site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Surely this is an empirical question. What has Muslim immigration been like for America? What are Muslims in America actually like? PEW did a giant study back in 2007 that surveyed over 60000 Muslims in American and found they're... pretty similar to the general American public. Less likely to go to college and a little bit more likely to be poor. They did have more socially conservative views than the general American public but, like, "median American of 1994" not, like, "median American of the 1800's". I think it's pretty easy to believe that a substantial shift in the social beliefs of Muslims can occur over the course of some decades, given we have already seen such a shift occur in the general public's perception over a similar time frame. Maybe Islam is going to turn out to be inoculating against modernity in a way that Christianity or Judaism weren't but color me skeptical.

I’m not convinced. The behavior of Muslims doesn’t indicate they’re 1990s style Americans who are okay with other religions as equals. They’re absolutely not okay with gays, they don’t want women working, and so on. There are numerous videos of Muslims preaching that America or Europe will become Muslim. A Baptist preacher saying even 10% of that is a far right radical. A Baptist preacher saying that and blocking major roads for prayer services would be probably thrown out of the SBC.