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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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It's over for me.

We pretended that senile rambling old man was a president for four years and now the country is more divided than ever. I am ashamed of how I have treated people while I have been under the influence of that horrible man who helped break this country.

I say helped break because he didn't do it alone. Every person who covered for him, who made excuses for him, who refused to see that there was an old man with no control over himself (he was leaking constantly, he couldn't keep a secret. He couldn't keep a secret.) has some share of responsibility in this.

This is a serious situation that we let get out of control. And we need to be united, and I wish I had been able to admit that Trump was a divider sooner.

  • -78

We seem to be having a spate of low-effort ramblings that are basically "I'm mad about something and want to vent." I am sorry if you're having an existential crisis over Trump (for months at a time now?) but if you are going to post a top-level post, please make it relevant, interesting, or at least present an argument. We don't want to see free-form rants about how Trump or Biden or whoever is The Worst, devoid of anything but your own undigested disgust.

An argument? You want an argument?

Every person who was wrong about Trump and his effect on this country needs to pray to God for forgiveness. I know I have.

If you spectated this disaster from the comfort of intellectual distance, you're part of the problem.

  • -50

An argument? You want an argument?

Every person who was wrong about Trump and his effect on this country needs to pray to God for forgiveness. I know I have.

That's not an argument, it's just ranting.

If you spectated this disaster from the comfort of intellectual distance, you're part of the problem.

Hectoring, finger-wagging, and telling people "You're a bad person and you should feel bad" is not what this place is for. Go ahead and talk about why you think Trump is terrible and Trump supporters should repent, but right now you're not a lot different from a evangelical Christian yelling that we all need Jesus.

You do need Jesus.

But that's neither here nor there.

Go ahead and talk about why you think Trump is terrible and Trump supporters should repent

Trump supporters should repent because it is wrong to turn brother against brother in politics.

  • -25

I'll bite: what is it that makes you think Trump supporters are worse in this regard (turning brother against brother) than other political factions/subfactions?

One of the criticisms that stuck with me early on in Trump's presidency, don't know who said it, was that by embracing a politician whose action deliberately enraged the 'other side', we were furthering division in this country. I think that was undeniably true, and it was undeniably the sort of thing any proper conservative party should understand.

You think "basket of deplorables" Hillary wouldn't have been divisive, had she come to power?

I keep harping on about Mitt Romney, whom I think is a very whitebread politician and doesn't impress me greatly - had his ambitions ever gone anywhere, I think he would have been the Gerald Ford of the time (vaguely competent but uninspiring and not missed once his term was done).

For a while there he was The Only Good Republican from the same people who, back when he was running, were representing him as the Mormon theocrat who was going to implement the Handmaid's Tale for real and start burning the gays at the stake and as for minorities -! We don't even want to think what he was going to do to BIPOC folx! He was just another Literally Hitler Rich White Cis Het Christian Republican who only cared about making money and grinding the faces of the poor. As for what he did to poor doggies, well the shame has never dissipated about his cruel heartless animal-hating treatment, remember that?

So don't talk about divisiveness being uniquely a Trumpian moment, I think it was in the building for a long time.

Do you think Obama didn’t antagonize people? Yes, obviously from a blue tribe perspective, even a blue tribe conservative perspective, trump is uniquely divisive and shit, but there’s no actual reason a blue tribe perspective has to predominate.