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 -
Just as follow on, and in the spirit that everything related to Trump is culture war:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/19/politics/trump-voters-of-color-analysis/
Pull quotes:
This fact should be the smoking gun that we're not talking about the same thing that we used to with the term "racism". The american public pretends to believe that Trump was more racist than Wallace.
This is political realignment from the inside. It's slow, it could reverse or it could continue. I believe very strongly that the political coalitions are going to change composition quite a bit in the coming decade. I don't know what the issues will be, but the separation between the working class (see our discussion in last week's thread) and the middle class is becoming big enough to win elections on. The question is which party will get which side, and in what quantities.
As a point for discussion, if (and it's a big "if) the Republicans fully take up the flag of the working class, would that make them the left-leaning party?
I think a lot of this is people leaving the Democratic Party not so much because they agree with the GOP, but because the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class on almost every issue, and has become the party of the elites and sneering at the working class.
Hispanics are Catholics generally, and thus are pretty strong Christians (at least culturally), strongly pro family, and are thus pretty conservatives on most social issues. They also fled parts of the world run by criminal gangs and would thus be fairly strong on law and order stuff. Blacks are usually conservative Protestants and thus also pro family, and so on. They might also want the supposed left-leaning economic policies, but on social issues, they’re pretty conservative.
Which gives the democrats two major problems. First, they’re not only against these more conservative social policies, but they often sneer at anyone not fully on board with them. They aren’t just generally in favor of LGBT stuff, they insist on drag queen story hour, full on drag shows in elementary schools, and so on. Secondly, they are not even trying to deliver any of the kinds of policies that would help the working class. The last minimum wage increase was just after the financial crisis of 2008. Biden had both houses and all he really needed to do was ignore the parliamentarian— who he can outright fire — to put a minimum wage increase in a budget bill where it might have passed. He chose not to. Instead the big economic policies of the moment are environmentalist infrastructure and paying off student loans (and he was blocked on the loans).
Now if you oppose the woke stuff, and don’t like being lectured to about it, that’s a strike on the democratic side. They aren’t upholding your beliefs and values. In fact the6 often mock you for holding them. They’re teaching things in your kids schools you don’t like, and often at the expense of very necessary skills that your kids need for their future.
And there’s nothing gained by holding your nose for them. They’re not working on making working class lives better. They sold out the train engineers. They aren’t raising the minimum wage at all, they’re not paying for trade schools or on the job training. They’re not teaching your kids to read. They’re not even doing anything about drugs and crime. They care about Ukraine, they care that the upper class failsons are unable to pay back their loans. They care about the cultural interests of the laptop class.
There’s a misconception that Hispanic Catholicism is a driving force in Hispanics moving towards the GOP(which does appear to be a trend over time, but one with lots of spikes and stops and steps backwards)- in reality, while church attending Hispanic Catholics probably vote more GOP than non-attending Hispanics, a lot of the GOP’s recent strength with Hispanics has been their ability to run up their margins among Hispanic evangelicals until they’re voting almost like white evangelicals. I don’t deny that the recent prominence of the abortion issue has probably hurt the democrats among Hispanic Catholics(who I would, BTW, not associate with particularly strong homophobia compared to either white Catholics or other Hispanics), but the trend is utterly swamped by the rightward lurch among Hispanic evangelicals.
If Desantis/Abbott/Trump/whoever is in Arizona can figure out how to get church attending Hispanic Catholics voting like Hispanic Protestants, that’s huge and also unexpected.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link