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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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This reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother last year. She is a fairly standard-issue Gen X liberal, although somewhat open-minded about certain conservative issues, and guilty of Noticing™️ certain things about race and gender that gave me no shortage of distress back in my days as a dedicated progressive. She caught a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome after 2016, though, and began ensconcing herself ever more deeply into the MSNBC bubble. She and I hadn’t talked politics for years, until last year, when she was ranting about Trump and his voters and how stupid they are, and how she could never imagine having an intelligent conversation with one, at which point I hit her with the “you’re talking to a Trump voter right now”. This was utterly shocking and disorienting for her. She couldn’t imagine that someone well-informed, sophisticated, and obviously intelligent - her own son, no less! - could see any value in Trump. Every conversation she had ever had with a Trump voter up to that point had been like pulling teeth - nothing but Fox News talking points, uneducated ranting, shit-tier conspiracies, and an evident lack of even a basic curiosity about the world.

I brought up an article called [The Asshole Filter] (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html). This article is about how women navigate the dating world, and how for certain women, if they make it clear that any guy who approaches them in public will be rebuked, the only guys who will approach them in public are going to be uncouth assholes with no social tact. If a guy is conscientious and desires to be respectful of your boundaries, and he is aware that you will be offended by his overtures, he’s not going to commit the faux pas of transgressing your explicity- or implicitly-states wishes. An asshole, though, doesn’t care about your boundaries, or isn’t smart enough to intuit them, so he will transgress them without a second thought. Eventually, as this process is iterated, the only strange men who will ever approach you in public are going to be assholes, and you will begin to get the strong impression that all men are assholes, because the only ones you meet are assholes. You unintentionally set up a filter that has screened out all the normal nice men you would have met, and the only men who made it through the filter are the ones you wanted least to meet.

I told my mom that she had unintentionally set up a similar effect when it came to talking politics. She is a very outspoken person, and is not shy about broadcasting her liberal views. Therefore, most people in her life are well-aware of where she stands and the kinds of statements that will make her mad or will start an argument. If they value maintaining a cordial relationship with her - for example, a coworker, or an acquaintance who likes hanging out with her without needing to have a deep level of agreement with her - will be conscientious enough to avoid making those statements. They will let her spout off about her opinions, and they will not challenge her on them or bring up their own more conservative/Trump-oriented views, since it’s not worth offending her or rocking the social boat. However, if someone doesn’t care about offending her - maybe they don’t particularly like her, or maybe they’re just not smart or self-aware enough to predict the negative consequences of expressing pro-Trump opinions around her - then they’ll happily say something Trumpy around her. That means that the only pro-Trump opinions she will ever hear will come from hostile, stupid, or unsophisticated people. All the smart Trump voters are invisible to her because they know better than to say anything where she will hear it.

The vast majority of liberals and progressives have set up precisely this type of political asshole filter. When you go on Facebook and post something like “If you don’t support a woman’s right to choose, unfriend me right now,” you’re not expecting any of the people you see as your actual friends to unfriend you. Your real friends would never have such an ugly opinion; if they did, surely you would know about it. Well, no, they just know how much it would piss you off if they expressed disagreement to you, and they care about your friendship more than they care about winning an argument. So, they stay silent. However, the people who don’t actually care that much about preserving a friendship with you - or the people who are dumb enough to think they’re actually going to change your mind with a public argument on Facebook - will take the bait and argue with you. Of course those arguments will be stupid or hostile; only a stupid or hostile person would have gotten into it with you in the first place. All the smart people realized it wasn’t worth it.

Any right-winger in a heavily left-wing social context - myself, for example - has long since realized the futility of attempts to persuade, or even of publicly outing yourself as a dissenter. They’ve decided to keep their heads down, only discussing politics in (usually anonymous) forums like this where they won’t be dogpiled or doxxed. The fact that this woman was willing to publicly display her GOP allegiance in that context should have been an immediate red-flag: she is either someone with nothing to lose socially, or someone who’s not smart enough to realize she’s about to lose it. A smart conservative would have avoided the whole situation and moved on with her life.

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@ZorbaTHut I tried to report this as AAQC but the submit button on the report pop up is grayed out. I'm on mobile if that makes a difference. Just FYI.

same for me, and I'm on PC.

It seems to me that an Asshole Filter can only be dismantled from the inside, but the person who sets up that filter (in whatever context) doesn't have much reason to do so--in fact, the usual behavior he sees from others just reinforces the reason for the filter. Quite the unfortunate Catch-22.

(And yeah, I've seen a number of the "if you don't agree that [whatever], unfriend me!" posts. Haven't found a better approach than ignoring the posts, and backing away slowly...but that doesn't really help anyone in the long run.)

I wonder about ways to prevent their establishment, really. Familiarity with the concept helps (and Siderea certainly gave it a vivid name) but if anybody has specific ideas to go further, I'd be keen to hear them.

Best starting point I can think of is intellectual humility--embrace the idea that you've got more to learn than you know, and grains of wisdom can be found in many unexpected places. In terms of external behavior, be willing to talk to anyone, even if that person is unpopular.

Even here, there is some wisdom in moderation; I'm not advocating for going full-bore quokka.