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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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I do have a lot of sympathy!

Jokes and 'jokes' about violence aimed at specific politicians have always been sporadically enforced, and as much as it's unfair that there's been less notice aimed at the left for the last few decades, it means quite a lot of people genuinely don't have fair notice when the closest thing to ramifications was Kathy Griffin (and even she didn't get booted from Twitter) for almost two decades. Some people do genuinely just have a morbid sense of humor, not just when people they don't like are involved. And it's not unusual for a lot of the enforcement to really be 'about' some more tedious local drama leading whoever starts the cancel campaigns to bubble things up, or because some especially-neurotic town asshole decided to Make An Example of someone.

I just don't have arguments, or at least any not-laughable ones. I've been trying to write up some of the recent libertarian Barnett-Sandefur discourse on related topics, and it's just empty.

What's left?

  • Principles? Clearly these aren't shared values to the left, but worse than that it's far from clear they're even held by any opponent of cancel culture. Even among self-identified Big-L Libertarians, there's no shortage of big-name people who flirt back and forth from XKCD 1357. It's not that SlightlyLessHairyApe was coming up with increasingly threadbare excuses for why This Didn't Count; it's that the people who write entire legal treatises about the First Amendment and cancel culture struggle to handle whether turning the shop radio to the wrong should be a (required-to-be) fireable offense.
  • Appeal to the center? @TracingWoodgrains might believe that the "the center... has been the only group consistently mobilizing against the phenomenon writ large", but a sizable part of my frustration is that, having spent well over a decade, I'm pretty far from convinced. For all the center might be shocked by the excesses of aggressive cancel culture, the resulting policies demonstrably changed minds far in excess of any backlash. In no small number of cases, the center absolutely loves it. We both, specifically, are beneficiaries of the illiberal stridency and cancel culture against homophobia, and today that means gay marriage is a 80%+ thing! Nobody cares about the 'f-word' getting people fired. And as much as I'm personally a fan of "don't beat up gay people" even if I'm far more mixed on jokes about gay people, "don't try to assassinate politicians" is pretty good as a goal if I'm far more mixed on joking about it.
  • Hegemonic Swarms and the involved drama are Bad? That's a great argument for not doing it in Matt Parlmer's shop, and I've been lucky enough to find some places that try something at least along the same lines, but they're far outliers. Everywhere else has been quite happy to not merely tolerate but invite Progressive Hegemonic Swarms; whether the right does it or not has no impact on whether it shows up there.

I'd love to see reasons why. I've been looking! I'm not willing to join in, both for my principles and for the what did you think tolerance meant vibes posters reasons. But the best arguments I can find for anyone else to behave differently don't look very good.

Example bullet points are convincing and demoralizing. Do you have vast bookmark archives, or is your recall that sharp? I will bump an absolute banger of a post with junk and an AAQC report.

The behavior is better than literally burning witches and heretics. So, in a sort of Pinker-esque perspective it's not so bad. If we can't recognize any useful tools, people, or mechanisms, then hope or acceptance may be better than chasing the dragon.

Principles? Clearly these aren't shared values to the left

The left-left? They jettisoned, or were stripped of, any sort of practiced ideological pinning that shares any of the relevant principles. Progressivism consumed liberalism among city dwellers without much resistance.

Left of center people will still recall these principles. Their voices, politicians, and institutions even still give lip service and faithfully repeat the right platitudes. Until challenged by their moral betters with the most tepid amount of heat applied to their feet. Still, if those principles become apparently useful then something will change. Once upon a time, left-leaning Jewish lawyers rallied a hell of coalition to espouse, then enshrine such principles.

Appeal to the center?

I'm not sure what Trace means when he says centrists. Inasmuch as centrists supposedly can mobilize they are not in a position to be a prominent voice, nor equipped to actually do things writ large. Unless we define major institutions as inherently centrist, as a leftist would, then they may as well not exist except for a number of grey tribe weirdos. The moderate liberal does exist. I'd include a hefty slice of the aging center-left and some right of center folks. Powerful folks, even, but not cultural movers. They are cowed all the same when the hot iron is applied.

For as long as centrists are boring and culture warring fun they will remain cultural irrelevant. Politics, partisanship, and being mean to enemies is fun. Having enemies you won't die to is fun. The stakes aren't high enough for enough people to be stripped of fun. How do you compete with fun? You either take power to enforce boring, win a cultural victory via memetics like principles, or-- you wait for a terrible self-afflicted catastrophe that allows moderate temperaments to have their day in the limelight. Take advantage of the aftermath of some awfulness that reminds people why the responsible centrists are so eager to tell you why you're ruining stuff.

The radical, backbone-having centrists needed to start their march through the institutions 15 years ago, but they didn't, because they don't exist. They can't be real until the landscape changes to allow them to exist.

But the best arguments I can find for anyone else to behave differently don't look very good.

Christians have some good reasons. People in positions of authority have good reasons. Each individual person probably has one or two good reasons. LibsofTikTok has few good reasons.