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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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I watched the Harris speech this morning and wrote down some scattered thoughts. My apologies if any of them don't make sense without having watched, I was just typing a few things up as I watched.

  • Nice outfit - fairly warm while still professional.

  • When she mentioned going to Illinois, there was a small cheer, when she mentioned Wisconsin there was a much larger cheer. No one likes Illinois, not even the people that live there.

  • Talking about the experience of “injustice” is in such bad taste for the child of professors. These are privileged people that found immense opportunity in the United States. I realize that the whole Democrat schtick is playing up how oppressed people of color are, but it’s ridiculous for Harris.

  • The phrase, “I’ve only had one client - the people” is a fantastic way to spin never having held a private sector job. Good speechwriting!

  • The line referring to Trump as an “unserious man” is a good line. Trump’s lack of seriousness is obvious to all but his most ardent supporters. This criticism rings as much more on point than all of the Russia conspiracy and “coup” nonsense ever could.

  • The claim that Trump has an “explicit intent to jail journalists” is just an outright lie.

  • The callback to her earlier line with “the only client he has ever had - himself” is great speechwriting. Banger of a setup and punchline. Much like the lack of seriousness jab, this rings much more true than all of the dark conspiracy stuff.

  • The line that the Department of Education “funds our public schools” is pretty weird. It’s not quite literally false, the DoE does spend ~$20 billion on public school funding, but total American school spending is nearly $1 trillion and the vast majority of it is state and local money. Are people under the impression that school funding is a big thing that DoE does or is it just a bit of rhetoric?

  • Referring to abortion as “decisions of heart and home” is an interesting tactic. Abortion is a huge winning issue for Democrats, but it’s so frequently referred to with euphemisms rather than in the most literal terminology. I’m basically entirely on the same side as Democrats on the issue, which makes it more interesting to me that it tends to come with alternative phrasing rather than just saying what they mean.

  • Shoehorning every issue into “freedom” requires some downright Orwellian twists. Abrogating the constitutional freedom of the right to bear arms is inverted to “freedom to live without gun violence”. A massive regulatory state creating arcane rules for everything from flow of showerheads to the powertrains of vehicles becomes “the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”. I think the framing probably works for people on that side of those issues though.

  • Claiming that the recent Senate border bill was the “strongest in decades” is a lie. HR 2 from 2023 passed the House and was much stronger but was unacceptable to Democrats. I do understand that this one has become an accepted truth among Democrats though, so it probably plays pretty well. Continuing to push this one requires a fully complicit media, but she can safely rely on that.

  • The Israel line is politically palatable, but also pretty hollow. Israel has a right to defend itself, but the Palestinian people will get freedom and self-determination - OK, what’s that look like? As near as I can tell, Palestinian self-determination selects Islamist leaders. Islamist leaders want dead Israelis and the land returned to Palestinians from the river to the sea. You can’t solve this problem if you’re not addressing reality. Someone has to actually lose.

Overall, it was a well-delivered speech that tacks towards the middle on most issues. While I am personally not impressed by teleprompter speeches, her tone and clarity were both quite good. Simply being energetic and eloquent is a good look. If I were a Democrat strategist, I would feel good about the speech and consider it a positive step towards victory.

I agree she’s done a good job so far with the fashion and impressions. It’s a good start for Democrats.

The biggest current threat to the Harris campaign is navigating release of actual policies in such a way so as to avoid creating a media firestorm, slip up, or criticism, but it also needs to happen before the debate or else she will get torn apart. I’m sure some political operators would be tempted to coast by on vibes, but the smart ones know that even though people are a bit dumb, they aren’t that dumb. The attack line that KamalaHarris.com doesn’t have a single policy in it is a good one. Their time frame for doing so is about 3 weeks, maybe 4. Any longer and you won’t be ready for crunch time when people start tuning in.

The line referring to Trump as an “unserious man” is a good line. Trump’s lack of seriousness is obvious to all but his most ardent supporters.

The man got shot in the head and, after standing up, started chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" He gave up a very cushy real-estate and media career to do that. The man is incredibly serious. I reject the implication that people like Joe Biden or Mitt Romney or whoever are serious because they speak calmly. If this is the common verdict across the political spectrum, it's the opinion of a weak electorate that values deeply silly traditions about how politicians are supposed to act.

Counterpoints:

Love him or loathe him, the man is famous for hurling juvenile insults at his opponents and going off on weird random digressions about whatever crosses his mind. I think "unserious" is a perfectly valid adjective to describe such a man, regardless of what you think of his politics. You can describe him as such without questioning his bravery or the sincerity of his patriotism. "Serious" does not imply "speaking calmly": fire and passion have their place in politics. But I don't think it's too much to ask for a politician to be able to string a coherent sentence together.

Name an American politician who qualifies as "serious". Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? Bush? Jeb? Obama? We have clown politicians who speak idiotic childlike cliches because they are stupid and silly people.

Trump can't speak in coherent sentences? Trump is the only man alive today whose every utterance is taken seriously. Nobody will remember anything about Kamala Harris two years from now, except that Trump called her Komrad. The man is one of the funniest politicians alive, he is a poet, the way he speaks has literally changed the way we speak the language. Bigly! This is a tired cliche. Please consider how Trump regularly speaks to crowds of tens of thousands of people without teleprompters or notes, and this has made him the most powerful man in the world.

A serious politician is Lee Kuan Yew, who could speak to his nation like adults about controversial issues directly. A serious politician is Theodore Roosevelt, who spoke at something above a third-grade reading level. A serious politician is Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, or Shinzo Abe. Calling Donald Trump an unserious politician -- compared to who? -- Kamala Harris! -- lmao! -- is an isolated demand for rigor. The woman who won't sit down and do any interviews, because when she talks, she explains that democracy, that's when the people, being the people, brcause the people, they have the power, and that's why it's so important -- when this woman speaks, as a rationalist, I listen!

