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 -
Update. Perhaps I should just include it in the thread I created below but I feel like they go dead.
I complained at the Iowa State Fair that Vivek wasn’t taking the mask off. Here he is. Calling transitioning as a child barbaric. Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaker that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.
https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1691880080866263319?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
Musks also retweeted this speech and I’ll include his summary so you don’t have to click thru.
https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1692267994490060817?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
TRUTH.
Strategy interests me. The billionaires who were backing Desantis seem to be looking at Vivek now. They like myself don’t like Trumps persona. I now think Vivek is probably the best salesman for the GOP. Especially if they want to make arguments the PMC will listen to. Desantis I believe is the best get shit done member of the GOP. If you get where I’m going Vivek will make a lot of sense as the frontman President with Desantis as VP. Trump is the best at throwing a raving party and he’s really good at taking punches from the left and keeps moving forward. Which has bought him a lot of trust in the gop.
Strategically the GOP best move is to keep Trump as the poll lead until like March/April. Let them develop their lawfare election strategy. Then slide the nomination to probably Vivek maybe Desantis. The issue with this and one of my biggest problems with Trump is he doesn’t care as much about advancing an agenda as he cares about Trump winning. But for winning an agenda my thoughts today is this would be a very good strategy for winning.
Next thought. Vivek said “God is Real”. I assumed he was Hindu so was trying to figure out what he meant. So I had to go look at his Wikipedia and find out what that meant. He’s a monotheistic Hindu. I don’t know if that’s a true belief or something adopted to be more palatable to the right. Could be something explored in the election that he at some point will likely need to explain.
The other thing I thought of when he said God is Real is Marginal Revolution ran an article on St Thomas preaching the gospel in India. So I thought with him saying God is Real it might mean he was a member of that community. I didn’t even know about old Christian communities in India until yesterday. So perhaps there is a connection between St. Thomas and Monotheistic Hinduism. I do recommend reading the marginal posts as initially they thought St. Thomas wasn’t real but then some archaeologist found some stuff that confirmed a lot of the story.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/08/no-doubt-saint-thomas-reached-india.html
If the GOP steals the primary from Trump they are toast. The base wants Trump. That the GOP is still scheming to dispossess the base shows that they don't get it. It doesn't matter how "skillfully" they do it. The GOP will fight Republican voters more than they will ever fight the left, and then ask Republican voters to turn around and unite for the election.
Any candidate who signs onto that plan is fundamentally unserious. How would Vivek or DeSantis pitch themselves as anti-establishment while accepting the establishment primary rig of death?
And if they get Trump they're toast. That's the problem. And if they can't find him off now they won't be able to in 2028 either, regardless of how old he is. The GOP has underperformed for three straight election cycles, and they're barreling into four with abandon. The only way they're going to win back the voters who have abandoned them is to convince them that this party is a different one than the one they voted against in 2020. Instead we get a full-throated embrace of election denial/ January 6th nonsense that won't go away. They need to pull off the bandaid but are incapable of doing so. It's like an episode of Bar Rescue where the owner is going down with the ship because he's worried about alienating regulars. That's usually good advice, but when the regulars can't keep you in business then something's got to give.
The GOP didn't underperform in 2018 or 2020. They underperformed in 2022 when Trump wasn't on the ballot because of poor voter turn-out. Given historical trends for midterm losses in the first term, the Trump lead GOP in 2018 did the best in the last 50 years.
Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?
failing to address the obvious election fraud is precisely the reason why they performed so poorly in the 2020 senate runoffs in GA and in many 2022 races, not because of ongoing fraud (although that definitely did happen), but because they don't motivate their voters to show up
the person who motivates their voters to show up is Donald Trump; trying to claim the GOP's strategy for the last 2 years is "election denail/jan 6 nonsense" is simply wrong given they've done nothing at all in response to either of those and, in fact, helped opposition party attack their own on those exact issues
the countryclub suburban GOP voters of the 1990s aren't coming back no matter how much you trash trump and promise you're totally not like him because those voters are dead or strongly Democrat
edit: Just like another conversation we had here, Trump didn't lose the "Republican Stronghold" which voted for Obama by 8 points in 2012 and even more for Obama in 2008. Trump is not the reason for GOP failure, especially in Pennsylvania (a state which hadn't gone to a GOP presidential candidate since 1988). Doubling down on denouncing Trump and whipping yourself isn't going to win you back the "Republican Stronghold" which voted for Obama by 8 points.
Trump is remarkably good at motivating Republican voters. I would argue that the only thing he is better at is motivating Democrat voters, thus no longer being president.
He motivated "Democrat" voters so much, they sometimes voted multiple times in different states! Truly historic rates of voter participation, but only in counties controlled by certain people using certain procedures. Neighboring counties not controlled by those people using those procedures didn't see that magical turn-out.
There are lots of reasons Donald Trump isn't president; you could likely put most of these under a "motivates Democrats" banner, but some specifics would be the illegal and unconstitutional ways in which elections were conducted in explicit contravention to election laws across dozens of states. The GOP, the courts, and the law were wholly useless in addressing this issue.
When I worked in politics, you could pretty much tell if the GOP or Democrats would win an election by basic turn-out numbers. DJT changed that dynamic where it's the opposite now. In the motivation game, Trump may motivate a minority of people into hysterics, but in sheer numbers Trump motivates his voters more than the opposite.
If they could cheat under Trump, they certainly can under Biden. So either way, if Trump runs, he loses, whether it's fair and square or a tipping of the scales.
The 2020 election was closer than the 2016 election. Illegal changes made to election law and procedures by executive fiat justified by "the pandemic" no longer exist in most places with courts already ruling against those changes. The pandemic is not around to justify vast mobilization of state power and cowardice on the part of courts. The State operating at peak power prohibiting in-person interaction and mobilization (unless race riots ofc) and forcing people into manipulated online spaces isn't around anymore, either.
The state cashed in a whole lot of single-use plays in order to get Trump, and even with all of that and more, the election came down to tens of thousands of votes in a few states. It came down to a judge in any of 5 states allowing a filed election contest to be heard or even a slight peek at those definitely legitimate ballot signatures.
Could Trump run and lose? Sure, and it will take another vast and more ridiculous fraud campaign. The reason Trump is being indicted isn't because the regime is sure he's going to run and lose, it's because they know he could win and he's dangerous to that regime.
Another Trump run and subsequent obvious fraud by the regime has its own benefits. And in comparison to what? Without Trump, the GOP will lose anyway. And even if that's not true, I don't see how a Trump-less GOP victory would benefit rightwing politics in any way.
Measured how?
Ah, I see. Since literally every attempt on /r/TheMotte and here to provide a shred of solid evidence of fraud has been thoroughly debunked every single time, we've come back around to "just repeat things a bunch and they'll become true."
Or, you know, Trump not being that popular. Which, if you look at the 2016 results, was actually always the case--Clinton was just an unusually bad candidate (combined 2 party vote share of only 94% in 2016).
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