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 it happens this way it would essentially make the Dems a semiparliamentary party,

They already sort of are. In contrast to the Republican Party where the regional and state committees are largely seperate and operate independently of the national party, the Democratic Party's structure is much more "top-down" with the national chair holding power of the purse and an outsize influence over both the convention and the primary process. If you dont believe me, just ask a "Bernie-Bro" how they feel about superdelegates some time.

I mean, to be fair, they did undo a lot of the superdelegate system afterward because of exactly these kind of complaints. But yes the Democrats tend to be more centralized, at the very least since the Obama years, where that same centralization turbocharged a lot of their fundraising. I have no idea how much it may or may not predate that point.

This is also itself a reflection / downstream of how the primary Democratic Party machines are based on relatively centralized City Machines, which tend to dominate state politics, but also themselves the have (relatively) clear power differentials. The NYC political node and the California nodes, by virtue of their monetary influence for the rest of the power, have a degree of leverage over the lower party organs via patronage networks that the Republican Party lacks due to the decentralization.