one, given that it does have racial discrimination codified in law, and endorsed by top corporations. I suppose it's controversial, and not exactly 100% popular, but it's hard to call it not winnable
And which is which? I'll agree that "fuck the darkies" is probably not going to (and shouldn't) pass, but questions like "what is an American" are 100% valid in my opinion. For example we had the establishment right circle the wagons around Vivek Ramaswamy, and clutch pearls over the racism against him, and declare he's "culturally anglo-protestant", only for him to deliver such brilliant electoral strategy like "look at this molested loser".
There is a difference between Americans tolerating racial preferences dressed up in the language of remedying historical discrimination and Americans embracing racial hierarchy as a positive political principle. The white racist has occupied the role of a stock cultural villain in American public consciousness for several generations now. From the civil rights movement onward, opposition to racial discrimination and fascism have become deeply embedded in the country's civic mythology, educational institutions, popular entertainment, and understanding of its own moral progress.
Whatever the inconsistencies of its application, antiracism is not some recent progressive affectation that can simply be discarded once people grow tired of DEI seminars. It is part of the moral grammar that mainstream America uses to understand its national identity. Now you can argue that anti-white racism should be included in that vocabulary, and I bet many people will agree, that doesn't mean the underlying taboo against anti-minority racism has evaporated. The initial rhetoric made sense, constantly injecting grievance literature will never allow black Americans to move on from racial consciousness and even unravel the social fabric. This is not what Bo French and the groyper right believe though.
Are we discussing citizenship, cultural assimilation, shared historical identity, ancestry, or racial membership? These are different propositions with different implications. Simply insisting that the question is legitimate doesn't establish that every proposed answer will be equally acceptable to the public. Vivek's conduct can be criticised without establishing anything about whether Indian-Americans (those born and raised in America, not H1Bs) can be legitimate members of the national community. That question draws so much ire because it is quickly pattern matched to white nationalists who are too shy to admit they believe in racial membership, and they're not at all a minority of right wingers.
Is there? Than explain to me what difference there is. As in, actually is, not just what people tell themselves to feel better about it.
I'm sorry but what does that even mean? If there are inconsistencies in "antiracism" than how is it antiracism, rather than just racism targeted at someone else? It can't just be discarded? How is that different from "no, you don't understand, making the darkies pick our cotton is our way of life!"?
Yes.
The point of the question is to establish which one of these makes you an American (/insert nationality), and who's interests the American government and the American institutions are supposed to serve. And just because some of the possible answers are less palatable than others, doesn't mean that the conversation as a whole is not valid, and even essential to have.
It can, however, be used as an argument that a person who scammed their way to the top, and somehow came away with the idea that being molested is something you can publicly shame the victim with, may not have fully assimilated, despite being born in a given country. From there it can at least be used to put forward the question if being born on a plot of land is enough to determine nationality.
I doubt it. SocJus ideas are quickly pattern matched to all sorts of unpalatable ideas, including racism, which so many people supposedly oppose, and no one bats an eye.
What I believe is happening here is closer to the "what is a woman?" question, where some people get angry simply because they don't have a good answer, because any one they come up with will damn them in some way:
And it's not like there aren't ways out, but getting there also involves things unpalatable to liberals of all kinds (including those calling themselves "classical"), so now the whole conversation is haram.
The difference is between the justification of a policy and the principle it purports to establish. Affirmative action is defended as a corrective to slavery and Jim Crow, not as an affirmation of permanent racial hierarchy. You can reject that justification as incoherent or discriminatory, but it doesn't follow that the public perceives the two propositions as morally equivalent. That distinction matters because my argument concerns cultural legitimacy, not whether progressive racial politics can survive a philosophical consistency test.
It is not, and I already addressed this:
Okay, so what should the criteria be, in your opinion? A civic idea of nationality, a cultural idea, and an explicitly racial one entail very different political arrangements. Americans can disagree about the first two, and they will overwhelmingly reject the latter, so if that's what you're going for, you'll have to readjust your expectations.
If objectionable behaviour is enough to question someone's belonging, why shouldn't we subject Donald Trump to the same scrutiny? Americans gave him a historic victory, despite relentless attacks on his character and legitimacy from the left, and how did he repay them? An economy in tatters and a war that nobody wanted. We can apply your principle, but it will engulf a lot of people in your putative ingroup as well.
Well duh. That doesn't answer whether the association is warranted in particular cases. Sometimes the accusation is lazy pattern matching, other times the speaker really does believe that ancestry should determine membership in the country. When was the last time you raised these concerns with someone who is 100% European and whether they should belong? You're not the only one doing the "noticing".
Closing the borders, and treating your citizens equally independent of their heritage are not mutually exclusive positions.
What do you want, exactly? What rituals should they participate in to prove their belonging? What are the practical policies that will ensure that 350 million people are conforming to the culture, without severely (understatement) impeding on civil liberties? Does this apply to everyone or just non-white people?
There is that minor problem of ~150 million non-white Americans who are not going anywhere.
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Immigration is still probably the Republicans' best issue. For all of the missteps with ICE, that isn't what lost them the election.
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