site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37814 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I find it very fascinating that people are yelling about which of two elderly white men with questionable cognitive abilities should run our country. It just blows my mind that our politics have gotten to this point.

I do not see the evidence that Trump has any fading cognitive abilities. He is likely not as smart as he was at 30. He doesn’t drink. He still steps on stage and gives a speech often. He has been a loudmouth his entire life. It’s his personality. Not the same thing as cognitive decline. He is just old. We all age differently.

I do not see the evidence that Trump has any fading cognitive abilities.

He is likely not as smart as he was at 30.

How can you hold both of these views?

Language precision issue.

Trump has normal decline. Like he was IQ 135 at 22 and now he’s probably 125. Biden has the gappy decline where he doesn’t know where he’s at sometimes.

Categorically different.

Cognitive decline is an unavoidable part of aging. Every 70 year old i have ever talked to about it will admit they used to be sharper when they were younger.

In races where no other information is available, I vote for the more conventionally white and male seeming candidate. I am not alone in this prejudice and trying to push DEI in democracy seems suspect.

I think that's fair enough as carefully worded, but a presidential race (even the primaries) has almost the most information possible available out of any election you will ever encounter, so.... "no other information" is almost never the case, thus this whole vote-tendency is almost entirely irrelevant? So I fail to see how this statement is relevant at all.

I mean if you're taking into account race and gender to vote for white men, why can't other people to vote for a black woman or what have you?

You're already following essentially DEI for white men, therefore you're a prime example of why people might think pushing DEI for others might be needed. You are creating that which you dislike.

You said it was valid in the first place, aren't you just appealing to principles you don't hold (and in fact mock?) in order to exploit someone?

I don't mock principles generally, so I am not clear exactly what you are saying here. Can you rephrase for clarity?

It’s perfectly fair for you to prefer voting for black women when you don’t have other information available. But many more people share my prejudice of ‘white men are less likely to misappropriate public funds and are just generally more competent’ than do what you do. That’s what makes DEI in candidate selection kinda dumb.

I think if you were correct the Democrats would not be punching above their weight in reference to the EC. Or at the very least the people who believe as you do, do so only very weakly and it is out-weighed by the actual political affiliation of the candidates.

Democrats are not punching above their weight in the EC, and my belief- that in the absence of other information, you should prefer a white man because he’s likely to be more competent and honest- is itself a bounded belief that can be readily outweighed by other considerations, notably including the letter after their name.

You've got it backwards. The open advocacy for voting for, nominating, or appointing people because they are black and/or female is what prompted this.

And where did that come from? Just happened for no reason? Or did that happen because of open discrimination legal and otherwise against black people in the US? The Civil Rights Era occurred for a reason. DEI and wokism is a response to what came before.

  • -10

Just happened for no reason?

It happened because

  1. Black people believe voting tribally is perfectly valid, just like pretty much every other racial group except white people and

  2. The Democratic party's long-term strategy involves spoils for women and minorities.

And why do they feel that way in the United States of America? Why is the strategy that way? What formed some kind of divide between black and white people in the US of A? Any kind of situation or series of events that may have had some kind of impact on race relations? Something even the Founding Fathers thought might become an issue down the line? Might have caused a mild civil contretemps? Something that created a coalition of minorities? Something about discrimination being legally enshrined, one race being owned by the other?

The USA is the way it is because of the history of slavery and everything that came from it. Jefferson recognized it. So did many others from then until now. Saying Oh people prefer white candidates because Democrats push non-white candidates but refusing to go back the extra step as to WHY that coalition happened the way it did is probably the biggest frustration I have with parts of the right in America. You don't have to support how things are now (wokism etc.), to at least understand the chain of events that led to it. This didn't just spring up out of thin air due to racial spoils on behalf of black people. It was racial spoils on behalf of white people first, that was legally enshrined that then was overturned, over a long period of time. And the USA has been unable to escape that history. But ignoring that is not going to make it go away. And because Democrat's don't ignore it is why they punch above their weight. Like it or not, many white Americans do feel significant white guilt and that includes many conservatives who buy into the "All men are created equal" founding mythos. Whether they should feel that way or not is irrelevant, they do.

Wokism and DEI emerged in the US and not in say the UK because of the specific history of the United States. If you want to cut history off at a certain point and complain about how Democrats pushing DEI pushes you into preferring white candidates but without thinking about the extra cycle about what historical events caused them to push DEI in the first place, then you are going to struggle to attract people to your side, who do see those epicycles.

  • -11

I can criticize old, white men until the day is dead on whatever policy they have.

