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 -
I have previously discussed Ron DeSantis's prospects of becoming GOP nominee here and probably back on the old sub as well, but events of the past few weeks make me want to revisit the topic. During this period, several op-eds appeared suggesting that DeSantis is already flaming out. The biggest evidence for this is polling, which shows him losing ground to Donald Trump. While I think these reports are a bit premature—after all, polls from a year out aren't exactly the most reliable, especially concerning a candidate who hasn't even announced yet—they seem to underscore a point I had made previously. Ron DeSantis is a great candidate if the goal is to wed the Trump spirit to a candidate that doesn't want to directly invoke Trump. Some call him Trump-lite but that's not really an accurate description. He knows that the Republican party desperately needs to move on from Trump if they want to win national elections, as most Americans find direct MAGA invocations and claims of rigged elections to be distasteful at best and dangerous at worst. There's value in appearing to be the reasonable Republican who might have a shot at winning the general election in the face of an unpopular octogenarian. On the other hand, he knows that Trump has a large base that is now well-integrated in the party and is distrustful of Romney-type moderates who will sell them out to wealthy elites if it puts an extra nickel in their pockets and will play dead in the face of woke excess. RINOs, in other words. The Tea Party and later Trump reinvigorated a Republican party that had been moribund in the wake of Bush's disastrous second term, and the voters who made 2016 possible won't stand for some squish. They need someone who will fight.
DeSantis sought to split this difference. He balanced effective, bland government with culture-war ostentation. He refused to kowtow to Trump but was reluctant to criticize him. He built up plenty of media buzz. The thought among his supporters was that he would have the upper hand on both Trump wannabes and boring moderates in the primary. And then Trump himself announced his candidacy, and started attacking DeSantis directly, even though DeSantis hadn't (and still hasn't) declared. When he finally announces (probably in June), the primary fight will be a bloodbath. And no, DeSantis can't wait until 2028 because his buzz is solely based around his supposed candidacy. If he sits this one out he's a popular governor who no one outside of Florida gives a fuck about, at least not until 2027, when he'll have to compete with whoever the next wunderkind is, assuming Trump isn't running yet again.
The smart money says that DeSantis would have a shot in the general but is hamstrung by the fact that, having to go against Trump directly, he'll have to run further to the right than a general electorate will find acceptable, and will come out of the primary looking like another MAGA extremist. This is the conventional wisdom but I think this wisdom is wrong. First, DeSantis would have a tough row to hoe in the general even if the GOP handed him the nomination on a silver platter. What's the man know for so far? His COVID response put him on the map, but COVID isn't going to be an issue in 2024, and he'll have to do better than pointing out an isolated glory from four years ago. Everything else he's been in the news for has been culture war bait that is of dubious effectiveness, has nearly no national relevance, and is distasteful to moderates in any event. Part of the reason why Republicans were so disappointing in last year's midterms is because they failed to address things voters actually cared about. As much as the GOP would rag on Biden for inflation, they never presented a coherent plan for how to deal with it. No one knows what Ron DeSantis thinks about inflation. No one knows what the thinks about healthcare. No one knows what he thinks about crime, or how he plans to explain how Florida's crime rate is worse than both New York's and California's. When he's on the debate stage with Biden, what's he going to do, talk about the STOP WOKE act and the Don't Say Gay bill?
But then, he had an opening. Earlier this month, "Justice for All", a new single by Donald Trump and the J6 choir, went to No. 1 on iTunes. The single features president Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over a choir of heavily autotuned January 6th prisoners singing "The Star Spangled Banner" over prison phones. To most people on the left, this was just a hilarious example of how nutty the right is. But it gives DeSantis a chance. This is, for once, proof positive that there's no outflanking Trump on the right. No amount of MAGA-adjacentness is going to cut it here, when Trump represents the platonic ideal of MAGA. DeSantis's culture warring has proven that he's no RINO squish; now he can use this credibility to fight Trump directly. Come out directly and say that Trump's implicit support of the J6 prisoners, most of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement, is a disgrace to the idea of law and order and legitimizes left-wing violence. Come out and say that the 2020 election wasn't rigged. Come out and directly attack every MAGA conspiracy theory out there. Run on all the good, boring things he's done in Florida that no one has paid attention to, like environmental legislation, which has greater GOP interest in the wake of the East Palestine debacle. There's little doubt that if he wins Iowa, or New Hampshire, or wherever else, Trump will claim that the election was rigged, so get out ahead of it. He'll lose the Trump faithful but he wasn't winning with them anyway, and the rest of the party will be able to get back to some semblance of normal.