FWIW, I don't think Kamala is a "serious" politician (or person) either. The absurdity that she's the current sitting VP and presidential nominee - and her campaign up to this point has been primarily focused on how "brat" she is rather than any substantive policy position - honestly, it's rather sickening.

Agreed. What has been worse is seeing my progressive close friends just become so nakedly and smugly political about it.

I've literally seen men I've known and respect for 10 years bragging about how stupid republicans are because they don't like being called 'weird.' It's just.... horrifying.

I was honestly on the fence about voting for Trump, but after seeing the start of this Kamala presidency and the reactions to it among people in my life, I am much more heavily leaning towards him.

Yeah, this election has brought out the worst in the left the way 2016 brought out the worst in the right. The growth of the ‘weird’ meme is just… weird. I said it when the ad came out and I’m saying it now: I don’t understand why the attack is landing, and why conservatives aren’t content to just laugh it off for the dumbassery it is.

But also, it’s just bullying. It’s puerile. And unlike Trump’s puerile bullying, it’s directed at the masses, at a large group of faceless people, not public figures. It has more “47%” or “bitter clingers” or “basket of deplorables” energy than “Ted Cruz’s wife is ugly” energy. I don’t like a lot of the bullying Trump does, but other than his views on illegal immigrants (which even Scott defended as more balanced than was reported), I don’t remember him bullying the masses.

Is this all about Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment, which wasn’t even made during the campaign? Did this piss off the childless cat ladies so much they went scorched earth?

I'm not sure it's new, so much as it's a new target. Prop8 Discourse was very broad and very ugly. I agree it's emboldened, though; it used to be lawn signs or bumper stickers, with a lot fewer calls to go out and apply them to other people's stuff before 2016.

((And that's not limited to the left; the right's fascination with sticker graffitti is just following the leader, but it wasn't something I'd have expected in 2016.))

I don’t understand why the attack is landing, and why conservatives aren’t content to just laugh it off for the dumbassery it is.

It is? They aren't?

Am not American, and the media I follow might be a peculiar bubble, but I haven't seen people spend all that much time on this. The "joy" campaign seems to be discussed more than the "weird" one.

Honestly, after the "basket of deplorables" comment, Hillary had no one but herself to blame for losing the election. Years and years of "Russiagate" cope, and that sentence in isolation probably decided it.

I think they are talking about a messaging sense, popular perception, not an actual assertion.

It’s undoubtably true that the popular perception of Trump resonates with the criticism even if you think it’s unfair. Remember, the audience here is the base, but the message is one that’s being workshopped for swing voters, who like a few of Trump’s policies and actions but by and large feel that way in spite of Trump’s occasional unprofessionalism, not because of it.

Nobody will remember anything about Kamala Harris two years from now

They're going to forget about the then-current President of the United States?

Calling Donald Trump an unserious politician -- compared to who? -- Kamala Harris! -- lmao! -- is an isolated demand for rigor.

That's certainly true. Harris's thought-out policies are socialist wish-fulfillment fantasies and her extemporaneous speech is... lacking. Donald Trump may not be a wonk, but he's clearly put some thought into things. We had 4 years of his presidency, where we saw a complete tax plan, worked out immigration policies, surprisingly nuanced tariff policies, and absolutely nothing on the whole "turn the US into Gilead" thing. But this is an unserious election. It's not about policy. It's about whether you want the dreamy black Indian girl and her grandfatherly companion, or the bad orange man and his weird nerdy sidekick. And the reason it's unserious is the Democratic-controlled media, though they're deadly serious about it.

They're going to forget about the then-current President of the United States?

Well, they’ve forgotten about the now-current President of the United States.

What I don't understand is, what in the world is the Trump campaign doing? I feel like Trump supporters have been on the back foot for a whole month now without being able to effectively counterpunch. This includes the Trump supporters on social media, both the genuine believers and the astroturf accounts. They have been spending too much energy on things like transgenders in sports, which I think mainly the highly online care about. I'm not convinced that the average swing state voter sees that as a big issue.

Meanwhile Trump himself has been spending too much time talking about minor ideas like getting rid of taxes on tips or the right to try. And I think that the right to try is a great thing, but is it really going to shift the needle much as far as the campaign goes? There's also the whole matter of the seemingly pretty large resources the Trump campaign has put into trying to swing black voters. But how much difference will it make to shift 13% of the US population a few percentage points pro-Trump? I just don't understand what they are doing.

I think that Trump's big problem is simply that Harris seems really young compared to him, and the average voter knows almost nothing about her, so it is easy for the Harris campaign to effectively present her as a young, dynamic force for hope and change similar to Obama in 2008, when his campaign attracted an essentially religious fervor mostly because of the symbolism of electing a young handsome eloquent black man to replace the architect of the Iraq War, rather than because of any policy ideas. Trump is old, quite visibly old at this point, and he has been so prominent in American political discussion for the last nine years that I think many people are simply bored of him at this point.

Trump is no longer the fiery, fun maverick of 2016. He is still entertaining and charismatic, but he has noticeably slowed down and he can no longer present himself as a dynamic outsider who is capable of changing everything if elected. I think that needs to emphasize crime, the economy, immigration, and the positive aspects of his first term as president. Real, substantial issues. Whereas Harris is largely running a fluff campaign based on youthfulness, momentum, and Democrats' joy at having a fresh face to vote for, meaning for the top seat this time and not just for the VP position, which almost nobody really cares much about.

