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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Well, we were just talking about men and women becoming increasingly politically divided. Now it seems we're seeing it take center stage. I always knew the gender stuff would get much worse before it gets better.

But what's crazy is this ad was ludicriously low on actual facts. It's a fantasist's view of the socialcon right. And it continues to try and tie Trump to Project 2025 even though he's come out against it.

The egg frozen thing is particularly ridiculous. The view of anti-egg-freezing people isn't that if you freeze eggs you should have to carry all of them to term, it's that you shouldn't freeze eggs at all. That could be a fruitful line of attack, and wouldn't require such flights of fancy.

There are lots of actual disagreements over policy that this ad could have touched on. Abortion is the obvious one. They even could have talked about the porn bans, but instead they went on a bizarre tangent about the Speaker of the House. Further, I know of 0 active political movements to take legal action against contraception (NOT ABORTIFACENTS), which makes that another dumb angle of attack. Perhaps there are some Catholics somewhere who want to ban condoms, but even radtrad Catholics know they're the junior partner in the religious right, and I assure you evangelicals are using condoms in the marital bed as much as anyone.

If you told me this was a fake ad created to mock the left, I'd believe you. I put it at 40% this is the case. It's too dumb even for a batshit insane PAC. If it's real, I almost feel like its target is men, not women. Otherwise, why would it focus so much on condoms and porn?

Boy, this election season is going to be dirty. A lot of unnecessary shit is going to get flung. And I have a feeling we're going to end it with men and women at each other's throats. God help us. I mean that.

https://x.com/travishelwig/status/1817954718989390317

Considering the guy who helped produced it previously worked for Crooked Media, a liberal/progressive American political media company, as well as Adam Ruins Everything, I'd wager it's an actual ad from a group that's on the left.

https://x.com/wontpacdown/status/1817953646409286059

They're asking for donations to actually get this on air, some possible explanations:

  • Wontpacdown is grifting to get money
  • Wontpacdown has no ties to Kamala campaign and genuinely believes this will help the democrats win the campaign
  • Wontpacdown is being funded/directed by actual Democrat campaign operators to determine if this kind of messaging will help or hurt Kamala's chances on the campaign

I'm curious what actual normies and independents/undecided voters would think if they watched that ad. Or even your everyday democrat that isn't chronically online.

The egg frozen thing is particularly ridiculous. The view of anti-egg-freezing people isn't that if you freeze eggs you should have to carry all of them to term, it's that you shouldn't freeze eggs at all. That could be a fruitful line of attack, and wouldn't require such flights of fancy.

When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled embryos were protected by a law protecting human life and thus increasing liability on negligent IVF providers, the Democrats absolutely jumped on "Republicans are going to ban IVF". At the time, I predicted the Alabama legislature would amend the law because while they did want to ban abortion, they did NOT, in fact, want to ban IVF. The Alabama legislature indeed did so, going so far as to protect them from pretty much all liability. But this made no difference, because control of the media belongs to the other side. "Republicans move quickly to protect IVF from unintended consequences of abortion laws" went into the memory hole; if anyone remembers anything about that, its "Republicans are going to ban IVF".

Yeah, and that's Alabama. Imagine how hands-off Republican legislatures would be in less decidedly deep red states, let alone swing states.

This desire to see the absolute worst in one's opponents is just horrible. There are plenty of real, enduring differences of opinion between the right and left in this country, we don't have to make things up to hate each other over.

But if we're going off this week... fake couch fucking quote, "it was glass shards not a bullet," this insane PAC ad... there does indeed seem to be a segment of the American left that's so completely infected with TDS they've left the reality-based community altogether. I think the people who stormed the capitol on Jan 6 were more in touch with reality than these folks, and some of them wore animal horns.

The difference is that QAnon Shaman doesn't have the reach to impose his view of the world on the population at large through the mainstream media. The Democrats do.