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 -
What does the light at the end of the tunnel look like?
Look, every now and then I stop watching my footfalls and get pensive. And one of the things I've gotten pensive about the past few days is this: the Western culture war is not going to last forever, which means it's going to end. And when it does, how will we look back on this mad time?
Two of the answers are obvious:
But what I can't really put together is the third option, the narrative that will be told if SJ is indeed just a passing phase, either because Red/Grey defeated it or because it wins and then turns out to be unsustainable. Frankly, the Blue Tribe's been writing all the history books since before I was born, so it's hard for me to even picture it. And that troubles me; it's the scenario I think is most likely, and the one I'm to at least some extent trying to bring about, so if I don't have a good idea of what it even looks like that's kind of an HCF. "It is not enough to say that you do not like the way things are. You must say how you will change them, and to what."
So, how will the people in that scenario think of this time? What story will they tell?
(To the SJers here: feel free to answer, if you think you understand your opposition, or feel free to correct me if you think my #2 is uncharitable.)
Why will the culture war ‘eventually end’? This culture war has been happening, in some form or another, since the enlightenment. Certainly it’s been happening since America’s founding. It may wax and wane (the latter if there’s some larger unrelated international or domestic crisis for a prolonged period), but it would be ahistorical to expect it to end. I suppose AI may change things, but since it is likely only to increase the reliance of the people on the state (due to mass unemployment etc), probably not in any direction I’d consider positive.
... I'd be interested to see what sort of 'wane' would fit your expectations, even if the culture war would still remain in a form, that's anywhere short of modern conservativism (and anything drawn as close to it) being smothered out completely.
One of my big frustrations is that for all people might say that this stuff isn't as bad or is 'only' as bad as McCarthyism, McCarthyism lasted less than a decade, and it very much had the seeds of its own destruction within it. We're coming up on fifteen for the most obvious start date of this particular cycle.
But McCarthyism won!
'Communist' is still an insult in like 90% of American contexts and none are tolerated anywhere near positions of real power, capitalist realism is so pervasive that it's treated as a fundamental facet of reality rather than an ideology, and the US is still explicitly hostile towards communist and formerly-communist regimes around the world to this day!
It's hard to imagine McCarthyism succeeding much more strongly than it actually has. The fact that he's remembered as a jerk in some textbooks is pretty immaterial.
McCarthyism took ground, but that's the other reason I'm using it as an example. I'm neither expecting nor asking 2rafa to come up with hypotheticals where 'racist' or 'sexist' stops being an insult in 90% of contexts and clear examples are tolerated anywhere near positions of real power, where the assumptions of social justice aren't treated as a fundamental facet of reality, or where the US stops being explicitly hostile towards racist and formerly-racist regimes.
((Hell, I don't even want a lot of that by its strict definition. And, of course, 'racist' is only useful as a description for what the SJW movement targets as a caconym, in the triple sense that the net is wider to catch entire other 'sins', that it's narrower in excluding a lot of SJW racism, and that it's fine-enough mesh to catch a lot of things that aren't actually in any of those categories by any reasonable definition.))
I'm just wondering when people stop getting fired for minor acts, or being to slow to report those suspected; where we don't see criminal investigation or massive civil liability coincidentally pointed at the politically unacceptable; where the FBI does not take con membership as cause for investigation. Where one-in-two people don't undergo
loyalty review'sensitivity training', where we don't see weaponization of the IRS, of the Veteran's Affairs office, of Social Security benefits, where no rando is highlighted by national politicians by name and by photograph for public humiliation.((And, again, a lot of what's targeted today has less in common with actual-racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever as McCarthy's Army hearings did with communism.))
These aren't goals, they're just weapons, and they're weapons that were placed fully out of McCarthyist hands by people who told us they were too dangerous for anyone to access.
Win/lose might be meaningful for discussing movements in terms of their longer-term impact, and far more important than who's remembered as a jerk, but it doesn't really say as much for the conditions of the war itself. Yet those conditions matter in their own rights: a recurring claim is that since we've seen those weapons set down in the past, they'll be set down here.
Those weapons will not disappear. They just aren't used in times of peace when dominion over the culture is unquestioned.
The 90s were not peaceful because people had grown weary of the quarrels of yore, they were peaceful because only one side was powerful and they didn't feel threatened.
I don't think that's a terribly good model -- McCarthyism's weapons were put down in the late-1950s/early-1960s, which is not exactly where I'd say conservatives felt unthreatened by communists -- but even supposing it's true, what does the equivalent look like today? When, if ever, does the modern social justice movement not feel threatened? When will they feel as their dominion over the culture is unquestioned?
More options
Context Copy link
The later 90's were peaceful because one side had just made a run at power ("Political Correctness") and been repulsed. As it turns out, they were regrouping, and now they have achieved victory and are in the "mop-up and occupation" phase.
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