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 -
DID YOU READ!?
A province's government changed, the second largest politcal party switched from vehemently pro to anti-lockdown with the Pro-lockdown losing their jobs, Trudeau's government is basically crippled all of his policies since have failed as seen with his gun ban falling through...
And the emergencies act failed to be extended, the relevant powers were lost when its 7 (not 9) limit expired without the power to extend it.
The fetishism of defeat. The desire to be powerless in the case of clear and undeniable victory is disgusting.
Your enemies can be absolutely as irredeemable, corrupt, and tyrannical as their worst critics imagine, AND STILL BE WEAK.
The hell do you want? Do you want the CBC to pat you on the back and say "No its OK. You won"
Grow up. Politics is war by other means, casualties on your own side are acceptable in the pursuit of victory.
And the truckers won a complete victory. Every freedom I had lost from 2019 to 2022, everything I expected to never get back and to suffer across decades of insurgency trying to claw back... Was restored, mostly within a month, and the rest in half a year.
THAT IS TOTAL VICTORY.
I will not let blackpilled moldbuggians tarnish it with their own impotence.
FLYOVER country won whilst all the theory-cells and blackpilled cosmopolitan right wing wing intellectual wrung their hands... Becuase the flyover rubes are better than you. More fit to rule. More fit for combat. More able to organize. And now it is the job of the right wing intellectuals to catch up with the 40 year old small businessmen and conpsiracy theorists who've shown themselves more capable that the entire right wing political class
Be less antagonistic.
More options
Context Copy link
Everybody is anti-lockdown now. In fact, nobody even knows anybody who advocated for the lockdown except their political enemies. It's not fashionable now, so everybody has been always supporting what is fashionable now, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. This is not victory - once the need arises, the agenda will turn back as quickly and you'll find the same policies implemented again - only now, with full knowledge that there are no costs, except maybe having to move on to the next cushy job as the winds change. This rotation happened in Canada, happened in the US, happened in many other places. Attributing it to the power of the protest is a delusion.
I don't really see how Trudeau failing to pass the largest gun ban in history of gun bans (while still feeling free to enact various smaller gun bans by executive order) means he is "crippled" on "all policies". This ban was not especially popular before the protests, and claiming its failure is the direct result of the protests - and that it extends not only to this one but all policies - is a bold claim that needs some better substantiation than just proclaiming it.
No, I want some sign that it's not business as usual for all involved except declaring fascism on demand is now confirmed ok.
Man, whatever makes you feel better. You think introducing fascism, doing exactly what they wanted, taking away every freedom with no consequences whatsoever, causing thousand deaths and billions of economic damage on the way, then giving some of them back when the need is no longer there, and to make it a total mockery, make an "investigation", which confirms - yeah, we did everything exactly the right way and will do it again - this looks like victory? Well, your "victory" doesn't look anything like what I would want.
Who needs "decades of insurgency" if you have fascism on demand? The government would just take your freedoms when they are an impediment to them, do what they need, then declare "ok we're done, you can proceed as before" and you'd be happy. After all, they have stopped punching you and even though they didn't return your lunch money, they didn't take any more than all you had - until the next time they want your lunch money - so, everything is well and it is TOTAL VICTORY. If that's victory, how does the defeat look like? Some weird BDSM fantasy where the government comes to you personally to oppress you on schedule with whips and shiny leather? That's not how it works. Nobody cares about you to oppress you when they don't need to. When they need to, they have the option to get their way, when they want it and how they want it, and you can do absolutely nothing about it. In other times, enjoy your total freedom and TOTAL VICTORY.
Except I don't see the victory. Removing the restrictions a bit later than the other countries who didn't experience the "victory" sounds like copium, not victory.
Capable of what? The only organized protests that happened have been crushed with the rubes that gave their lives to them now have their lives thoroughly ruined, bankrupted and getting insanely long sentences, while their supposed leaders are afraid to even say something in support of them. All freedom restrictions are removed when and only when the government decided it's no longer necessary for their purposes, with full confirmation that every single one of them was legal and fully kosher to use again when desired. No significant pushback happened to neither lockdowns, nor nationwide riots and abandonment of the rule of law, nor to the wholesale overhaul of the election system, nor to the complete absorption of the big business into the woke agenda. Where is this superior capability deployed and what is it achieving? TOTAL VICTORY?