But even though I think that Trump would benefit from hammering hard on his core issues, I do not think that is enough. Trump also needs a new emotional, symbolic narrative of some sort to counter the ceaseless waves of the highly energized and quite effectively organized Harris narrative. Obviously much of the Harris support is organic, but the astroturfing I have seen online so far is also quite skillful and persistent. What is the new Trump narrative? It would be hard to make it about him being an outsider this time around simply because at this point he is much more familiar to the public than Harris is.

I am confronted with Kamala or Walz's face every other time I open a YouTube video. In contrast, the only Trump ads I see is garbage like this, hyping stuff like the "no tax on tips" policy.

I feel kind of insulted. First of all, tipping is dumb. I tip decently because I have sufficient disposible income that I can pay a little extra, but these sorts of illegible culturally-mediated costs are bad and unfair. Why on Earth would I want to incentivize more tipping by exempting tipped income from taxes? Has anyone gamed out the equilibrium here? (Is this some sort of 4D chess to get black people de-facto excluded from middle-class economic areas? Think about it.)

Secondly, why does this feel like a Hooters ad? Obviously you don't want ugly people in your marketing, but this is borderline offensive. This woman is way too hot for me to believe she was selected for any reason besides her looks.

On the other hand, JD Vance is quite relatable, in the sense that his campaign feels like what would happen to me if I were to run for office.

That made me laugh way more than it should have. Nice link/funny caption!

I think that needs to emphasize crime, the economy, immigration, and the positive aspects of his first term as president.

He talks about these at literally every rally he gives. It's the center of his campaign. I question where you're getting your ideas about the Trump campaign from.

Trump also needs a new emotional, symbolic narrative of some sort to counter the ceaseless waves of the highly energized and quite effectively organized Harris narrative.

He literally just dodged a bullet on stage and stood up and told his supporters to keep fighting. The largest independent candidate since Ross Perot just endorsed him. Kamala Harris has yet to give a press interview. Trump is doing fine.

He talks about these at literally every rally he gives. It's the center of his campaign. I question where you're getting your ideas about the Trump campaign from.

The actual Trump campaign does not matter. The reporting on the Trump campaign is what matters.

What I don't understand is, what in the world is the Trump campaign doing?

Trump is visibly breaking down seemingly day by day. His mental state appears to be deteriorating noticeably to the point where even his followers in Twitter are starting to comment on it. Biden dropping out and Harris getting good poll results has apparently broken something inside him

  • -22

What on earth? Trump is not breaking down and is continuing to give rallies and interviews, sometimes at personal risk. Not a single person I know is talking about what you describe (?).

You know the media's successfully pigeonholed reality when no one is mentioning that Trump was shot at and very nearly killed at a rally. Don't you think that would negatively damage ones ability to rally?

Don't you think that would negatively damage ones ability to rally?

Apparently not so much, since while he had a "bulletproof" barrier in front of him at a recent rally, he got out from behind it to call for assistance for a rallygoer in distress. This was of course reported as Donald Trump Suddenly Stops Rally and Asks for 'a Doctor, Please!'

Sigh. We really don't hate journalists enough, do we?

Don't you think that would negatively damage ones ability to rally?

I would absolutely agree that might be a contributor or even the main cause but optically from a winning the election POV he needs to write the ship.

I would not be surprised if the near-assassination was a contributing factor. Events like that can cause some non-trivial psychological trauma.

I think that Trump's big problem is simply that Harris seems really young compared to him, and the average voter knows almost nothing about her...

One of the most striking features of this election cycle is that we had years of polling data where people kept saying that they were concerned about the age of the candidates, especially concerned about Biden's age, and partisans just kept shrugging that off as though people giving that answer didn't really mean it and were just using it as an excuse. Currently, it seems like people that basically said, "I like Democrats, but Biden's too old" were just telling the absolute truth about what their perspective was.

Great writeup, thanks for this.

I'm modeling the campaign now like this;

  1. A majority of Americans feel the country is headed the wrong direction and are unsatisfied with the economy. The deciding states (some mix of PA,MI,WI,GA,NC,AZ,NV) have a demographic bias not necessarily toward trump but away from Harris. These are structural advantages for Trump. Meaning that pretty much any Republican would have them and they are not dependent on Trump himself.

  2. Anti-Trump sentiment is the motivating factor for about half of the population and the key demographic within that is professional women between 24-50 with and without children, married and unmarried. Pro-choice is a winner there (especially after the epic mishandling of the Dobbs decision by Republicans). These are structural advantages for Harris.

  3. Trump lacks message discipline, but he's now predictably unpredictable. He's not going to say anything so outrageous that it meaningfully pushes away voters. He's already done that. All of the off-the-record messaging from the Trump campaign is how much his adivsors are urging him to stay on message. I think this is because they realize their structural advantage and lack of new voters to be won over. In a sentence, this is "playing not to lose"

  4. Harris is notorious for gaffes worse than Biden and her own version of word salad. She can lose voters by saying something totally out there. Even mainstream media outlets have comment on her lack of major interviews so far. After the hangover from the DNC wears off, I expect this to escalate. Harris' problem is likely that she has too much message discipline and comes off as reading a script. But the risk of her going off script even a little is so high that the optimization strategy has been what we've seen - just don't say much at all.

So you have a high volatility wild card in Trump going up against a contentless line reader who might accidentally self-destruct. And it's over 300,000 votes in 6-8 states. Man am I glad I'm not a campaign person.

The forecasts I'm willing to make off of this are:

  • The Biden-Trump debate in June was the most consequential Presidential maybe ever. I think the rival would be the OG Kennedy-Nixon TV vs Radio debate. And the Harris-Trump debate in September could be even more consequential I'm confident it will not be a "nothing burger." Harris will show how well she can deal with a full volume Trump off-script. She doesn't have to beat him, but she has to perform in an environment and format that she is notoriously bad in. She has to put on her best performance ever for a tie. Again, woe to the campaign staff.

