site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 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.

The female divergence is interesting, because from a somewhat objective perspective almost every single policy that has been passed on the state and federal level for almost 100 years has been explicitly designed to benefit them directly or indirectly. There's certainly been close to ZERO that would advantage men over women. Just a random smattering: Marital rape exceptions have been repealed across the board, Title IX has ensured Womens' sports survive, the ACA requires birth control be covered in full by insurance even for those who can't give birth, there's special accommodations for females in military service, and there's virtually no restrictions on women's sexual behavior on either a legal or social level. Indeed, regardless of what 'mistakes' a woman makes in this area, there's probably a program designed to alleviate the consequences at almost no cost to herself.

But there's always some other new issue that is now causing them horrible discomfort that must be addressed immediately, at all costs.

Seems like there are a few incontrovertible facts on the ground:

  1. Women have, year over year, decade after decade, been getting LESS HAPPY since about 1970, despite receiving virtually every political benefit possible, as described above.

  2. The percentage of females taking psychiatric drugs for diagnosed disorders has massively increased.

  3. Females, or specifically unmarried ones, have been swinging further and further left by any reasonable measure.

Which is to say, they want MORE political interference on behalf of disadvantaged minorities, even when they themselves are quite literally the most advantaged group in the entire world.

Feel free to controvert any of said facts if you have reliable information to the contrary!


My basic thought on this is that we now have a huge sub-population of perpetually dissatisfied voters, who are particularly sensitive to fear-inducing stimuli, and are constantly under the influence of some kind of mind-altering substance. Who are also constantly, incessantly, loudly pushing for more of the sorts of policies that haven't led them to happiness and life satisfaction in the past. Nothing will appease them, granting political rights hasn't helped, medication hasn't helped, control of an increasingly large share of the economic pie hasn't helped. Give a woman billions of unearned dollars, she'll still go all in for Leftism!

(On a side note, its interesting that the single easiest path for a female to become a billionaire is... to divorce a billionaire. Actually rather amazing that the law of this country enables someone to claim billions of dollars on the basis that they're not satisfied with their marriage. And if a billionaire can't keep his woman satisfied, what hope do the rest of us have?)

While we simultaneously have an entire media edifice/egregore screaming in their ear at all hours that they have to be afraid of virtually everything in their environment, including the environment itself, and the only path to safety/protection, absolution for sins, or social acceptance is to fall in line behind [BLUE TRIBE CANDIDATE], and join the mob that is howling at the rest of the population demanding action on whatever the issue du jour is.

So it makes sense to me that there is some level of intentionality behind these developments, because it allows the powers that be to have a reliable voting bloc that can be pushed towards or away from any given policy goal simply by adjusting the messaging sent out to this group so as to scare them into supporting whatever said powers need to do at that given point in time. If TPTB want them to be afraid of taking an 'untested' vaccine, they can pull that string. If they want them to be afraid of NOT getting the vaccine, they can swap messages. Which is precisely what we saw.

And additionally, to the extent males form a block of uniform voters at all, it is in the interest of the Cathedral/the Machine to keep them divided and demotivated from participating in the political process, lest they advocate for policies on the basis of their expected outcomes or cost/benefit analysis or something.