Of course. I wrote all this before I saw the news last night of the latest developments in the Disney scandal. I thought his move against Disney was stupid at the time, and said so here, but all of the DeSantis supporters assured me that this was the right move. It was clear almost immediately that simply ending the special district wasn't going to work, and I wasn't surprised when he said that the legislature would be dealing with the issue at a date that was conveniently after the election. Around this time, Bob Iger came back as Disney CEO, and apparently realized that a drawn-out court battle wasn't in the company's best interests, and it looked like the two sides had reached the kind of compromise that allowed both parties to save face: The state would get a couple token board members and everyone would forget about the whole thing. Then, at some point, DeSantis got greedy and made a deal that looked too good to be true—the entire district would be replaced with a new one whose board would consist entirely of political appointees, including a self-described children's activist and a self-described Christian nationalist, along with some wealthy donors for good measure. Some even went so far as to suggest that the board could monitor the content of Disney's theme park programs. The new board took over last month with relatively little fanfare.
And then, yesterday, weeks after the crucial documents had been signed, it became clear that the whole thing was one big setup, and that Disney had completely outfoxed DeSantis. It turns out that, back in February, the existing RCID board had entered into an agreement with Disney that devolved almost all of its powers. At least the powers that would have given DeSantis any leverage over the company. The board will still oversee infrastructure, but won't have any ability to influence development. Florida officials are obviously livid and the new board is seeking legal redress. I won't comment on the legality of the whole mess because I don't know, but even if the state has a good case against Disney, it doesn't really matter. First, the RCID was a public body and thus subject to sunshine laws. The whole thing was done out in the open—the agreement was posted online so you didn't even need a records request, the meeting adopting the agreement was public, etc.—so the only excuse DeSantis has for getting into this mess was not anticipating some kind of funny business and not noticing that anything was wrong until weeks after the deal was done. Second, it doesn't matter because any litigation won't be resolved until well after the election is over, and I doubt anyone will be issuing preliminary injunctions enabling the board to operate as it desires. One of the centerpieces of DeSantis's culture war has been delayed significantly due almost exclusively to the incompetence of public officials. Who knows, maybe this will blow over, but it significantly damages any attempt by DeSantis to run on competent administration.
I'm just going to throw out personal experiences and anecdata right here. I'm a lifelong Republican, living in a purple region of a purple state. I've been campaigning for friends in the primary election coming up for local campaigns, knocking on doors and going to events. I've spoken to somewhere around 500 likely Republican and 200 Democratic primary voters in the past two months. This is what I'm seeing...
-- The Rs are very much split between die-hard down-with-the-ship MAGA who will not vote against Trump, embarrassed Republicans who barely want to be Rs any more but are kinda stuck, and R registered voters whose knowledge of these issues is so shallow and uninvolved that they're not predictably committed to any ideology. The political equivalents of Pentecostals, Episcopalians, and Christmas-Easter Catholics; one group passionate and moronic, one group that treats what should be a whole-life commitment as a social club that they really only stay in because it already exists, and one group that doesn't really know what they believe but they're pretty sure they'll believe the hell out of it when they get around to it. I would guess the MAGA has the slim plurality, but not a strong enough one to be certain of victory depending how the Christmas-Easter contingent breaks.
-- There are really smart and interesting Trump supporters in the world, including a good number on this website, but his base is the Lumpen-Proletariat. The downscale end of the Republican party is where Trump gets yardage against Desantis. Desantis can carry the McMansion Suburbs that Biden did better with than HRC, but Trump dominates the houses with an old car parked on the lawn.
-- School board fights are vicious around here where they used to be staid. In my two local school districts, there are cross-party slates of people violently worked up about Trans Issues, opposing a group of Covidiots who would probably still have schools closed if they had their druthers. There are going to be vastly more schoolboard fights across the country this year, I predict school CW will dominate early primary headlines as they win some elections and implement new policies. Things are going to get much worse on that front, especially because the sole actual policy that seems universal is that all school board business should be operated by livestream. So (no offense to present company) assholes on the internet from Ireland to Russia to Canada to Missouri are going be able to tune into my small town schoolboard to criticize and look for something to turn into CW fuel? It's going to be a bloodbath.
-- Democrats are in a pissy mood. Even in very local races, where we're not CWing or really doing anything to do with national politics, nice old ladies would scream at me that they're never voting for any Republican ever again. This correlated strongly in a neighborhood with knocking on R neighbors' doors and getting a hard MAGA type. I'm not sure there's really any traction to crossing the aisle unless the R candidate renounces Trump. Desantis will not draw significant Democrat votes unless he personally renounces Trump/J6/etc. He will not be able to walk the line between the two, Trump must be slain before any moderate Reagan Republican run is possible.