  • There's going to be a September or October surprise. Just today, Jerome Powell announced September rate cuts. Nominally, that's a win for Harrris, but if the cuts are coming too late or they don't have the intended effect and unemployment spikes, that's an bad situation. Regardless, Harris is probably going to have to make some sort of speech about whatever the October surprise is with very little prep and, possibly, field live questions from reporters. This is a high risk situation for her.

  • Trump will either develop a cohesive message or he won't. If he doesn't, he's betting the farm on the demographics and economic perceptions of those 6-8 states. Maybe an RFK endorsement tips the scales and he wins by 1%. A toss up might sound "ok" but then there's the potential down ballot underperformance and the resulting automatic 4 years of lame duckness.

All in, this is a massively stupid campaign (but you already knew that). Both parties are running historically awful candidates with thin policy positions and incongruous platforms. This is why the horse race of the campaign is front and center - it's the only there there.

Harris will show how well she can deal with a full volume Trump off-script. She doesn't have to beat him, but she has to perform in an environment and format that she is notoriously bad in. She has to put on her best performance ever for a tie. Again, woe to the campaign staff.

Trump's pretty bad at debate too. People considered him to have lost most of the debates he was in.

I think as long as Kamala keeps tacking to center she'll be fine. People are taking Trump seriously as a threat. There's little sense of "Ugh we're stuck with a centrist when we wanted Bernie" this year because no primary meant Kamala felt inevitable. That means the left wing of the party has less influence, and Kamala's free to appeal to the swing voters who really matter without risking mutiny.

But ultimately I agree, I feel like this debate will be consequential. I'm holding all my prediction market bets until the debate happens.

People are taking Trump seriously as a threat.

I mean, maybe? I imagine that for a lot of people who only have a surface view of politics, the narrative on Trump has moved from 'he's going to put black people back in chains' to 'he seems weird'. That's quite a shift in how big of a threat he is.

I think people have downgraded on how bad it will be if he does take office, but upgraded on how likely it is he'll take office, compared to 2016 and maybe even 2020

Trump's pretty bad at debate too. People considered him to have lost most of the debates he was in.

I suspect the people who say that are missing the point, from the Trump campaign's perspective. Perceptions of how Trump does in debates seem very polarized and, even moreso than normal for such things, watching him in debates mostly seems to intensify whatever the viewer already thought about him. And, a small minority are swayed by this charisma he apparently has (which is completely invisible to me) and do switch to him. Maybe not a lot, but it seems to be a lot more than I've heard of moving in the other direction, especially post-2016. So from his perspective they do their job regardless of who the Serious People think won.

Trump is not "bad at debate". Remember the Trump/Hillary debate where the sour grapes response was that if the sexes were reversed Trump never could have gotten away with that? Then they staged a simulation of it with sex-reversed actors and "female Trump" won even bigger against "male Hillary"?

Trump is pretty good at debates, but he is a little less spry at off the cuff comments as he’s aged. The debate is going to be both highly unpredictable as well as highly consequential. And honestly, helpful for voters!

That play was something else. I still watch the video sometimes. It's amazing how much I want to vote for Fem!Trump.

Referring to abortion as “decisions of heart and home” is an interesting tactic.

Correct if I am incorrect, but don't democrats deny any right to the father of child and the family of the mother to determine if it should live or die? Because if neither her husband nor her family should have any say, the "home" part is deceitful. Only the "heart" (of the mother) decides.

The callback to her earlier line with “the only client he has ever had - himself” is great speechwriting.

Is this referring to Trump? He owned hotels, casinos, of which visitors could be called clients.

Someone has to actually lose.

A bit off-topic, but I read today about the political system if Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country has three main ethniticies: Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, all are subethnicities of Slavs, each has an associated religion, and all speak basically the same language. The country is divided into Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Croats and Bosniaks live, and the Srpska Republic inhabited by Serbs. Since the divisions run deep and none of ethnic groups trusts any other to not ethincally cleanse them, the bodies where power is allocated by election are subordinate to a neutral third party: Office of the High Representative (OHR) or unoffically Viceroy of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Such a solution for a territory deemed to be too "primitive" for self-rule wasn't invented in Dayton, Ohio, but follows in the tradition of "Mandates" dating back to the League of Nations.

Perhaps a similar solution could be adopted in Palestinian Territories: P5+regional islamic powers+EU+Israel each send representative to Steering Board, which elects a viceroy. He would be given a range of powers and would tasked to make sure violent extremists do not gain power, and to slowly accustom Palestinians to a free and democratic society.

How does differ from a just a military occupation? Under the OHR system the natives make the vast majority of political decisions and OHR only intervenes if he senses danger to the peace treaty (in BiH's Dayton Agreement), while under military occupation (as practised by Americans, not as defined in international law) not even this fig leaf is required: any organization can be freely dissolved, destroyed, or altered, any person killed, imprisoned, or impoverished with no justification needed.

While the Bosnian and Second World wars both saw brutality, Germans in the war just prior to the one which earned them the occupation (WWI) behaved in a honourable and admirable manner, while South Slavs in the war just prior to the one which earned them the occupation (WWII) commited many atrocities, even against each other. So by this criterion by which one could determine how civilized populations are, Palestinians of the pre 10-7 era are closer to the South Slavs of WWII, than Germans of WWI, in their want to seeing people die.

So the role the foreigners play should reflect this similarity: because the Palestinians are seemingly crueler in general, the regime should be hands-off.

OHR will never work on Palestinans alone. As long as Israel can take actions unilaterally, they will do something stupid that will make Palestinians erupt in another intifada.