NAME ONE LONG SENTENCE. ONE.
You are projecting Jan 6 and the failure and symbolic flagellations of it onto the trucker convoy.
Two entire different protest in two vastly different countries with VASTLY different outcomes.
Canada removed restrictions FASTER than the US after the Trucker convoy. In the Angloshpere and Europe it was by no means that the restriction would be removed at all. After the Convoy and sister protests in Europe and Australia exploded these contries opened faster and removed travel restrictions faster than the US.
The American restrictions on entry were only removed in May of this year, last month.
Stop projecting your American Doomer bullshit onto other Countries. Canada had a political revolution over the past year, the Netherlands had a complete political upset with the Dutch Farmer aligned BBB winning major political offices.
The fact YOU are under the thumb of your elite with no effective means of resistance or organization becuase Trump sucked all the energy out of the room and then tried to bargain it away to the elite, does not mean that resistance has failed in other countries.
It isn't often that we get a mention in this place, but as in all things, foreign takes on smaller nations' politics are nigh-universally mistaken. This is no exception.
First-off: people saw BBB's victory coming a mile away. Something isn't an 'upset' when it's been well-predicted in advance, so I'll take issue with the phrasing you're using here.
Even aside from that, this kind of thing isn't unprecedented, or really uncommon in Dutch politics. Charismatic protest movements do really well in elections all the time. In this millennium alone we've had the LPF, TON, PVV, FVD, and now BBB doing the whole run-around; when you get a new bunch of these guys every election cycle or so it's not so much EXCITINGLY NEW as it is business as usual.
Except, you know, that doesn't sell clicks, and foreigners love to map stuff abroad onto their own politics and vice versa, so now and then we get to roll our eyes. So it goes.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not "projecting", I am specifically considering them both as parts of the same phenomenon, because behind the local details, it's the same system at work in both places. As the comment on your claim "Becuase the flyover rubes are better than you.". They may be better than me, for sure, but I am not seeing them achieving anything near TOTAL VICTORY. I'd love for them to do this, but that's not what I am seeing happening. Nor in Canada, nor in the US. In fact, in Canada even worse than in the US, since Canada does not have US's constitutional freedom protections and it is way further on the road to fascism than the US, in general. One bad gun bill failing doesn't reverse all of that.
If, as you say, the flyover rubes were some kind of super-predator capable of overwhelming revolutionary victories, the same victories would be happening, many times over, in the US. They are not. Which puts this claim superiority into question. Unless Canadian rubes have some specific qualities that US rubes do not - which ones then?
Very small number of people cares about entry restrictions in the US (and, I suspect, except for the US-Canada border, same goes for Canada). The flyover country person certainly doesn't. All the rest of the restrictions - important ones, ones that affect an average small business owner in a small flyover city - has been removed way earlier. The international ones lasted that long because nobody cared for that enough to push it. If you show that the internal restriction removal was affected by the protests, we'd have some basis for discussing it. But "we protested and in mere 8 months we got restrictions nobody cared about removed" is not something that can be seriously considered.
If we consider the internal ones, the ones that affect the average person, I find this claim very suspicious. "The US" is very different - Florida, California, Idaho, Alabama and New York had very different restrictions and timelines. So claiming Canada removed all the restrictions faster, and this was due to the protests (and not the number of cases and deaths dropping, for example) - I think needs some better support than just capital letters.
I'll believe it when I see Trudeau prosecuted for abuses of power or at least a legislation enacted preventing further abuses, and there would be some way to ensure that this legislation would not be just ignored when inconvenient. Until then - enjoy your TOTAL VICTORY until the next time the government needs to squash you like a bug.
More options
Context Copy link
Canada has had no revolution, you are imagining these things. The Netherlands had an election upset, but are the policies the farmers were objecting to -- the plans to shut down much of Dutch agriculture -- going away? No, because they're being pushed by Brussels, and without Nexit, there's nothing to be done.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link