site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you want to get involved in something where you have a decent chance of scoring a win, I'd recommend the trans issue. There are actual structures there within which people can work to push things forward.

If you want a global all-encompassing win, like the progressives have, than you're going to be pretty unhappy for a long time.

The optimistic version is that "progressives" don't really have a culture that requires destroying in the same way that they've destroyed others. What are the things they get most excited about? Harry Potter, Drag shows, Star Wars, drugged-out criminals attacking people on the subway, girlboss gatekeeping hashtags, etc, all utterly vapid and ephemeral cultural artifacts seized on just to fill the void.
The entire "culture" might be summed up by the "I Solemnly Swear That I Will Resist" cake. It exists only for immediate consumption, is already being torn down as insufficiently radical down before it's even finished, and will have no lasting impact except embarrassment and a bit of extra fat.

If that was true, no fighting would be necessary. Once the ground shifted underneath them and their purity spiral was broken, leftists would just forget their causes in exactly the same way they forget e.g. their support for Stalin in the 50s, or all the crazy shit they said in 2020.

This is the Moldbug version of an American Reaction. I'm not overly optimistic about it, but it would be the nicest outcome. One of those G-rated zombie movie cartoons where a cure brings the zombies back to life.

That's why I used those examples. Nobody had to kill millions of American Stalinists, (or American Maoists) because those people didn't really believe the things they believed: they were just chanting the Current Thing, and stopped doing it the second they stopped getting positive reinforcement for it.
Granted, we probably should have purged many of the ringleaders rather than allowing them to re-infiltrate and subvert society, and ideally we will be more cautious about tying up loose ends next time.
But the bulk of #Resistance #More_Trans_Kids! Twitter will simply be turned off just like their bot accounts, and will soon have no memory of ever taking part in it.

Is there a victory possible that is not an orgy of violence because I just cant see it.

I can't see it, either. Indeed, our mental pictures of "a progressive culture war rout" are very similar. It's just that, barring some better path to victory, I find that to be a preferable outcome to the alternative.

Per my comment on how the Blue Tribe's hatred for the Red Tribe is a core part of their culture, the only way to keep my people safe from Blue Tribe's unceasing attempts to eradicate our culture is to eradicate the Blue Tribe as a culture first.

There's a regular commenter over at the Dreaded Jim's blog known as "The Cominator," whose standard position is that only one right-wing regime has ever gone far enough when it comes to purging the Left enough to make a lasting difference. I recently looked up the historical figures to put some numbers to The Cominator's proposals… and it pretty much lines up with the National Center for Education Statistics's figure for the total number of people employed by US postsecondary institutions. Throw in Democrat party politicians — a figure about a couple of orders of magnitude smaller — and it'll about match, proportional to population, the level's achieved by Cominator's exemplar.

I can say from 30 years of living here with a fair amount of certainty that, regardless of tribal sympathies, the entire Northeast US would need to be pacified

Yes, and? Eradicating the "Blue Tribe" as a culture is the goal, and if that requires eliminating a lot of them physically, then so be it.

I can say from 30 years of living here with a fair amount of certainty that, regardless of tribal sympathies, the entire Northeast US would need to be pacified as that region would never consent to permanent rule by "the worthless hick scum" south of the Mason Dixson.

You're describing the attitude of southerners towards yankees before reconstruction. One amusing thread in Colin Woodward's American Nations was the apparent universal revulsion of each USA regional culture toward the northeast puritan-descendants; everyone hated the yankees, everyone wanted to avoid being ruled by them. It's a powerful demonstration of how total conviction in one's cause beats virtually any other advantage: economic, strategic, or diplomatic. The Christians in the late classical period are another.

Well, the thing I find sad is that in theory I don't think the conflict needs to be so high stakes. Federalism offers a framework where a whole bunch of tribes could live their lives according to their values, while working together towards a common goal. The 90's media were full of "diversity is our strength" morals where "diversity" was understood as something more than skin color or sexuality. It was portrayed as values which could and did lead to conflict, but didn't rule out cooperation, and would ultimately lead to strength through complementarity.

That option just doesn't seem like it's on the table anymore, which is, again, sad.