site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

MBD of National Review told a story recently of asking his driver why he supports Trump. The driver said he thinks military experience is important and Trump went to a military style school for a while. MBD asked him if he knew that DeSantis actually served in the Navy for six years (as a lawyer) and the driver admitted that he knew this. He just counted Trump's boarding school experience as more relevant than active duty service.

I'm going to with grug-brain more correct than the midwit on this one -- being a JAG lawyer is not relevant military service in the sense that any historical citizen would care about, when thinking about wanting a leader who had proven themselves in the military. In fact, it is probably a net negative, it is anti-military service, in that a JAG lawyer is going to be trained in a way of thinking and operating that is inimical to historically how successful wars were fought and won.

Ideally, you would have a bona fide military veteran and successful general to choose from. But if you have to choose between frauds, the bombastic, even winking, fraud of the Trump is more appealing to some than the sophisticated and self-serious fraud of pretending that being a lawyer gumming up the military operations is something that counts as being a successful warrior for your country.