Like all that shit they pulled in Gaza in September of last year?

Correct if I am incorrect, but don't democrats deny any right to the father of child and the family of the mother to determine if it should live or die? Because if neither her husband nor her family should have any say, the "home" part is deceitful. Only the "heart" (of the mother) decides.

The assumption is that the decision to abort is a discussion between the involved parties (mainly, the prospective mother and father). Legally, the woman has final say, but in any remotely healthy relationship, one would assume that she does not just make the decision without any input or consideration for her partner's opinion. I think most men would be pretty upset (and probably consider it a relationship-ender) if their girlfriend or wife said "I'm pregnant and I'm going to abort, don't bother telling me what you think because you don't get a say." Even if he's pro-choice, and probably even if he would be in favor of aborting in the situation also! That's just not the sort of decision that people in an actual partnership make unilaterally.

I emphasize again: in a healthy relationship. Harris isn't talking about either the abusive ones that the left likes to bring up or the she-demons who LOL at their exes on their way to the abortion clinic that the right (probably thinks exist in larger numbers than they do).

That being the case, that only one person has the deciding vote under the law doesn't make it "deceitful" to argue that for most people it is a decision of "heart and home."

Perhaps a similar solution could be adopted in Palestinian Territories: P5+regional islamic powers+EU+Israel each send representative to Steering Board, which elects a viceroy. He would be given a range of powers and would tasked to make sure violent extremists do not gain power, and to slowly accustom Palestinians to a free and democratic society.

Have you read about the history of Palestine? That's not too far from what the British originally tried to do with Mandatory Palestine (albeit with less finesse or consideration for anyone there, since the British had no love for either Jews or Arabs and basically wanted to wash their hands of the whole matter).

While the Bosnian and Second World wars both saw brutality, Germans in the war just prior to the one which earned them the occupation (WWI) behaved in a honourable and admirable manner

So did the Japanese. Before the invasion of China and WWII, the Japanese were known for being exemplary in their treatment of civilians and POWs. Things can change a lot in a decade or two.

That being the case, that only one person has the deciding vote under the law doesn't make it "deceitful" to argue that for most people it is a decision of "heart and home."

Right but the people who want me to accept this would never characterize it that way.

Not sure what you mean. The person I was responding to is complaining that the DNC characterized it that way.

the she-demons who LOL at their exes on their way to the abortion clinic that the right (probably thinks exist in larger numbers than they do).

The right wing narrative about women seeking abortions is either ‘sluts who don’t know who the baby daddy is’ or ‘deadbeat/abusive boyfriend doesn’t want to be a dad and strong armed the woman’.

I will agree with you that the she demons are probably not very common, but they aren’t very common in the right wing narrative either.

I've seen little to no discussion of the women who get abortions on the right in the last 20 years. The whole discussion is around the baby and how its right to be alive trumps any other possible consideration. The sluts thing is all mental models erected by the pro-life crowd and probably memed about by some greentexters.

I mean, yes, almost always having sex that leads to an abortion itself was a fundamentally foolish act. And I've seen enough of the men in the criminal justice system who are adjacent to the communities where abortion is most in demand, sex with any of those fellas is a deep form of self hate/sabotage, but this is all stuff that is taboo to discuss, not something you see at National Review.

In my tiny part of the right, at least, there is still discussion of the women who get abortions. But it's not calling them sluts, it's usually calling them HR harpies who find making useless PowerPoints for $60k a year more fulfilling than motherhood. Or generally other attacks along those lines of enjoying meanginless careers, or vapid and empty lifestyles, more than motherhood.

That being the case, that only one person has the deciding vote under the law doesn't make it "deceitful" to argue that for most people it is a decision of "heart and home."

What if only men would legally allowed to make some type of a decision, and their wives would be only allowed to argue against them and threaten with divorce (a no-fault divirce at that, as abortion of a child the father wants alive isn't, according to (my understanding of values of) democrats, grounds-for-divorce), would democrats call such decisions as anything other than solely his own? Because feminists like to poont to past such laws as example of the patriarchy and consider women in such cases completely powerless. Like the "women weren't allowed to open a bank account" (but they were allowed to talk to their husbands how money should be spent). Or suffrage: woman talking to her husband about her political ideals wasn't illegal, but because she wasn't issued a ballot, feminist consider the husbands vote as representative solely of his values and the woman disempoweted.

What if only men would legally allowed to make some type of a decision, and their wives would be only allowed to argue against them and threaten with divorce (a no-fault divirce at that, as abortion of a child the father wants alive isn't, according to (my understanding of values of) democrats, grounds-for-divorce), would democrats call such decisions as anything other than solely his own?

Yes. It's harder to think of an example of a decision that "only a man can make," for reasons of biology, but one that comes to mind is getting a vasectomy. A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge, but a lot of women would consider doing so without consulting her (especially if she wants children) to be a deal-breaker. And it would be a dick (heh) move to do that without talking to your partner.

More generally, making any kind of huge financial or life decision ("I am going to quit my job," "I just bought a new Cybertruck," etc.) is the sort of thing you can legally do but most people would agree is a shitty thing to do unilaterally. And those sorts of decisions are mostly made by men.

Or suffrage: woman talking to her husband about her political ideals wasn't illegal, but because she wasn't issued a ballot, feminist consider the husbands vote as representative solely of his values and the woman disempoweted.

Most people probably understood that a wife was probably going to have some influence on her husband, but it was also understood that a husband could and would vote however he wanted without consulting his wife.

And those sorts of decisions are mostly made by men.

I'd love to see a source for this. A quick Google isn't bringing up anything reliable either way for me ... though some of the questionable sources are amusing:

It seems that in married households both genders believe, in supermajority poll results, that they had the most influence over car purchase decisions.

