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 should have couched it more: I consider a weakness of BC's argument to be its reductiveness. If 1999 was the peak of human civilization, consider how "poorer" in possessions and quality of life people were in '89; '79; '69; etc. Also consider how families shrunk from each preceding decade. It doesn't take long before you find dozen-kid families in destitute households. Civilization marched on, it got better. We're not looking at the thing itself. Those modern households at question: generally single mothers, generally non-white, or if white, black children, 3/4+ kids--we're seeing social questions in divorces, children out of wedlock, and especially children from multiple fathers, and we're seeing governmental issues in their voting, where to leftist politicians, are described most congruently with reality when called "bought." We're looking at the consequence, or asset or vassal of the thing, when this is the framing. It is reductive, so I presented an opponent's hypothetical reductive response. Yes, as fitness has been labeled by eminently foolish leftist mouthpieces as at best "right-wing" and at worst (to them, they know not what they say) "fascist", physical fitness and "traditional", insofar as it's genetic, beauty standards are being conditioned into the masses as rightist. The right embraces this for obvious reasons, they're being freely given the easiest image W. The Soviets were very interested in fitness so I expect it will be remembered by history as quite the mistake when the American left decided on tolerating and more encouraging fatness as an angle for political power. Short of pathology or actual brain-hacking, there is not enough time or words in the world to make the average guy think of "placeholder excessively overweight woman celebrity" as more attractive than say, Sydney Sweeney.
I'm glad you brought up the question of "leftist" governance. One of the most insidious rhetorical tricks communists pulled (and there are many, as they are typified by such) was the invention of the concept of the "Lib-Left." Leftism is an inherently authoritarian ethos and this is evidenced by a simple looking at history. Since Marx, there has been no leftist political movement anywhere in the world that achieved majority power on the promise and subsequent delivery of a reduction in size of government. Leftism in all circumstances, again when in majority power, invariably strengthens itself. A state that seizes a child to trans them has identical spiritual power to the Soviets seizing Kulak land. In creating "Lib-Left" the trick was cemented with the two-axis political spectrum, thereby allowing leftists to deny any governance as left unless it were economically left, ie avowedly communist. Thus, all governments that failed to achieve communist utopia could be labeled "Auth-Left" and/or "not real communism", or even "Auth-Right", as everyday leftists were free to continue beating their drums in support of the most evil ideology ever conceived by man. We're swiftly approaching the final dissolution of political rhetoric into purely friend/enemy distinction, and I hope just as much that we are swiftly approaching the end of rightist political discourse entertaining the two-axis premise. Or at least until a new two-axis spectrum is likely conceived, but this one without the communist framing. To repeat just to be clear: I reject leftist framing as leftism requiring communist economic policy; leftism is about a powerful state, and the American state is very powerful indeed.
While I agree that leftism tends toward authoritarianism (and that "leftist libertarians" are mostly liars or useful idiots who would immediately be purged after their precious revolution, as seen in basically every leftist revolution in human history), I still disagree that this means that all authoritarianism is leftism. To me authoritarian leftism (at least in the sense of the leaders being genuinely more true believerish in leftism, or at least very credibly willing to signal that) still looks more like Mao Zedong or Stalin than the present American regime (which isn't to say that the present American regime isn't resembling those two more and more lately, but still). Though wokeism is a variety or at least an offshoot of leftism, and though it has infected the present regime to a significant degree and increasingly root and branch, I still feel that it's not quite absolutely embedded or fundamental enough to make leftism the absolute defining context of the present American regime yet (though it is absolutely of course still far more left-wing than right-wing). That is, regime hasn't quite entirely abandoned its military/bureaucracy coup on liberal, small government republic origins enough yet. (This is shown by the fact that it was willing to jettison wokeism in military advertising to try to achieve better recruitment numbers, which it couldn't do if it was its entire legitimacy narrative and raison d'être. You would have never seen the Soviet Union go "Hey we're gonna relax on this whole socialism thing." to try to boost contributions to the Red Army, because in their whole political formula, the army only exists to defend socialism in the first place and without it there's nothing worth protecting.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link