site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34454 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

W wasn't even a neocon. Although the Bushes like 'compassionate conservatism', they were really just the wild Northeastern Establishment reaching it's dead hand forward into the 21st century.

I voted for W, and one of the biggest reasons I voted for him was his firm stance against nation-building. 9/11 was shocking enough to change my mind for a year or two, but before his first term was out I had achieved escape velocity from the Conservative movement of my birth almost entirely because of the war and the whiplash-inducing abandonment of principles that went with it. Torture was fine. Fiscal responsibility was out the window, with the meme at the time being us dumping pallets of hundred dollar bills out the back of airplanes in Afghanistan. Two ruinous foreign wars leading to what were obviously going to be indefinite and doomed exercises in nation-building, based on deliberate lies to the public. Massive violations of civil liberties, "free speech zones", ubiquitous government surveillance. I had opposed Clinton and the Democrats explicitly because I didn't want any of that!

The neocons were a core part of Movement Conservatism, from the beginning. They had no special connection to foreign policy and the weight of anti-war sentiment coming down on them was more a creation of left wing anti-war media than something central to the neocons themselves.

I suppose I was fooled then, because what I remember is The Project for a New American Century and W's administration being notably staffed by neocon true believers in numerous prominent positions, and that they set policy in numerous ways from those positions. I remember those policies defining the era, and I remember the results.

the social conservatives have been thrown under the bus on abortion

The social conservatives have gotten Roe overturned, and are now one of the core nuclei for serious Red Tribe organization in the culture war. W's attempts to support the social conservatives as an integrated part of American society failed categorically. The current strategy seems like a better deal to me, given the present realities. We no longer have any illusions that public morality can be maintained, but that is probably for the best. Better for us to accept our role as the outsiders, to recognize that this nation and its social order are incompatible with our understanding of universal truth.

and the business conservatives/fiscal hawks have been shown the door both in rhetoric and actual practice.

As they should have been, because they have zero credibility with any part of the public any more. Offshoring manufacturing in favor of the "service economy" was supposed to provide broad prosperity. It did not. "Learn to code" is a cruel joke now, but I remember when that was the actual, inironic policy prescription. Fiscal responsibility is a joke after W and the Obama presidency; there will never be a balanced budget, and pretending otherwise is foolish; even if we could maintain it under Republican leadership, which we couldn't, there is no benefit to tightening Red Tribe belts to pay down Blue Tribe's credit card. We let the business conservatives lead, and they consistently led us to failure and to outright disaster. Then when we'd beggared ourselves supporting their defunct ideological prescriptions, they promptly dumped us and defected wholesale to the Blues.

You are describing outcomes, but you are not accounting for the process by which those outcomes arrived.

While the Social base of the MAGA movement allowed for this revival of Paleoconservatism, the base of the New Right in the suburbs is moving Left too rapidly for the New Right to ever revive, so Movement Conservatism is essentially dead. Evangelicals will continue their deal with the devil and Business Conservatives will dither over what to do: go to the Democrats and just pray their socialist wing can be kept under control or try to influence MAGA to be more friendly to them.

The social base of America is dead. The social cohesion you see right now, where cities are haunted by the specter of nation-wide race riots and federal politicians are dodging assassins' bullets, this is as good as it's ever going to be, and it's never going to be this good again. In less than a week we're going to vote in a national election, and no matter what the result may be, social cohesion is going to decrease significantly, yet again. Nor is it going to recover in the next ten years any more than it did in the last ten. The Culture war consumes all other concerns, and it continues to escalate. Red Tribe has a pressing need to mobilize to a war footing versus the Blues, and MAGA is the best option available for achieving that. There is no reason to compromise that mobilization to prop up a social order not only dead but visibly rotting off the bone.

So you agree with me that the Conservative Movement is dead.

I agree with you that a conservative movement is dead, certainly.

Yes, for 60 some years now what people meant when they said 'Conservative Movement' is dead.

Yes, for 60 some years now what people meant when they said 'Conservative Movement' is dead.

And given what that "conservative movement" looked like, how is that a bad thing for people on the right?

Because the entire great desideratum is gone.

The one good thing that has come out of it so far is to get you people to admit you're against everything conservatism has stood for since the 1950's.

Glad to help. But your claim was that Trump killed that movement, and as I pointed out above, it actually killed itself. Trump did not discredit foreign interventionism; his predecessors did that for him. Trump did not discredit fiscal responsibility; his predecessors did that for him. Trump did not establish that personal character is irrelevant in the presidency; his predecessors did that for him. He is the effect, not the cause, and it seems to me that you are speaking as though this all could have gone some other way, if only his supporters had possessed the necessary moral fortitude.

If you want to argue that foreign interventionism was a sound policy, by all means, take the floor. If you want to argue that the fiscally-responsible promised land was just over the next hilltop in 2016 or even right now, by all means make your case. But it seems to me that you are painting the GOP elite with virtues the historical record cannot remotely support. They lost, and they lost for concrete, obvious reasons. What benefit is derived from ignoring or papering-over their failures?

Foreign interventionism made a hell of a lot more sense when we were fighting the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is gone, and you think nothing should have changed? Why?

And yet, it seems to me that my conservative principles find better representation under the current environment than they did under the old arrangement. Why should I mourn this outcome?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats