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I'm obviously not in the position to confirm or deny any vibe shift happening half a world away, but my ongoing frustration with the whole Kamala thing is that there's always at least one degree of separation between the enthusiasm and the person reporting it's existence. I'd love to hear the thoughts of an earnest supporter, starting with what they're hoping to get from her that they weren't getting for the past 4 years.
I'm my sabermetrics addled brain, the Trump-Biden transition was between a negative WAR president and a replacement level president. Biden amounted to a blank space in the oval office, and the country/government ran itself around that.
Kamala represents getting a 1war player over a replacement level player. Some upside! Major league competence! But still well below average. And there's some good, organic Kamala content out there. It's fun!
I still expect to vote third party.
I think it's debatable to what level President Harris would even "do" anything. The stabdard now is that she can't speak off-script, so she hides; and Biden is senile, so the departments run themselves. If Trump wins, he imposes change, a little or a lot. If Kamala wins, why wouldn't things go on mostly as they have?
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As someone now leaning Kamala (despite having some nasty things to say about her earlier), she isn't embarrassing in the same way Biden was (or Trump, to a lesser extent, is). When she does something goofy, it's more endearing than terrifying.
I'm unhappy with both candidates' "policy platforms," but in the end neither will be enacted to a meaningful extent. Kamala's also more allied with my geography and employers, so I might receive more benefits from federal largesse.
Does that count as enthusiasm? Hah. My vote doesn't matter anyway.
Are you sure about that? The chance of a trifecta, provided a Harris victory takes place, is about 50%, per the betting markets, I believe. That's high! They might not be able to get some of the price controls stuff through, but if they get 50%+1 in each house, they absolutely will enact "court reforms" (term limits, which are really court packing; the No Kings Act, which is really a way to force the judiciary to stop taking positions one dislikes, constitution be damned) that have popular sounding names and high esteem among democrats (so they'll pass), but have the long-run effect of destroying the independence of the federal judiciary and our system of government. Also, no way they crack down on the border, which will over time, as those here illegally get citizenship, push the country farther left, and get you some more of those policies you don't like.
I am skeptical about the judiciary changes happening: if Democrats win the Senate and the Presidency, the court "reform" (I agree it would be bad, and I'm pretty content with the composition of the current court) is a much bigger lift than simply appointing new justices. In fact, I'd say that Trump winning actually increases the risk of judiciary reform over the next decade, if he replaces one or two of the Democratic justices and Democrats feel increasingly desperate and hopeless. If court packing is going to happen, electing Harris or electing Trump just shifts it a couple years forward or back.
As far as immigration goes, neither Trump nor Harris will do much to change the existing system. They'll take different rhetorical approaches and make some marginal changes, but both will more or less maintain the status quo. The constant stream of millions of illegal immigrants is just too critical for the lifestyles of both Democratic and Republican donor classes to allow for any real action to be made. You'll still see roughly the same number of immigrants in the US regardless at the end of their respective terms.
The only place I see a substantively different choice of futures is foreign policy, particularly China. Who's better to avoid a war with China? This is not obvious and requires some guessing: Harris is a sock puppet for the existing foreign policy establishment, while Trump's approach is (charitably) more personalistic. As much as I dislike the foreign policy establishment, they provide predictability. Major wars break out when one side doesn't correctly predict what the other side will do; if everyone can predict what will happen and the costs to each party, it greatly increases the likelihood of managed transitions that don't go kinetic. A war with China will hurt the economy far worse than cherry picking all the worst policies from each candidate, so that ends up being one point in Kamala's favor for me.
What do you make of Senator Whitehouse saying that they'd pass the reforms that, bundled in a single bill with a bunch of other popular things, to only circumvent the filibuster once? That they would be "virtually certain" to pass such a bill, and that it would have "spectacular tailwinds"? Is he lying, or wrong?
I don't expect Republicans would overplay their hand with replacing Democratic judges, because of what the situation is like right now—if they could get a sufficiently strong commitment to not blow up the whole thing in the future in exchange for replacing the justice with another Democrat, that seems well worth taking. (Though I could certainly see them replacing some of Thomas, Alito, or Roberts, with other conservatives.) I could be wrong; it's possible they have no self-control.
I think immigration can be done with more direct action, so congressional actors are of a little less importance.
I'm similarly uncertain on foreign policy. In practice, it looks like Trump's foreign policy worked out a lot better than Biden's (see: Afghanistan, Abraham Accords, Ukraine, Iran), which is a point in Trump's favor, but I don't know how the amount of risk taken compares. Are you opposed to people using strategic ambiguity?
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I don't see how this follows at all. If one side is able to predict with relative precision the costs of a conflict will be, they will be more likely to do it whenever the benefits exceed those costs. Predictability alone is not a prophylaxis, you need a robust and credible cost infliction strategy to actually generate deterrence.
You absolutely need a cost infliction strategy. But the competitor needs to be able to predict costs will actually be inflicted. Otherwise, they can convince themselves it would be lower cost than it actually will be.
For a Taiwan contingency, I believe the variance of costs (or, more precisely, China's perception of the variance of costs) is higher with Trump than with Harris. A war resulting in a quick, painless victory with minimal worldwide economic repercussions is likelier with him as he's more likely to call bluffs and cow China with escalatory responses, but so are disasters where we tumble into massive total war because China mispredicts US responses. (He's also more likely to sell Taiwan off, which isn't great but still a much better scenario than the total war outcome.)
I acknowledge this is guesswork, and the primary determinant of how horrific war will be is decisions on the Chinese side, not the US side.
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And yet Putin didn't invade Ukraine until the existing foreign policy establishment was fully back in control.
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I don’t think democrats need 50%+1 to pass court reforms. Historical dem majorities have relied on blue doggers who are scared of such things.
They likely need 60% in the house, or close to it, and a good 55 or so senators, at least.
I've yet to see anyone commit that they won't. It's worth noting that term limits is a popular and moderate-sounding proposal, and the no kings act has the advantage of being against an unpopular, and extreme-sounding SCOTUS decision.
In the Senate, Manchin and Sinema were the only ones who cared about the filibuster. They'll be gone.
The list of D-affiliated senators who did not cosponsor the No Kings Act are: Senator Sinema, Senator Bennett, Senator Murphy, Senator Ossoff, Senator Tester, Senator Cortez Masto, Senator Rosen, Senator Hassan, Senator Menendez, Senator Brown, Senator Fetterman, Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Manchin.
The most likely set of seat changes, should the democrats win the senate, are Sinema->Gallego, Cardin->Alsobrooks, Stabenow->Slotkin, Manchin->Justice, Butler->Schiff, Carper->Rochester, Menendez->Kim.
That means they would still need to convince all of: Bennett, Murphy, Ossoff, Tester, Cortez Masto, Rosen, Hassan, Brown, Fetterman, Warner, Kaine, Cantwell, Gallego, Alsobrooks, Slotkin, Schiff, Rochester, and Kim. 18 Senators. Schiff's literally running on court packing. Alsobrooks spoke in favor of the Biden "reforms." Kim and Rochester are members of the house progressive caucus, as was Gallego before he had to pretend to be moderate, so moderation should not be our expectation. Slotkin's said she'd be open to term limits. So that's all the new members.
If anyone votes it down, I think it would be one of the current members. These are not as strong, as evidence, but Cantwell, Rosen, and Cortez Masto all cosponsored a bill to propose a constitutional amendment saying that Presidents have no immunity for actions, and generally applicable laws should be ordinarily read as applying to Presidents. Most of the rest supported ethics code things, but I don't really think that's weighty evidence.
Senator Whitehouse recently said that the "reforms" would in all likelihood be bundled in a package containing everything else they really want (e.g. making abortion legal everywhere), so that they only have to bypass a filibuster once. He says that would have "spectacular tailwinds," and that they'd be "virtually certain." It's possible that he's lying or wrong, but I'd expect he'd understand the environment better than I would.
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Pardon if I get something wrong in the process of paraphrasing, but if the argument is "I think the Democrats' managerial apparatus is better (or more aligned with your interests, as you seem to be saying) than Trump's, and Kamala is a superior skinsuit for it compared to Biden" then it's something I can respect, and it can serve as a starting point for a conversation. I'd have some follow-up questions about what this says about the state of your democracy, but I can accept "it is what it is". I also understand how the tee-hee-heeing about all the fun the Blues are having in their tree house, and how us chuds are not invited, is part of the campaign and has to be blasted through the media (social or otherwise), but I don't see how that can serve as a start for a conversation, and so I am left somewhat frustrated with the utter state of the discourse.
A bit of column A, a bit of column B, and some caveats, but yeah, that's a fair paraphrase.
If you're asking me to make the media blitz and astroturfed social media campaign somehow palatable or something that's worth rationally participating in, well, that's a big ask. The thing that pushes me most towards Trump is seeing that and thinking "Trump losing will make those people happy."
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Having just spoken to Mom, I don’t think she could answer that. Not in a satisfying way. Zero discussion of policy, no signature proposal, none of that. That’s why I used the goofy “vibe” term. It really felt like this was just people getting permission to feel good about what they vaguely wanted.
Yeah, the Harris 2024 campaign website literally doesn't have a "platform"/"policy" section. The closest you get is the Meet Kamala Harris and Meet Tim Walz pages discuss policies they have implemented in the past, so we get a vague idea of the kinds of things they're in favor of. But the most concrete policy discussion is the Tim Walz page links to a page about Project 2025 explaining what policies they're against.
I understand the strategy: any time you give a concrete policy, some of the people that would otherwise support you are going to be against that specific policy, so the less you say, the fewer people you alienate. Harris/Walz have decided there's no upside for them to be talking much about policy right now and they may very well be right. But it's frustrating that just vibes is the level of political discourse we're at when theoretically elections should be a time to have a national conversation about the future of the country. Although realistically that mostly happens in primaries, not the general election.
Ages ago, @AshLael posted this theory.
In a vacuum, state your beliefs. People like a strong horse, as it were, and they definitely like a “positive vision.”
If you can’t directly compete with a strong statement, try debate. That can’t work because X. Supporters haven’t considered Y. Set yourself up as the reasonable one, tempering the initial naïveté.
And if someone is out-debating you, if you don’t have the institutional backup to argue policy? Call ‘em nerds and shove ‘em in a locker. Policy is boring, so remind them that you’re the one with a real vision. Play up your outsider status. Sneer at the ridiculousness.
The risk, however, is that Americans like one thing more than a strong horse. If your opponent can come across as an underdog, a scrappy idealist standing up to your bullying, they have an advantage. Debate beats state, sneering beats debate, state beats sneer.
===
Donald Trump is pretty good at pivoting between state and sneer. The 2016 Democrats had no ability to state a positive vision, so they weren’t able to counter his enthusiastic sneers. Worse, any sneers at deplorables, etc. were ammunition for Trump’s strong, stated narrative.
Once he won, he was faced with four years of institutional opposition. Backing up bold statements is hard without a deep roster and/or a detailed plan. So he looked like a poor debater and lost 2020 to an incredibly boring candidate plus an incredibly sneering media.
Here we are in 2024. Trump still struggles to debate policy, but he had plenty of opportunities to sneer at Biden. The assassination attempt also gave him some serious armor against sneers. That left the Democrats with one strategy: outcompete him on statement. So now we have the Democrats pivoting towards just that sort of substance-free platform. Can Harris actually out-MAGA him? I’m skeptical, but it’s better strategy than trying to debate. Against Trump, that’s just asking for a swirlie.
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There is probably also the part of not having a literal dementia patient in the oval office, which is pretty exciting almost regardless of policy platform.
Sure, but on this point I'd have to ask your thoughts on celebrating the solution to a problem that was still being described as a far-right conspiracy theory just a few months ago. What's next? Are we going to celebrate the vanquishing of pedophile satanists when the next palace coup happens?
Obviously the public didn't agree with the media description of the situation. People thought Bidens age was a huge issue regardless of what spin the media tried to present.
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