I'm not sure where all that leaves your Desantis theories, and it's all just anecdotes collected by me personally (a white guy in a blazer or a patagucci vest depending on weather) knocking on doors and getting responses. But R candidates ignore it at their own peril.
More options
Context Copy link
I'd rather De Santis sit tight in Florida for another four years, and work on cleaning it up, and let Trump lose another election and maybe finally go to that TV show host position he is desperately overdue for. Because the alternative is a huge fight between De Santis and Trump that will only hurt the Republicans, will still lose them 2024 and will both tarnish DeSantis image and possibly prevent him from doing any good in Florida and from running later.
Is this actually true? I see a lot of charges of "parading", "entering", "disorderly conduct" and so on.
This is not true, it's reverse of the truth actually - his supposed candidacy is based on the fact that he created a lot of buzz. It'd be a shame to waste it all on a futile fight with Trump.
That's baloney, the left-wing violence has been legitimized long before - at least since 2020, where widespread BLM/Antifa riots had met with warm embrace from the politicians, but actually earlier - similar, though smaller, violent outbursts in 2016 and earlier were also equally embraced. Laying it at the foot on J6 is going to cut it only for people who have no concept of time and no memory beyond yesterday's headlines.
So, lie.
So, alienate your base.
So, pander to people who hate your guts, and paint yourself with "blue tribe" virtue signals, because that's what Republican base would love.
East Palestine wasn't an environmental legislation failure. It's like saying that limiting the thermostat settings at homes would be popular because there was a series of arsons nearby, and since both deal with heat...
And so, you are proposing that he'd fight - Republicans. A brilliant strategy.
Yeah, interesting that the suggested tactic for Desantis, who has achieved massive success by directly going after Democratic malfeasance and punching back against lefties on social issues, is to... pander heavily to Democratic voters.
I mean yeah he may have to slide towards the middle for the general, and as @Rov_scam has now helpfully noted he has the tactical ability to do so by pointing at certain parts of his record.
But to follow this suggested strategy would effectively throw away the entire persona he's crafted AND suborn himself to the very narrative he's aiming to overthrow or at least divert.
"Pump up your reputation for being Cathedral-friendly and promise to follow Cathedral-friendly policy suggestions, and then hope the Cathedral lets you win."
And it's not like Republicans didn't try exactly the same strategy before. There was Romney. There was McCain. Both were duly declared literally Hitlers and both lost. But of course, true pandering to socialists has never been tried yet.
That's arguably the real elephant in the room.
Trump was in many ways a result of a repeated failed strategy to moderate the message, then getting shellacked anyway.
Desantis seems to be pulling off the impossible. Someone who appeases the GOPe whilst actually engaging in red meat culture war policies that should attract the base too.
The thing worth admitting is that it's unclear if he can attract moderates while being called "fascist" by most of the media at once, but early signs are promising.
Being called "fascist" by most of the media at once is a given, comes with being a Republican candidate, and has been so since "fascist" has been a thing (really, it's amazing how fast this word came into use in US politics - even before WW2!) - so, since there were Republicans elected since then, it's possible to deal with it successfully.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm pretty sure DeSantis knows that it is unwise to take tactical advice from one's enemies. In fact, him knowing this is a large part of what differentiates him (and Trump) from the run-of-the-mill GOP candidate.
That's been consistent, yeah. By all accounts he seems to have a crack team (as much as politics allows these days) who are loyal enough to not leak things and know who the enemy is and to disregard enemy input entirely.
The broad rule to refuse any sort of interview or interaction with 'non-friendly' (read: actively hostile) media outlets is a good example. Basically prevents anyone from becoming at all dependent on such outlets for coverage, and probably reduces the risk that anyone on his team might end up angling for a spot at such a network.
He runs what could be the very definition of a 'tight ship' compared to Trump's leaky tugboat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I am always slightly amused when people cite fluctuations in poll numbers as proof of any politicians' overall chances well before the election, especially since polls have had a rough few years missing some election outcomes in the late-stage polling.
In the leadup to the 2022 election the polls had Desantis with a commanding lead over Crist but gave him somewhere around 52-54% of the vote.
He won with 60%. Okay, 59.4, but who is counting?
There is very little question that Desantis owns the Florida vote, which is a hefty stick to swing around.
Does this mean Desantis is inherently going to overperform? Nah.
Has Desantis been consistently underestimated, over and over again, by people who WANT to believe he's a buffoon and thus keep stepping into 'traps' that ultimately raise Desantis' profile?