I can't do that with black men and/or women. Unless I have a D next to my name, in which case I can call Ben Carson an Uncle Tom or House Nigger and not receive one iota of pushback.

Spare me the entire guilt on slavery and racism speil. I don't care. The past two decades have made it clear that every ethnicity will follow along tribal guidelines - so I will take that lesson to heart and move forward with that in mind.

I don't think it has shown that is the thing. Its shown that a group with very specific historical context in the US does so. But they don't outside of the US, black Africans have vicious intra-racial conflicts.

And yes, again in the US the historical context, numbers and forced nature has created an unusually close group that attempts to socially police its members to maintain safety in numbers (see also Northern Ireland) but that doesn't mean it will remain like some immutable law of physics, which your own argument illustrates, the very existence of people like Ben Carson et al shows that the group can and will fracture just like bigger groups as it becomes wealthier and more successful.

My wifes family are a good example, very mixed political views, wanting to moveaway from the city and obviously open to mixing with other groups. Add money, add success and you can get where you want to go. No need to move retrograde here. We have very clear examples that creating opportunities to make wealthier more comfortable people creates fractures along socio-economic lines instead which will solve the whole problem in the end.

Black people feel voting tribally is perfectly valid because that's the general rule. No explanation is needed, that's how people normally act. It is white Americans who are unusual here. It's not slavery that resulted in anything different, it's the Civil Rights era which resulted in whites being taught it was not right for them to act in their own racial or ethnic interest (either "white" or their own particular ethnicity, though the latter took longer to fade).

it's the Civil Rights era which resulted in whites being taught it was not right for them to act in their own racial or ethnic interest

And why did the Civil Rights era happen? Because of the after-effects of slavery and the Civil War.

White people are the ones who also ended slavery to be clear. Their feelings are not imposed from without, they emerged internally from the moral underpinnings of why they started to believe slavery was wrong in the first place.

But regardless of that, slavery is what led to the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Era led to DEI and so on. So I think my point is made.

White people do vote tribally now, it is simply made up of sub-tribes (Blue and Red tribe are notably primarily white) because even prior to the Civil Rights era, white people are not and never have been a single tribal group, unlike ADOS who were turned into one by default after the erasure of their pre-existing tribal identities (this is a bad thing!).

The mistake you are making is thinking that because ADOS in the US have a singular (well not entirely, but close) identity and given the history in the US that they are more likely to vote racially tribally that means that white people should do the same. But that is a result of their history, and it is not something to replicate, it is a negative outcome for them, and for everyone else. It is something to be accepted for now, given the history, but it is not in and of itself a good thing. It is an outcome of a (possibly warranted!) siege mentality. And there are signs that identity is fracturing, but that is going to take time, rising economical outcomes and so on.

My interest is not the same as a French white person or an Amish one, so there is no reason for me to vote in their interest rather than my own. And in Africa, the tribal grouping are not all black people or all Africans, they have sub tribes and divisions. The only reason black people in the US largely have not had this, is because they were forced together by circumstance and numbers and treatment and because for large swathes of time they were treated as all being the same "tribe" whether they wanted to be or not.

The answer is not to double down on that. It is to understand that given the sweep of history, we both need (in my opinion) be sensitive to their current tribal outcomes and what needs to be done for them to feel empowered as part of a larger polity that treated them so badly for so long AND be clear eyed that racial tribalism is largely a bad thing, but that white people saying that to black people in America carries the weight of a history that cannot be ignored. The lessons white Americans learned from the Civil Rights era are positive, but the ADOS black community is not at a point where it can trust those same lessons. Though it is I think getting there. There is a bigger and bigger internal divide as urban black working class and middle class communities break from the underclass (Divestment, black homesteading etc.) But it is hampered by geographic and economic realities. It is this divide that will signal a social split, where racial tribalism can be replaced by "factionalism" as it is in white Americans. And additions of more recent African immigrants is also contributing to this.

But if in the mean time people who are working for white Americans to forget the lessons they learned succeed then the whole project is in danger in a way that black American tribal behavior on its own could never do (due to lack of numbers and resources).

American Progressives are right in the short term, but wrong in the long term. But you can't get to the long term without going through the short.

More comments

elderly white males

Would it be less fascinating or mind-boggling if the two candidates were equally senile Latinas?

No

Yeah, that’s fair. For whatever reason, the words “white male” are a bit triggering to me, so sorry if my reply came off as rude.

There was a conventional GOP primary, the party wanted Trump. Because he says loudly and clearly that it is unacceptable that millions of people have illegally entered our country and they have to go back

The other guy not so much

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