A lot of feminist sources are happy to report that women make a supermajority or an overwhelming majority of car purchase decisions, not because equality means we must fight the matriarchy now, but because this implies we need to hire way more women as auto executives.

I think this is a good description of the story the modern blue tribe tells about itself, and if it were true to form I'd probably have less of a bone to pick with that side of the isle's treatment of my sex. But like many autobiographies, it gives itself too much credit.

I think you'll find that in practice, very little scorn is offered to wives who decide for themselves that having another baby is "right for her", and very little lenience to husbands who aren't prepared to quickly get with that program.

From what I have seen, most normal people believe all such decisions should be mutual, while very tribalized people always tell a narrative that emphasizes the most selfish and abusive individual stories from the other side while claiming that the selfish and abusive cases on their side are exaggerated. Thus conservatives emphasize selfish women making childbirth choices without giving their partner any say, and claiming that men actually being controlling and abusive is just a story women tell themselves. While leftists emphasize women in controlling and abusive situations and imply women lack agency or responsibility for anything, while excusing truly selfish and irresponsible behavior by women.

"This should be a joint decision, but the person whose body is at issue has the final vote if they can't reach an agreement" is where we are at.

I understand what is supposed to happen. My concern is what happens when something goes wrong.

Blue tribe is happy to hand wave away men's vulnerability to women's overwhelming reproductive power as "biological" in origin. I am unsure how biology writes our laws in any sense other than the most reductive and worthless—but on the other hand, I am not opposed to the implementation of cultural protections in lieu of legal ones where the latter may be too unwieldy. Blues would insist that any legal protection for men is impossible to practically implement. I may mostly disagree, but I can see how it might be hard to implement within a marriage context. Cultural protections may be appropriate here.

The problem is that this form of protection isn't offered to men by blue tribe in nearly enough volume to justify the power differential. Blue tribe culture may be willing to condemn reproductive coercion of men by women as being kinda mean, and wag a finger at women who do it, but that isn't nearly enough, and proves that blues don't really care about this abuse of power.

If we're taking this seriously, reproductive coercion of men by women really ought to be considered at a similar level of transgression as infidelity. This is a good example of a love crime that we do actually take quite seriously, and offer serious cultural protection against in lieu of legal protection. If we were to apply this kind of protection as a safeguard against women's reproductive power, things would look very, very different. It would look like blue tribe looking at a sobbing woman whose husband left her because she tried forcing another baby on him dead in the face, and, shedding no pity whatsoever, assuring her that all this ruin is only what she wrought upon herself. It would look like, in the other timeline, blue tribe lionizing a husband as downright saintly for finding it in himself to forgive this kind of transgression, given to an individual wholly undeserving of mercy, even if the true intended beneficiaries are the children.

But in the current blue milieu, unexpected babies in marriage are something that just kinda happen. Like, it's a little bad if the woman is being deceptive, but comon dude, shit happens. You need to move on and focus on making room for the new kid. I don't even want to know how much of the asshole he would be if he up and left due to this betrayal. Sticking around is simply being a decent human being and awards no cookies.

Again, I'd have less of a bone to pick with Blue Culture if the protections it claims to offer to men were real, but as it stands right now calling it a fig leaf would be offering too much credit.

I don't think people do actually have much sympathy for a woman whose partner leaves her because she wants a(nother) child and he doesn't. It's just an unfortunate irreconcilable difference.

(I also don't think husbands leaving their wives because they don't want any more children is very common.)

He's still financially responsible for any children he produces, though. That's an ever-present potential consequence of having sex that both parties have to live with.

More comments

A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge

Getting vasectomy doesn't mean your wife cannot get pregnant, she still can, just from another man.

Adding to ControlsFreak's comment: In some countries, men cannot get vasectomy unless they already have children (2 in case of Russia), this requires women.

Well yes, and in some countries women cannot get abortions.

We're not talking about Afghanistan here. ...France had blanket ban on vasectomy till 2001.

Okay? What's your point? I am aware other countries are more restrictive than the US.

A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge

This was not always true. I personally know a couple where the wife had to sign paperwork in order for her husband to legally get a vasectomy.

Society really used to treat marriage differently than we do today.

This was not always true. I personally know a couple where the wife had to sign paperwork in order for her husband to legally get a vasectomy.

In the US? What state? Genuinely curious, because I have never heard of this. I've heard of doctors refusing to sterilize young people requesting it, claiming they might change their minds later, but I have never heard of a spouse needing to give permission.

I don't know what state they were in at the time. I knew them well after the deed was done, but she said that she definitely had to sign. I'm maybe a little less confident now that it was a legal requirement rather than doctor-driven, but I can't really tell. Search is broken in 2024, especially when looking for good history. ChatGPT seems to think some states had such laws into the ~60s/70s (and its suggestions would jive with my guess of where my friends probably lived back in the day). Maybe it's hallucinations all the way down...

A quick search tells me it's not (and hasn't been) legally mandated in the US, but a lot of doctors will require it anyway (which may itself be a HIPAA violation).

A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge, but a lot of women would consider doing so without consulting her (especially if she wants children) to be a deal-breaker. And it would be a dick (heh) move to do that without talking to your partner.

And a woman can have her tubes tied without her husbands consent. So here women and men have equal rights, but with abortion what is destroyed is inherently a product of two people, unlike fallopian tubes or vas deferens. A woman who never interacted with a man has nothing to abort, but she has fallopian tube.

More generally, making any kind of huge financial or life decision ("I am going to quit my job," "I just bought a new Cybertruck," etc.) is the sort of thing you can legally do but most people would agree is a shitty thing to do unilaterally.

