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 is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?
He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.
1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.
2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.
3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.
The responses by various commenters here reveal severe contradictions at the heart of “the case for Trump”. I think that this profoundly confused tweet by Martyr Made is illustrative.
In this framing, Trump is the champion of the weird, socially-unpopular kids - the ones shut out of bourgeois normal society. The jocks and the pretty girls snub and bully them, but by banding together in a coalition with disaffected members of the social elite who have become awoken to their plight, they can launch a liberatory strike against the privileged upper crust who have historically marginalized them.
This is textbook leftism! This is literally the ur-narrative of the cultural and political left. It’s also the opposite of reality. Blonde jocks and rich cheerleaders are one of the core voting constituencies for Donald Trump! The weird alienated kids who got bullied in school, meanwhile, are a core Democrat constituency! One bloc of Trump voters are now apparently attempting to re-brand themselves, or re-contextualize themselves, as oppressed victims - the marginalized Other.
However, this is blatantly at odds with the original core appeal of Trump, which is that he was a champion of normal, well-adjusted, classic and confident America, here to take the country back from the freaks and faggots and pencil-necks who have essentially usurped control through subterfuge and used that power to resentfully force their unpopular obsessions on the mass of normal popular people.
And of course, it is manifestly risible for Trump voters to claim to hate bullying. Whatever else you want to say about the Trump phenomenon in 2016, it clearly involved a substantial amount of bullying, derision, and even rough-housing/violence at some of the rallies. (I’m not absolving the Clinton campaign, which of course also involved a different type of bullying and derision.) Trump supporters have also ruthlessly mocked and derided “DeSantoids”, using classic nerd-bashing behavior; see Scott Greer’s (admittedly amusing) unflattering impression of DeSantis’ nasal voice and spergy affect.
Trump voters have no leg to stand on if they wish to wear the mask of the oppressed and marginalized. That sort of maudlin victimhood-signaling has never been what conservativism or right-wing values are about. If anything, Trump voters should be proud to be the jocks and cheerleaders rightly excluding the maladjusted weirdos; playing this “no, you’re not the underdog, I’m the underdog” game is just totally conceding the left’s frame.
If anything, Trump voters most closely resemble the oppositional culture cultivated by blacks. When they are a minority or are relatively disempowered, they cry victim and throw out accusations of cheating and unfair privilege. When they are a local majority or gain any sort of power, though, they ruthlessly bully whites and Asians; they also bully those within their own ranks who “act white” by refusing to wallow in victimhood and who aspire to earn a spot in the majority culture via self-betterment and the adoption of bourgeois values. Blacks as a cultural-political constituency would rather destroy the mainstream American establishment - supposedly for excluding and “othering” them - than try to prove worthy of being embraced by that establishment. And when they don’t get what they feel they’re owed, they riot.
I say this all as someone who voted for Trump in 2020 and who will vote for him again this November, assuming he’s the GOP nominee. I just hate liars and cope. The people in power in Washington DC and in the media and academia are certainly not Chads and Stacys. They were not jocks and cheerleaders. They see themselves as champions of the marginalized and disempowered, the same way that [the Trump who exists only the minds of his ardent supporters] does. Oppositional populism is a great way to drum up votes and guilt your way into power, but it’s also the sign of a catastrophically unwell society. Give me a candidate who is proud to represent normal, productive, intelligent people, and maybe then I’ll start getting excited. That’s what Ron DeSantis was supposed to be, and Trump supporters called him a fraud and a sellout for not going to bat hard enough for J6 rioters or agreeing that the 2020 election was stolen.
Our country is fucked.
I think many Trump supporters really do see themselves as the underdogs being picked on by Chads and Stacies, and that is a common perception even here: many, many posts are devoted to how the "Elites" (whether that means liberals, Democrats, Jews, the media, all of the above, whoever) are the popular kids picking on the losers.
Thank you for an example of an acceptable use of slurs, since recently a number of people have been claiming not to understand when they can and cannot use words like "faggot." If you were directly calling Democrats, or the "Elite," or whoever, "faggots," I would mod that as being inflammatory and boo outgroup. It would be little more than namecalling: "My enemies are faggots." Not because we don't allow people to use "faggot" or other slurs, but because we don't allow namecalling and unnecessary antagonism. However, using it to represent what other (hypothetical) people think isn't going to get a warning for using "no-no words."
This would be an interesting use of Chat GPT to see if it can tell the difference between a slur used for rhetorical effect or pejoratively
Dollars to donut holes says that ChatGPT understands the use-mention distinction but has been explicitly programmed not to apply it to racial slurs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"I imagine my outgroup would use slurs" really should be prohibited. It at least violates "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be", "Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument", and "Don't be egregiously obnoxious". But since it's put in the mouth of Trump supporters, it's okay.
Because "faggot" is considered to be an extremely bad slur to use, accusing someone of using it without a direct quote is likewise extremely bad. If using it directly is so bad that you can ban people for it, using it indirectly by putting it in the mouths of your outgroup should lead to a ban too. The fact that such things are permissible is a double standard. (Which is enabled by the fact that many slurs that leftists use such as "racist" are considered acceptable, so the right can't accuse the left in the way that the left can accuse the right.)
"Racist" is not a slur. It may be an insult or an unwarranted accusation. Saying "You're a racist" would probably get a warning. Saying "That's racist" would generally be an allowable expression of opinion.
The comparison isn't calling someone a racist, it's saying "those leftists call people racists". Which is the right-wing version of "Trump supporters call people faggots". Except that it's acceptable for progressives to call people racists, so the accusation is useless.
There obviously are leftists who call people racists, and Trump supporters who call people faggots. Whether or not the two statements are equivalent (I don't personally believe they are), in themselves, I would not find reason to mod either one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No it’s not. It’s offensive to some people but most think it’s rather crass.
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like there's a large range in how bad this word is depending on where you are in the US, in contrast to the other double-g word which is more dependent on in which race you belong in the US. Where I grew up, this word was barely a hair beneath "nigger" in terms of how unacceptable they were, but as an adult, I learned that there are entire communities of people elsewhere in the US who use the term as freely as any other slur. Which is bad IMHO, but doesn't make it an extremely bad slur to use. So I think depicting someone as using the slur could reflect just a different culture around the term rather than some judgment about the people throwing about the term.
More options
Context Copy link
I’m not criticizing my outgroup; I am involved in multiple group chats where people, including myself, use that word without feeling bad about it. I wouldn’t call somebody that on the Motte, because I respect the norms of this community. But I want to be very clear that I don’t think it reflects particularly poorly on Trump voters (or anybody else) if they use that word.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This honestly doesn't seem like a good use. If they weren't signalling that they were on the same side, it would read exactly like putting some very antagonistic words in the outgroup's mouth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link