site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you would be willing to explain where I am wrong or even lay out what your belief or thought is I would be happy to read it. Hope this helps.

The anointment argument is not that Biden was anointed by voters on November 8th, but in the Democratic Party inner-party coordination during the Democratic primary before Super Tuesday when the Party establishment successfully coordinated the majority of Biden's centrist rivals whom he been stuck amongst to drop out and endorse him. This was done in a context where this needed to happen to consolidate the centrist share of the party vote, who no one had been dominated to that point, vis-a-vis the insurgent Bernie Sanders, who up to that point had been on a Trump-esque trajectory of being one of the biggest minorities.

Between the coordinated pullout and endorsements of Biden, and the tactical stay-in by party institutionalist Elizabeth Warren that split the party left/Bernie-base vote, Biden was basically uncontested by any significant rival (except Michael Bloomberg) to the right of Bernie/Warren going into Super Tuesday, which inevitably produced an overwhelming victory on his behalf, as opposed to the forecasted muddle if the earlier-primary patterns had held. This provided the contested primary that Mozer was referring to that Biden won, as the counter-argument to @Mewis's critique of the Democratic Party relying on designated successors instead of (intra-)party democracy.

Mozer's argument was that Biden won a contested primary, and thus there was no anointing, and uses the endorsements during the contested phase as proof of this position. This relies on the assumption that an anointment must happen before the primaries, with any contested phase disproving there being an anointment.

This is an invalid assumption. There is no requirement for when an anointment/successor designation has to occur. It doesn't even counter what a successor / anointment can be considered to be.

The anointed successor argument is that the party coordination to clear the decks is the anointment, to the benefit of the designated successor. It's the institutional-driven, rather than voter-driven, pressures to determine a primary winner. Biden did not win Super Tuesday, and then other dropped out as is/was the normal causal relationship in primaries with a healthy intra-party democracy- rather, others dropped out, so that Biden could win Super Tuesday.