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 -
Good point. Not to mention the pro slavery mobs who used to riot and destroy the buildings and printing presses of anti-slavery newspapers. There were over 100 documented cases of this in the pre-Civil-War era in the United States [source].
By the way, the pro-slavery rioters were Democrats, and Democrat politicians and police often looked the other way as it happened. That pattern continued on straight from Andrew Jackson in the 1830's to Bull Connor in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's. Fast forward to today: some things have changed, and some have stayed the same. Black is the new white; BLM is the new KKK, and Democrats are the new... Democrats!
Pity Hlynka isn't here, he'd have liked you.
We can only fight on in his name, because he was in fact right.
He was wrong about literally everything. He was like a Marxist except instead of the working class vs the bourgeoisie it was Hobbes vs Rosseau. I saw him make insane comments like Strom Thurmond being a far left Marxist or saying HBD is the same thing as critical race theory.
He was right that the AuthLeft/AuthRight horseshoe is in fact a circle, that both are progeny of the Enlightenment/Progressive movement, and that their conflict with each other is fundamentally an example of the narcissism of small differences. To the extent that I understood his arguments, he also appeared to be correct about Hobbes vs Rosseau.
Almost everything we think and do in the modern world has at least some of its roots in the Enlightenment. The United States itself is a product of the Enlightenment (founded by Enlightenment thinkers etc.) and he was a super patriotic Red Tribe American. Taking his arguments seriously we could also accuse him of all kinds of things that he would disagree with and doesn't believe in because of tenuous links.
A lot of what we think and do has some of its roots in the Enlightenment. There are notable exceptions, a lot of those exceptions cluster in thought-space, and they form the foundation of Red Tribe.
America (together with Britian and their progeny) appears to me to be a clear outlier in the range of Enlightenment societies, throughout the entire history of the Enlightenment from its founding till now. It is nonetheless true that America has much of its roots in the Enlightenment, though, and I would argue that is why America is doomed. We didn't get enough of the Enlightenment to wreck us on the spot, but we got more than enough for the social equivalent of cancer, which we are now dying of.
In the first place, he is not here to defend himself, so it seems rather unsporting. But I am here, I am better at maintaining decorum than he was, and I'm willing to defend most of his arguments or make similar ones of my own. If you think taking my arguments seriously leads to absurd results, feel free to elaborate.
First of all, there is no such thing as Red Tribe. It was a thing made up by Scott that is completely unscientific and in my opinion a terrible classification system so I just reject it outright. Second of all, even if I did accept (which I don't) the backbone of this Red Tribe is the American South which were the most violent racists for the vast majority of the US's history. These were the same people who fought a war to keep slavery and fought tooth and nail to keep Jim Crow era segregation. Unless you want to say Jefferson Davis, George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and the KKK were all leftist or Marxist (which Hylnka did) and do giga Chad levels of DR3, his theories are completely inaccurate. They don't map onto historical realities. If you sent him back in time to these Red Tribe people he claims existed and he told his theories to them about what they actually thought, they would clearly say he is 100% wrong. If you heard him argue the Civil Rights movement and what happened, he would say conservative good old boy whites were fighting segregation and hippie Marxists leftists (Rosseau influenced of course) were fighting to keep segregation. This is laughably false. You may think this is uncharitable but this is literally what he thought. I saw him write out multiple variations of this.
Plus, he commits a political version of Lewontin's Fallacy in regards to political taxonomy where if something has many similarities it is obviously the exact same. And of course, there's really only two political tribes (Hobbes and Rosseau) and he got to define them (which is why he liked Red/Blue tribe so much).
I think it's pretty defensible, just in the sense that a lot of people are emotionally affiliated with a cohort of people who vote the same ways, and that this plays itself out more broadly than just in voting.
I don't think it works as espousing some underlying principles, but it does make sense as a way to describe the modern tribes that society has been organized into. There are many things that could easily have been polarized differently, or agreed upon, but this is just describing things as they exist now.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link