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 -
This is so comically wrong that I do not think you have an accurate understanding of Trump or the resentment that he rode to the white house. A large portion of his base supported him because of his policies and they had legitimate reasons to do so. They continued to support him despite many of those policies not being implemented because they (correctly) saw that his efforts were being stymied by the GOP establishment, bureaucratic inertia and the machinations/conspiracies of the deep state (this is not actually controvertible given the text messages and statements that have been made public). Mass illegal immigration, lack of enforcement or punishment for gross financial crimes, encouragement of outsourcing - one of the huge predictors of Trump support is if you belong to the demographics that were actually harmed by these things which he swore black and blue to fight against.
If you're interested in an article on this, I highly recommend https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/
It wasn't a shared delusion - Trump, if he wasn't hindered, would absolutely have made things substantially worse for the people who were in power. The policies him and his base wanted to enact would have been substantially better for the country as a whole (at least in my opinion), but substantially worse for the people who were in power. There was a lot of money to be made selling influence and favourable policies to the uber-rich, and Trump would have destroyed huge swathes of that system if he was successful. The people working so hard to defeat Trump were only doing so to preserve "democracy" in the sense that they understood democracy to be rule (and of course a constant flow of money and luxuries to them personally) by the PMC.
More options
Context Copy link