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 -
The last gasp of the europoor
For years, I've been treated to a steady diet of smug elitism coming from effete liberal Europeans laughing at obese, gun-toting and bible-thumpin' Americans. This reached its crescendo during the George W. Bush administration, took a lull during the Obama years and was resurrected after Trump took office.
The American was an ignoramus, a loud-mouth, a religious fundamentalist and irreversibly stupid. Hopelessly inferior to us sophisticated and cosmopolitan Europeans. Did you know half of Americans don't even own a passport? Most don't even know a second language!? Ha! And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
But as the years went by, these smirks felt increasingly hollow. The economic distance - and with it, standard of living - between the two major partners is growing wider by the day. A young French econ professor at Wharton lays out the bad news over just how deluded his fellow Europeans are on this question. Prominent FT columnists have noted the same.
Yet, perhaps there is still time to save the last shreds of honor for us poor Europeans. For one, the gap in PPP terms doesn't seem to be changing much. Europe has been behind for a long time. In terms of total GDP, the situation is much the same. Another aspect is that Europeans tend to work fewer hours.
While some of these arguments may have some validity, they all feel like desperate excuses. I for one am very much happy to see the insufferable elitism of Europeans slowly being wiped off our collective smug faces. The uncouth and primitive barbarian across the ocean turned out to be smarter and harder-working all along.
Perhaps this can also lead to a more pro-capitalist liberalism in the US. For much of my upbringing, liberal Americans were typified by folks such as Michael Moore and his obsessive admiration of the European welfare state. Colbert's snark about the embarrassing Red State American always felt like an underhanded way to gain favor with declassé elites across the ocean. Ann Coulter's observation that liberal elites in the US loved soccer because it is European surely hit closer to home than many in the media were willing to admit.
Of course, there is still some amount of liberal American simping left in the bag. This is perhaps most obvious whenever there are discussions on urban policy and the words "walkable city" invariably comes up. (To be clear, I actually think Europe gets this part better than the US).
Outside of an increasingly narrowing set of areas where Europe still outperforms, we are slowly witnessing a reshuffling of the deck. The old illusions are slowly coming undone and reddit-tier arguments about the US being a third world hellhole are convincing fewer by the day. At long last, after years of insufferable and unjustified smug elitism, the europoor is finally unmasked as the sham living on a lie that he always was. And I couldn't be happier.
This is pure anecdote; but the main problem I've seen for working class types during my time in Europe was rent and durable goods.
Every other thing is cheaper and of much higher quality than what is available in the US. Eg, a loaf of bread in Parris is .79 cents; the same loaf of bread in the US is either 4.99 or can't be bought at all; eat this dogfood instead.
This seems to be across the board for food, cloths, services, the whole shebang.
On the other hand, Europeans seem to make less money.
On the other other hand, Ya'll work a LOT less, like a lot a lot less.
On the final hand, once you get above US 70k purchasing power equivalence, ya'll seem to pay quite a bit more in taxes.
I'd like to see a breakdown of what the actual differences on the ground are instead of the theoretical economics of it, but I don't trust any of the breakdowns I've seen. Either conservative "European mothers eat every second child to prevent starvation" or librul "Non gmo locally produced by women owned businesses Milk and honey rain from the sky twice a day and three times on weekends."
I doubt it's true for that bread now.
Even in Czech Republic a loaf of bread is now 2€.
The inflation due to the Ukraine war was pretty brutal. Milk went up 50%. Eggs. Vegetables, etc.
The only thing that stayed low is pork, not sure why.
Nice.
Yeah, Us here in the USA aren't seeing much compared to how it around the world. Hooray for hegemonic dominance!
It's too bad our food is so bad though. I really don't get it. We have all the ingredients to make good shit, we just choose not to. To pick an example: I did maintenance and installations for grocery store food service equipment for a while, and it's all top quality steam injected ovens. The dudes that work in the bakeries are sometimes Simpsons squeaky voice teen but usually are at least kinda interested in making something food like.
Flour is flour, salt is salt, yeast is not yeast but even the boggest standardest breadmachine conditioned yeast can make something good.
I can only conclude that it is bad on purpose.
Good to know that it's not just me being a foreigner, someone in the US also agrees that for some reason US can make good food but chooses not to.
I have to ask though, why is US chicken so bad? Was it always this bad? Is it because you guys bred those enormous hypertropied chickens?
No, the muscle chickens can be good!
They obviously aren't as good in slow cook/stew situations, but as bulk protein they are excellent.
Again, it is pure choice. We could marinate this chicken in something acidic with salt aromatics/spices to encourage flavor penetration from aromatics and improve texture and flavor at a cost of basically free at scale because we use those same ingredients in the coating before frying and we need to wash and dry the chicken anyways before breading, or we could make it bad because we don't actually give a shit and want you to suffer.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It probably is still true because France practices price control for bread.
More options
Context Copy link
"due to the ukraine war" is pretty speculative I think. There is the confounding factor of Covid money from the sky programs.
I mean, two of the largest producers of grain in the world went to war with each other. That seems like it ought to have an effect on bread prices. Not sure about dairy/vegetables, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Energy prices are through the roof, that not enough ?
Instead of buying Russian gas at reasonable prices, it has to be imported liquefied.
IIRC, the price has about doubled.
Well that's a policy choice no?
A choice imposed on Europe by USA. Not much of a choice, really.
No one cared about Ukraine in NATO in Europe. Every major EU country was against it. Americans pushed it through in 2008.
Yet here we are.
Getting ever chummier wiith a stupid decaying empire that is angling for a air/naval war with a country that has 230x the shipbuilding capability and many times the industrial production and actual industrial policies.
NATO was now supposed to be in Japan, too.. I can't see it as anything else but US conspiring to get Europe involved in a future war.
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1678299275703484418
More options
Context Copy link
What event prompted the "policy choice" to stop importing Russian gas?
This is like the people who blame covid for things that are the result of government responses to covid. They are not the same.
While I agree that it isn't technically the Russian's fault, I don't think the EU governments actually had a choice in this matter - other than the choice to get deposed and replaced with a leader more compliant to US interests.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link