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 Biden's popularity is lower than Harris's because his weakness and mental frailty has been in the news for a month. Meanwhile, she's been mostly out of the spotlight for years now, which is good, because when she's in the spotlight we're treated to monologues about the significance of the passage of time unburdening us from what has been.

Her favorability will go down once she has to speak extemporaneously and people have to actually evaluate her as a potential president rather than just someone with a pulse.

What do you think about this explanation for that recurring turn of phrase she uses?

https://x.com/conceptualjames/status/1815057918229975147?s=46

Is dude seriously saying she's doing a Luciferian incantation? That seems a very odd take.

Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.

My main issue with Kamala is how do we reconcile the “coconut” comments with the “unburdened by what has been” comments?

If we didn’t fall out of the coconut tree, we exist in the context. But isn’t existing in the context, in essence, very similar (if not the same) as being burdened by what has been?

Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.

Because everyone who thinks it’s paranoid delusion is just ignoring it.

I think Republicans should make this criticism central to their critique of Harris from now until the election.

People really overestimate the degree to which people plan their moment-to-moment actions/statements. 95% probability that someone wrote her that line in a speech sometime, she liked it/it stuck in her head, so it got filed away in her brain's library of verbal tics, the same way musicians fall back on favorite licks.

Can anti-Democrats ever stop making Democrats sound cooler? Esoteric incantations? I'm voting for those.

Seems like a stretch to me. She's just saying a random political slogan.

The whole "the elites are secretly occultist Satanists doing magic spells right in front of us" can seem kind of compelling but... I haven't found good enough evidence to buy it. Yet.

I think this particular gem of hers would fit pretty well on TimeCube:

It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.

Damn, I just checked and TimeCube is down! It's true. The internet really is dead.

https://timecube.online/ is a false archive of the TRUTH, a trap to make people educated stupid. Accept no imitations. https://web.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/