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.

Sorry, Q13 Split B, on page 6. I'd confused the numbering system since Split B would not have been asked Q12.

Half of the response group (Split A) were asked

"What issue is most important to you when thinking about who you will vote for in the 2024 Presidential election?"

They gave answers in 30ish categories, with 9% giving some category outside of those answers, and 3% giving no answer. The other half were asked :

"Some people feel so strongly about an issue that they won’t vote for a candidate if they disagree with them on that issue. Of the following issues, what is the one issue you most strongly feel you couldn’t vote for a candidate who disagrees with you about it? If it’s another issue or if you do not feel strongly enough about any of the issues to determine your vote, please just say so."

They gave answers in only 15 categories, with 7% other, and 12% no answer. For individual answers, there are wide spreads -- 20% of split B thought abortion so important that they mostly strongly felt and could not vote for a politician that disagreed with them, while only 8% said it was the single most important question. In Split B, the closest I can find is the 1% that were categorized as "Inflation".

Some variation from one split to the next isn't unusual -- it's hard to get a perfectly random sample -- but the gap here is vast, and not especially coherent. Some of this probably the different question wording, especially the dropped importance of the economy-focused answers for Split B. But another portion probably reflects merged or split answers, especially for things like "Freedom and Rights", "Foreign Policy (general)".

And that's the open-ended question, where the poll subject had the most control over matters. If the WSJ article is really coming down from the latter questions that are thumbs-up or thumbs-down on specific matters (which they almost certainly must be, given the numbers the WSJ infographic uses), this gets even uglier. There's a lot of questions, even ones fairly high on Q12/Q13, that weren't investigated in later question at all.