Yes.
Trump is the big unpredictable variable in all this, and I'm curious to see what Desantis' team's containment strategy is.
And it just got interesting with NY handing down an Indictment and Desantis signalling he is somewhat taking Trump's side in all this.
I'm more genuinely surprised that Disney would take an action that would IMMEDIATELY raise the ire of the incoming board in such a way that they now KNOW that they're not being dealt with in good faith.
Indeed, what's to stop the new board from simply ignoring the agreement at the next meeting and daring Disney to bring the heat.
This is basically a sovereignty fight, and the way our governmental system currently works, a state government will win that fight, every time. Unless Disney cedes its property to the Federal Government or something and we know that ain't happening.
By all appearances, it now looks like Disney is actually afraid of what the new Commissioners might do. This isn't some flex on Disney's part showing off their authority, this was a move that at best is a delay tactic (maybe hoping for a new governor?) and at worst an invitation to throw down, which is just not a good idea when Disney has literal billions upon billions of dollars of capital stuck to the ground in the state.
More options
Context Copy link
It's a horse race. No one has any idea until the primaries begin. We can obviously exclude someone like Nikki Haley from consideration, but otherwise it's a coin toss between Trump and DeSantis and will likely remain this way until at least Feb. 2024. Trump suffered similar misfortune and gaffes but still sailed through primaries.
I don't think being outsmarted by Bob Iger changes this . It does offer some insights into how he will lead as president. He's very much entrenched in the culture wars and traditionalism...unlike Trump, no one is voting for him because of immigration or to 'return jobs to America'.
More options
Context Copy link
I think Desantis has a better shot than most people give him credit for. He’s basically the GOP redemption arc, if you like. Trump might excite the base, but he’s got just as many people — even in republican circles— who want nothing to do with him. I expect the negative reaction to grow after the indictments, as this would be hard to justify in a candidate for any office. I’m not sure if Trump can legally be president, but the thought that we’d have a president of the United States governing while having a felony conviction is uncommon, and no one has ever done it. Trump is thus reduced to a third party spoiler, not really a candidate in the traditional sense.
Biden has several negatives. He hasn’t yet curbed inflation to a degree noticed on main street. He seems to be suffering from dementia. His administration is inept. He’s been hung out to dr6 several times by the courts for illegally trying to order things done without going through channels (once in mandatory vaccination through OSHA, once in the student loan relief). There really aren’t things that Biden can say he’s done for the general public that helped anyone. He won the first time as a near stealth candidate (helped greatly by the perception that it was about COVID) avoiding impromptu events and interviews, not holding rallies. He can’t get away with that without COVID, and given some of his gaffes during planned speeches (at one point looking for a long dead colleague in the audience) I don’t think they can hide his dementia at a rally.
So really as it stands, there’s Desantis — who’s competent, Trump — who is a populist who says things that the mainstream rejects, and Biden — who doesn’t seem too aware of his surroundings.
More options
Context Copy link
You've misjudged the politics. Trump was already the leftward turn on policy for the Republican party. He's against cutting Medicare/Medicaid, wanted to tax the rich heavily to pay for infrastructure projects, was by far the most pro-gay GOP candidate ever, and made a big deal of signing major reductions in criminal justice efforts. He also was exceptionally dovish by GOP standards.
There is no outflanking that on the left, and Trump wasn't getting criticism because he was too far right on policy - he got attacked as the boorish tribune of declasse plebs; all those rural white men ... YUCK! Can't be any less cool than that. Didn't anyone tell them the Future is Female? And takes a train in a big city to an email job? Deviating significantly from a Trump-ish attitude signifies that the candidate isn't with the base, and that's no way to win a primary.
No, the way DeSantis attacks Trump is on details. DeSantis can sell himself as the type of executive who actually can do things. This means culture war stuff about defunding woke educational bureaucracies, sure. But it also means basic good-governance stuff like public order, disaster recovery, COVID management, firing rogue prosecutors, etc. (Whether or not DeSantis can make good on this is another question - he's benefitted mightily from having good connections with the friendly legislature in FL while governor; he's significantly less well-connected or -liked in Congress, and there's no guarantee that a Pres. DeSantis would have majorities in both houses).
The RCID thing is not as big as you make it out to be. I'm not even sure people remember why they were mad at Disney in the first place over this.
Desantis seems like he has the ability to pull friendly appointees from high profile state positions(both Florida and elsewhere) a lot more easily than trump, helped along by just being a better boss/personnel manager.