Abortion:

Woman: legally allowed to make a decision on her own

Man: legally allowed to argue

Quitting a job/buying a car:

Woman: legally allowed to make a decision on her own

Man: legally allowed to make a decision on his own

I fail to see the parallel.

Most people probably understood that a wife was probably going to have some influence on her husband, but it was also understood that a husband could and would vote however he wanted without consulting his wife.

Yes, when women couldn't vote this was realized, but I am talking about today. Of contemporary political affiliations, only anti-suffragists (Edit: and those who hand around them) are familiar with the argument that women had political power, even if the vote was denied to them.

Edit: As spaces have increasingly clamped down on rightists deviations, it is increasingly unlikely for normies to have heard this.

And a woman can have her tubes tied without her husbands consent. So here women and men have equal rights, but with abortion what is destroyed is inherently a product of two people, unlike fallopian tubes or vas deferens. A woman who never interacted with a man has nothing to abort, but she has fallopian tube.

So? Men can't get pregnant. This is not a convincing argument unless you're pro-life, in which case "It's not fair that the woman has the deciding vote" is not your actual objection. If you object to abortion on principle, that's fine - we don't agree, but you'd still be against abortion even if we made it a law that the mother and father both have to agree to it. If you'd be pro-choice if the father gets a veto, that would be interesting. Is that your position?

Yes, when women couldn't vote this was realized, but I am talking about today. Of contemporary political affiliations, only anti-suffragists (Edit: and those who hand around them) are familiar with the argument that women had political power, even if the vote was denied to them.

No, this isn't some secret knowledge that women, even in highly patriarchal and oppressive societies, have always been able to influence their husbands.

I don't think even Amanda Marcotte believes that women had literally zero influence or agency prior to the 19th Amendment. The argument is that having some "influence" exactly to the degree that your husband allows it isn't the same as having autonomy. If your argument is that women shouldn't have autonomy, fine, I understand that argument. But not being able to vote in a democracy is absolutely a lack of autonomy.

Abortion:

Woman: legally allowed to make a decision on her own

Man: legally allowed to argue

From the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women:

Article 16

1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations and in particular shall ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women:

...

(e) The same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights;

If a woman can unilaterally decide to abort or carry her baby to term, can men truly be said to have the same right to "to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children" if all he can do is try to persuade her?

Yes. It's harder to think of an example of a decision that "only a man can make," for reasons of biology, but one that comes to mind is getting a vasectomy. A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge, but a lot of women would consider doing so without consulting her (especially if she wants children) to be a deal-breaker. And it would be a dick (heh) move to do that without talking to your partner.

Not really the only thing. A man can radically alter his body's appearance by going to the gym a lot and lifting the right way in a way a woman cannot. He can hulk out.

More generally, making any kind of huge financial or life decision ("I am going to quit my job," "I just bought a new Cybertruck," etc.) is the sort of thing you can legally do but most people would agree is a shitty thing to do unilaterally. And those sorts of decisions are mostly made by men.

They are? Poor financial decisions are not the sole domain of any sex, but the cluster is on the other side of the aisle AFAIK.

So did the Japanese. Before the invasion of China and WWII, the Japanese were known for being exemplary in their treatment of civilians and POWs. Things can change a lot in a decade or two.

Is there a simple explanation of why the Japanese changed so much in this regard over such a short time period?

A simple one? No. The shortest explanation I can give is that from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, the Japanese imitated the West, tried to do a speed-run to a modern industrial society, and adopted many Western norms. They admired the West and basically wanted respectability and to be treated as equals. So they tried to do all the right things and be seen as fellow (honorary) Westerners.

The realization that that wasn't going to happen (even after they fought on the side of the Allies in World War I) was one of many things that led to Japan becoming increasingly militarized and xenophobic.

This is a huge simplification, of course - it isn't like Japan didn't already have a history of being very militant, and aggressive with their neighbors. And a lot of other things happened between the Meiji Restoration and the Showa Era. But for a while they were trying to play by the West's rules.

Is this referring to Trump? He owned hotels, casinos, of which visitors could be called clients.

Yes. I didn't say that I agree with the substance! It's good speechwriting though. The reality is that Harris has never had a client, never had a single person that willingly purchased anything that she's ever created. Neither has Walz, for that matter, which is an interesting fact about the ticket. The spin is that her clients were the people as where Trump is just purely self-serving. This is a good rhetorical defense, in my book.

Well I think it is more than rhetoric. I think it is an insight to their psyche. They think men of commerce are greedy me first people who therefore need to be crushed by the state to get them to do the right thing. But you can’t do well in commerce unless you care a helluva about your customers. Crushing state regulations make it harder to serve your client.

They think men of commerce are greedy me first people who therefore need to be crushed by the state to get them to do the right thing

If corporations would stop proving this time and time again, people might stop thinking this way.

As opposed to the state actors who are selfless paragons of virtue and love for mankind?

By and large, you get ahead by serving your client. If you don’t, you don’t get ahead in business.

Sometimes it involved concincing client to pay for what they don't need. I visited a Samsung shop week ago and asked whether there is a phone with plastic instead of glass, because i don't want it to be smashed. The director said "if you dropped your phone, it's because of klutziness, and klutziness has a price tag". Do you think this person would get fired?

Would they? No. How did you react? Does it have a negative on your interaction with that business?

I did nothing. Did not even send 1-star review.

Is this referring to Trump? He owned hotels, casinos, of which visitors could be called clients.

True, but "the only client he's ever had is himself" is an artful way of describing someone who is pathologically selfish and doesn't care about others. My understanding is that Trump has been involved in multiple fraudulent business ventures, which ties into this.

