site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

I know they’ll figure it out eventually but watching in real time as rightoids try to figure out how to attack Kamala is pretty funny.

In the spirit of equal-opportunity sneering, it was cringy how everyone’s bye Biden tweets all used the word “consequential” like someone must have directed them to.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks. Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican. It's all pretty vile, but workshopping takes time. I'm sure Trump will eventually come up with something.

With Kamala as the Democratic nominee, Trump will have to pivot in his rhetoric. He was already pretty mellow in his debate with Biden, at least compared to his usual self. The assassination attempt reportedly mellowed him out even further. His RNC speech had to be scrapped and re-written with unity as the central theme.

But Trump's platform of unity lasted only a week. I believe that unity is no longer a working, winning strategy now that Biden is gone.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks.

Cacklin' Kamala has a certain ring to it, don't you think? Isn't sexist or racist either which is another plus.

Cacklin' Kamala

High Fiber breakfast cereal that makes a pleasing sound when milk is added.

Geared towards children 5 - 10 with health conscious parents. Not a premium brand, but not bottom shelf. Sold next to Kix and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Eh. It just doesn't sting for me. What, she laughs too much? The best anti-Kamala taunt was the throw in I've seen on bumper stickers and flags: Joe and the Ho Have Got to Go.

I'm sure once Trump puts his mind to it he'll come up with something. Ron DeSanctimonious was still pretty good.

Isn't sexist or racist either

"Cackling" carries connotations of femininity (it generally is not used to describe a man's laughter), so it could be considered sexist. (I can't think of a masculine counterpart word.)

"Guffawing" is a more masculine-coded often-negative connotation word for laughing, though not exclusively masculine nor always negative. Also when negative it connotes boorishness, not bitchiness or supernatural evil.

I dunno,I follow some spicy people on twitter and the most risable things I've heard is that she's an Affirmative Action VP or that she slept her way into politics neither of which are new.

Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican.

I think the effect will be lower than expected. People are intelligent enough to distinguish between sexism and misogyny and vitriol towards specific person even if they do performative pearl clutch.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

I respect the possibility that she may WOW me with a pivot to a smart, competent, and incisive campaign. If only these were qualities she had ever managed to exhibit or sustain beyond a 30-second edit. This meme you're pushing that "Repubs are scrambling to figure out an attack on Kamala" is one of the most fanciful things I've read in this last week, as if she hasn't been repeatedly trotted out as a pinata to playfully hit with a stick in between more serious concerns regarding Joe Biden and the Blob. She is known to her opponents, and they make hay out of her every day.

The Trump campaign should give her a cursory acknowledgment as the Dem nominee, and then go back to hammering the Biden admin while pretending she's not even in the room.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

On the one hand, I see this sort of thing in some quarters. Like Neema Parvini declaring that Kamala is a "sacrificial lamb" intended to lose to Trump, and that this whole election proves his thesis about how our elites are "putting the woke away" and actively pursuing Trump's return as "right-wing containment" and a pivot to rebuilding America's force-projection capacity to maintain the global American empire.

On the other hand, I encounter others arguing that this guarantees Trump's defeat, because the only candidate he could even possibly defeat was Biden, and he's utterly doomed against literally anyone else. Further, many of these argue that this is Good, Actually — not because they support Dem policies (far from it), but because they "want to see Trump supporters cry" and think that the sooner "this MAGA shit dies" the better, to make way for their preferred alternative.

And then you have the Dreaded Jim predicting that "Kamala gets one hundred and twenty million votes at three in the morning after all voting centres have been locked down and Republican scrutineers expelled."

(And don't get me started on the opinions about Vance — he's a based neoreactionary, he's an "anti-MAGA" Republican establishment type, he's a race traitor, he's a CIA/Palantir plant intended to bring about digital passports and a central bank digital currency, he's secretly gay…)

I'm really not sure who — if anyone — has the right of it.

Has the present tumult weakened your confidence that Blues have already won and Reds should despair?

No, not really. The only question is whether they win by using Trump as "containment" — giving Reds another meaningless "win", to defuse tension and slow the proverbial frog-boiling, that translates to no actual rightward movement due to the permanent bureaucracy being fully insulated from election outcomes (Project 2025 is utterly doomed); by using deep-cover CIA Vance to get the GOP back on script as the Washington Generals outer party jobbers; or by announcing Kamala as the winner with over 100 million votes in the most-safester-and-securester election ever, and these absolutely-not-fake official results are unquestionable — literally unquestionable because anyone engaged in "election denial" is officially a domestic terrorist and will be arrested by the FBI forthwith; or some other horror scenario.

Every battleground but one, every mode of conflict between the tribes but one, inherently favors the left. There is only one field of battle where the right has a relative, comparative advantage, and that's the actual field of battle. Any other method, we're guaranteed to lose. And as I've said to you before, I still think that — thanks to the nature of modern military technology and to our inability to organize (because anyone who so much as mentions "organizing" is a Fed) — we almost-certainly lose that one too.

So yes, we're still doomed. Come back to me after you've won a civil war, and then I'll have likely changed my mind.