Being a disastrous people manager and completely unable to assemble a working team is the source of the most Trump's failures. In fact, he was the one who hired the lawyer on whose words the current accusations against him are based, didn't he? DeSantis would do well to be much better at this - and there's not much space to be worse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yep, MAGA has it's visionary, it needs someone who knows how to govern and implement it. I'm not sure DeSantis is that guy but there's room for someone to be.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I believe Ron attempting to use government overreach and taxpayer money to punish an independent business for expressing opinions he didn’t like has got to be the most anti-small government move around. I believe it will be an excellent sales point for every Democratic nominee and will sway over true moderates who see the hypocrisy.
More options
Context Copy link
Your theorized pivot is tidy, appealing, and, as the kids say, “cope.”
People have been theorizing a moderate backlash to Trumpism since roughly 2017. Each new headline is met with thinkpieces about how the GOP can finally jettison this guy and go back to repealing Obamacare. The most credible time was after the election, when Pence shot down the Eastman plan. It didn’t happen then, and it won’t happen now, because the GOP doesn’t want to lose.
Trump has the moderate wing over a barrel. He is absolutely able to parlay his outsider branding into a protest vote big enough to hand the ‘24 election to the Democrats. A drawn-out primary battle with DeSantis will ruin the guy for some fraction of the Republican base. No, as long as Trump wants the job, the party can’t moderate too far.
I agree with you about Trump but I don't know what other option DeSantis has. If he goes full MAGA the best case scenario is that he denies Trump the nomination by splitting the vote, but even that's a long shot. What do you think he should do, were you advising him? Telling him not to run isn't an option.
If he isn't willing to wait until 2028 and telling him not to run isn't an option, then I'd tell him to spend large sums of money on a marketing company run by a close friend/family relative of mine. It wouldn't change his chances of victory at all (they would stay at a solid 0), but if he's stupid enough to think taking on Trump in 2024 is a good idea it would be unethical of me to let him keep his money.
More options
Context Copy link
Hm.
I want to say run perpendicular. Hit more moderate issues and avoid contradicting Trump on his traditional talking points: jobs and exceptionalism. Do some deficit hawking, at least if that’s compatible with whatever he tries to say about inflation. Maybe immigration works out okay for Ron; I don’t know how well his stunts in that area have been received.
That might all just be a recipe for disaster, or it could be compatible with Ron seeking a VP seat. Not really sure how that works historically.
Honestly, I think it’ll be a moot point; Trump will call him “Small Dick Ron” or something, and the campaign will be over.
That seems to me even more of a surefire way for him to get slaughtered. I mean, who the hell is this supposed to appeal to? People who like Trump enough that they'll be offended by Ron attacking him but who don't like him enough to actually vote for him? People who want Trump but don't think he can win but a guy who says all the same things as Trump but isn't Trump can? He's not getting the VP seat because he already refused to kiss the ring when he declined to seek Trump's endorsement, and Trump is already pounding him mercilessly even though he's not in the race yet, so that ship has sailed. There's literally nothing to gain at this point by trying to appease Trump or Trumplicans. I'm not saying it will work, but I think taking the offensive is really his only shot. Call out Trump for not building the wall. Call out Trump for criticizing states that pass restrictive abortion bans (right after signing the six week ban in Florida which may or may not actually be popular). Call out Trump for his womanizing. If he says Ron "Desanctimonious", lean into it and say something to the effect of "It's easy to appear sanctimonious to someone with no morals whatsoever". He's already implicitly called out Trump for the Stormy Daniels indictment, saying “Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair, I can't speak to that". He said the thing was politically motivated, which is so obviously true that the New York Times isn't even saying otherwise, so it's not like he's toadying by criticizing it, but it's best that people are reminded that the man was banging a porn star while his wife was at home with their newborn son. Say that the Jan 6 committee is political theater but nonetheless lambast the rioters and Trump for election denial and all the rest of it. He doesn't have to be moderate, he just has to criticize Trump. Then bring up all the stuff he's done in Florida that's effective and say that Trump could never have that much of an impact. No of this is necessarily true, I just don't think there's any way to tiptoe around the issue anymore.
More options
Context Copy link
Desantis needs to run in the primary as ‘trump but gets stuff done instead of getting distracted by his ego’. Remember the Republican base, even most of the trump republicans, doesn’t actually like trumps personal behavior, so hitting him there is also a good strategy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I actually think Trump has rightly called out DeSantis’s bigger weakness which is his previous positions on cuts to Medicare and social security. I haven’t looked deeply into how RDS is navigating this topic but if he cannot effectively get around it trump will pound him mercilessly on it and no amount of tough talk about Micky Mouse will help RDS.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link