A lot of people in this country are generally in favor of (some) abortion being legal but are really uncomfortable with the reality of killing a fetus. Blunt language drives some of those people away, while euphemisms help keep them comfortable voting D.

The bailey is "killing a unborn child if its birth is too inconvenient for the mother" the motte is "it's a medical and complex decision to end a pregnancy".

This bailey IS defensible, there are definitely arguments that can convince me there, such as the lack of universally agreed upon distinction between a fetus and a baby and the start of life, edge medical and criminal cases, etc...

But I can certainly imagine there'd be a whole lot more deserters if that side was forced to always fight in the bailey.

I would have more intellectual respect for some pro-choice activists if they came out and said "Yes, I support killing the unborn child on the mother's request even if it is a child and not just a fetus, because I value the mother's choice over the child's life". And I would have more intellectual respect for some pro-life activists if they came out and said "Yes, one of the main reasons why I am pro-life is because I am against female promiscuity and/or I am religious, not just because I actually care about the life of the child". Alas though, we are where we are.

I believe this is known as the Violinist Argument.

As I've written before here, the Violinist Argument does a very poor job, gets intentionality exactly backwards, and mostly serves to trigger people's disgust response at a secret cabal of shadowy figures being allowed to kidnap innocent, unrelated individuals in order to strap them to a machine and 'suck the life force out of them'. Zero percent of people are capable of suspending their disbelief enough to actually imagine that you "just wake up" one day and some random process of the universe put you in that situation. As such, it actually tells us very little about how people view bodily autonomy.

My preferred analogy is rock climbing. When two people go rock climbing, they intend to have a little fun. They 'hook up', using the best safety equipment possible, intending to make the probability of an issue be as low as possible. But Murphy's law happens, snake eyes come up, and your partner ends up dangling at the end of a rope attached to you. Maybe that rope is causing you a little discomfort; maybe it's threatening minor rope burn; maybe it's threatening one of your limbs; maybe it's threatening your life. Lots of possible variations to handle a variety of scenarios people want for abortion. I don't think people are nearly as likely to say that you can choose to pull out your pocket knife and intentionally cut the rope, knowing that it will surely lead to your partner's death, completely regardless of what the danger is, all the way to the case where there is literally no real danger, just that they are relying on you to not cut the rope. This gets intentionality the right way 'round and also neatly handles the question of contraceptive use to reduce the probability of the undesired outcome, as well as the question of danger to the physical body of the woman. This should be an easy bullet to bite for any people who think they genuinely hold an extremely strong view of bodily autonomy.

I'll be stealing that analogy; it is much stronger and more relatable (and has probably been actually realized at some point!) than the violinist.

I'm reminded of a clip I saw of Bill Maher who said something along the lines of "Conservatives are right, abortion is killing a baby, and I'm OK with that. We need to be honest about it". And all his guest were just emoting some form of "Oh Bill.... no....".

Here is the clip.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XQvB55pAFy0

I dunno, I prefer the pro-murder/anti-woman framing more than I like the pro-choice/pro-life one, since it obviates the "what's a life" and "is deformity X worthy of life" questions the pro-choice faction wants to dance around and makes more salient the "are miscarriages murder?" point that our tendency to regulate literally everything inexorably leads us to.

Of course, because my answer to both of those questions tends toward "no" it's going to come into conflict with the people who answer those questions with "yes", and it is the side that will answer "yes" to those questions that has control of the framing. (Obviously the pro-choice people think it's a life, that's why they depend on the excuses to rationalize it.)

I dunno, I prefer the pro-murder/anti-woman framing more than I like the pro-choice/pro-life one, since it obviates the "what's a life" and "is deformity X worthy of life" questions the pro-choice faction wants to dance around and makes more salient the "are miscarriages murder?" point that our tendency to regulate literally everything inexorably leads us to.

I mean, if you are pro-life, obviously youd prefer this because the anti-woman frame collapses quickly under scrutiny.

I am not pro-life.

because the anti-woman frame collapses quickly under scrutiny

You're ignoring that female privilege is ultimately what holds that frame up. Removing privilege from any group is by definition anti-that-group.

The truth is that honoring that privilege necessitates you being OK with baby murder, just like when men use the privilege of self-defense to kill people that attack them [as opposed to specifically pro-choice women, who are also most likely to insist that criminals have the right to not be killed when they try to rob or kill you because it's involuntary... exactly like an [unwanted] baby does].

Which is kind of why the "principled exceptions" are the way that they are- an exception for rape pregnancies bestows upon the victim the privilege to not suffer/support a forced pregnancy, fine before X weeks bestows the privilege to exempt people who can't afford to be (or can't for medical reasons) pregnant from pregnancy, an exception for birth defects serious enough to render the baby incompatible with normal life that the body doesn't auto-abort bestows the privilege for parents to evade a bad roll of the cosmic dice, and an exception for incest touches both 1 and 3. That's also why the non-selfish anti-woman charities tend to focus on fixing the second one, because 1, 3, and to a point 4 are a lot less controversial (1 and 4 are mostly solved by implantable birth control and Plan B; condemning 3 is not so much anti-woman as it is anti-parent, and people who are anti-woman also tend to be pro-parent).

Maybe its just me, but I am having difficulty understanding your post.

Shoehorning every issue into “freedom” requires some downright Orwellian twists. Abrogating the constitutional freedom of the right to bear arms is inverted to “freedom to live without gun violence”. A massive regulatory state creating arcane rules for everything from flow of showerheads to the powertrains of vehicles becomes “the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”. I think the framing probably works for people on that side of those issues though.

I mean, isn't this just the difference between positive rights and negative rights, a major difference between the left and the right? Negative rights talk about a right to do that can't be taken away, Positive rights talk about a right to have that must be provided.