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 -
I think it's best that reorient ourselves to the initial topic of discussion. I apologize since my initial comment was a bit opaque and my replies were hastily written on mobile, so let me clarify the crux of my argument — There's an outward stereotype, mostly perpetrated, for lack of a better term, by the right, that agency is an inherently right-wing characteristic. The argument goes that if conservatives are more likely to blame one's failures on individual factors, most notably lack of effort, while liberals are more likely to point to external factors like structural inequities. I was trying to rebut this presumption by saying that right-wingers don't take this argument to the end of its ideological tether, since they temper their otherwise libertarian free-market principles with calls for restrictions on immigration and trade in the guise of protecting American workers. That's all I was saying. When pressed, @Walterodim made reference to J.D. Vance, who has, in the past, complained about the tendency of lower-class white conservatives to repeatedly make bad decisions and blame their misfortune on external factors, be it the economy, China, Obama, the government, immigrants, etc. My comment was intended to point out two things: First, that these sentiments aren't limited to lower-class conservatives but are prevalent among successful ones as well, and second, that Vance himself has echoed the same sentiments himself since he entered politics and had to cater to the class of people he criticized in his book. That's all I was saying. I wasn't making any particular argument about my own policy preferences or trying to criticize other people for theirs, just disagreeing with categorical statements about the belief in personal agency among liberals and conservatives that a lot of comments were making. I certainly didn't intend to go down this road. And while I place most of the blame on myself for this misunderstanding, I do think you made an assumption that I was following this thread more closely than I actually was, and your comment, as we lawyers like to say, "assumes facts not in evidence".
But while we're here, I might as well respond to your comment. I'm not conservative, but I am a liberal free-marketer who generally believes in what I call "welfare capitalism", which is mostly laissez-faire but allows for government interference in the case of market distortions and for some kind of welfare state. As such, I believe that a free market should be the default, and while interventions are permissible, they have to be justified. And this isn't just my default; it was the default throughout most of American history. The Constitution says nothing about immigration and very little about market regulation, and indeed the country didn't make any serious attempts at regulating either until well into the 20th Century. So when you ask me what I'd do about the passage of some particular law that was passed that threatened my livelihood, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that my opinion wouldn't be influenced by the fact that I'm directly affected. But whether I actually try to get the law overturned would depend on whether I think it's a good law. What I certainly wouldn't do is directly advocate for rent-seeking legislation, like having the state cap annual bar admissions to drive up the price of legal work. If there are stupid laws on the books that are having the effect of disadvantaging workers in the Rust Belt then I'm all in favor of getting rid of them, and I'd agree that the left advocates for plenty of stupid new laws that would have this effect. But opposition to them isn't what I'm talking about. What conservatives are advocating for is deviating not just from the default, but from the status quo, by passing additional immigration and trade restrictions for the express purpose of benefiting a favored class. And that's not exactly an expression of self-agency.
I didn't mean to go too off-track either.
Well then I could say that whatever you're doing now would be even more admirable and self-agentic if you were blind or something, so why not just burn your eyes out?
Leaving the borders swinging wide-open is the national equivalent of blinding yourself in my opinion.
I believe that it should have.
What about the Naturalization Act of 1790?
I said no serious attempts, not no attempts; the Chinese Exclusion Act is actually a better example, since the 1790 act didn't prevent anyone from coming here, just from becoming citizens (and in those days you didn't need to be a citizen to vote).
And a lot of people on the left believe that it should have included a lot of things that it didn't that you'd probably find abhorrent and that doesn't change anything. Your preference is your preference, and the default is the default; it's what we started with, and if you want to change it the burden is on you to demonstrate that it's necessary. I'm not saying that your opinion is illegitimate, just that it doesn't have any moral high ground over other opinions that the left holds that are also obvious examples of rent seeking.
I hate to do this, but this is almost literally a textbook example of a straw man argument. No one outside a few on the far left is advocating open borders. The current argument about the border is whether to raise numbers up a bit or restrict them further, and whether Biden's current manner of dealing with the border is enough. Border patrol agents are still working. People are still getting deported. The argument boils down to whether Biden should be taking actions that may or may not actually have any effect.
The far left doesn't advocate opening borders, the borders are already open. They just attack anybody who wants to do anything about it.
If you deport a thousand people and let in a million, you are still technically 'deporting' people.
Yes, we get told that arresting gang members would not do anything about crime, until somebody does it and then 'at what cost???'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As ever so slight of a tonal objection, I want to note that I didn't feel pressed by @Chrisprattalpharaptr, who brought up a point that I basically agree with. Looking back at the exchange, I realize that I didn't say as much, as that's my mistake, so I'll addend it now - Republican politicians love playing the victim routine and many of their constituents reward them for it. I offered Vance up not because I felt particularly pressed, but because I was engaging in the thought exercise of which Republicans don't act that way.
Zooming out to the broader point, I think we can relate that to something that's come up a number of times in this thread, which is that the reality of high-status Blue Tribers is that they certainly don't act like they believe that that people are but ships adrift, subject to the currents. That's actually one of the things that I think is most interesting about the conversation is the contrast between expressed opinions on the power of personal responsibility and the exercise thereof.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link