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.

I think there is a general vibe shift against PMC and woke ideology, but really to me the big factor is economy. Dems oversaw a period of insane housing inflation (other stuff too but housing is just retarded at this point) and people remember the Trump years as pretty damn good in comparison.

Also I really do think Biden as a senile old man is an incredibly weak candidate. If you had an Al Gore or John Edwards type in this election as the Dem nominee I still think they would landslide Trump. I think Biden is just so feeble and weak that the contrast between him and Trump is insurmountable in terms of public perception of strength and competence.

The median voter owns a house with a 3% mortgage.

Housing inflation is a key way republicans try to appeal to the youth vote(because ‘just cut the forest down’ is at least a better response to nimbies than endless lawfare), but the average voter pissed about inflation is pissed about gas and grocery prices because their house payment has not gone up, except a bit in taxes.

The median voter owns a house with a 3% mortgage.

Do you have numbers on that?

https://www.bankrate.com/homeownership/home-ownership-statistics/

Nationally north of 60% of people own a home. That rate is typically higher in swing states.

I couldn't find data on voters vs non-voters, but voting is generally correlated with good outcomes(like owning a home), so we can assume that if there's a mismatch it's in the direction of voters being more likely to own their house. And eyeballing the data it certainly looks like homeowners have generally been there for a while, meaning that their mortgage rate is likely low.