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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29550 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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I don't know this all sounds like a specific bubble. Here's my personal bubble.

In 2020 I would have voted for Biden if my vote mattered but I live in California so I've always voted third party. I thought Biden would tone down the culture war and stop petty political bullshit. Didn't appear to happen at all. Kamala's campaign seems to be built on saying she's great, ridiculing and slandering anyone at all who disagrees, and both of those things coming back to "this is true because I said it's true." And to be fair it works, a bunch of idiots wandering into a building and breaking a few things is now an insurrection. And that's been so common that I've become enured to it. But the petty mean girl shit they've been doing has actively made me think I might never support the democratic party again. Coupling together the "Kamala can't possible lose and is polling ahead of Trump on all demographics" and "Yeah, but also fuck him, fuck his family, this JD Vance guy fuck him, too, fuck his family, they're all dirt and should die. Kick 'em while they're down and don't stop 'til they're dead." They're justifying this shit by saying it's Trump's weakness. Yeah, well, now you're just like Trump and you can't pretend to be the party of good vibes and higher moral character anymore except for people who don't pay attention or have no compassion for anyone who thinks differently. Being underhanded, playing dirty politics is one thing to do behind the scenes or allowing to happen hands off but this explicit endorsement of being without decorum or decency has vibed me into my vibe-shifted vibe that I can't hold onto any hope or promise because it's all tainted with being scummy.

(Note that I look at Reddit too much. This may be strongly responsible for my vibe-bubble or vibubble for the vibe enthusiasts out there. Also note, I'm not making fun of you specifically for saying vibe, but it's become almost a meme to me at this point where people just say vibe about everything, now.)

There's a scene in Good Will Hunting where Will is telling his therapist how his dad used to present him with a belt, a stick, and a wrench and make him choose with which to get beaten. He chooses the wrench because fuck him. I'm almost that bitter because of how they decided it was a good idea to sink to Trump's level of being a petty insulter. Really, below Trump imo because Trump is a liar and a blowhard and I certainly don't take his insults as the dead serious "I would murder you and it would be completely fair and right" attitude that people have about Trump.

My vote doesn't matter but I might just vote for Trump. Trump deadlocking the world because no one will ever agree with him even if he said the sky was blue sounds like a better option than having another president and cabinet that get to do insanely retarded bullshit like trying rioters as insurrectionists because they feel differently about their politics and not any of the actual intentions behind the riot itself. Trump might try to do that but the justice department will protest, sit on their hands, and nothing will happen. So, how is he not the better option, here?

I will say until the end of time that the most politically brilliant thing Biden could have done was to immediately pardon everybody involved in J6, commit to blanket pardoning Trump for any stupid bullshit anybody tried, and leaned hard into national unity.

If he had done that, even with the rest of the woke bullshit, I’d probably be campaigning for him right now. Instead we got pseudo angry grandpa, endless lawfare, and more endless division presented as unity.

I remember thinking the same. I figured he’d offer it just for the “accepting guilt” gotcha. Instead, nothing.

Why do that when not doing that works just as well, and conveys additional advantages that doing that does not?

Because it would appeal massively to moderates, and reduce Republican turnout in subsequent elections, by giving the message that no, the Democrats are not trying to criminalize dissent, if you don't hold to the party this time there is still going to be an election and a GOP in 4 years.

Right now, they're sending the opposite message, which probably will lead to a lot of Republicans who could have been convinced not to vote for Trump voting for him because the alternative is, from their perspective, the system being blatantly weaponized against their very existence for another 4 years.

Why appeal to moderates when you don't have to? The formative experience for the modern Democratic party is the FDR-LBJ era when they wiped the GOP off the map for a generation and held the House for 48/52 years from 1933 to 1993. Anything less is apostasy to them, and they still haven't forgiven Gingrich for having the temerity to actually win and do something for once.

I thought Biden would tone down the culture war and stop petty political bullshit. Didn't appear to happen at all.

I still feel kind of burned by this. The number of obvious self-owns from choosing to wholesale reverse (rather than tone down or moderate) Trump's policies has led to a number of IMHO completely predictable results, from reversing sanctions on Iran and funding UNRWA, to police defunding and demonization, to reversing Remain in Mexico, to promising that this stimulus won't cause inflation. Clearly nobody could have forseen any of these troubles.

And honestly I feel burned enough that, absent some explicit acknowledgement of the failures and a change in direction, I'm not particularly inclined to offer my vote to blithe platitudes. The debate agreement is particularly frustrating, because it seems we'll at best get one debate between a candidate that I don't particularly like (but I at least know where he stands) and a candidate that seems to have a complete absence of policy proposals (excluding the non-moderate ones of her 2019 campaign). Debates would at least provide an opportunity to challenge both candidates as to where they stand today versus four years ago.

EDIT: I am not a betting man, but I would give decent odds that if Harris wins, she'll have a lower approval rating than Biden does now within her first year in office. Partly from a long-term downward trend in approval numbers, and partly because you can't promise a bunch of actually-disagreeing voters the moon Joy! and deliver something that satisfies all of them.

I was hoping to get some example of progressive moderation by people who are still supporting Biden/Harris, but at this point I'm hard-pressed to present the question over at The Schism in a way that wouldn't come across as trolling, and most places I can meaningfully ask aren't going to give a useful answer, but instead just Not Fifty Stalins Yet me.

I'm hard-pressed to present the question over at The Schism in a way that wouldn't come across as trolling

The bigger question IMO would be is there anyone still there willing and interested to give a useful answer?

For local-culture reasons, the example given at Blocked and Reported's subreddit was that the Title IX injunction did not become a major topic of the DNC. I don't find it a particularly satisfying answer, but that was slightly surprising.

For completion's sake, I did get a response from Trace.

I’m not completely sure I’m looking at the same tweet, but that… wasn’t really a response.

So goes the Trace of today; the Trace of yesteryear that we appreciated has been lost to the sands of time.

It's the full thread, or at least down to :

better on the margins than not doing it, and given their need to pivot messaging towards the center during election cycles (albeit without policy changes), at least marginally better than my protest votes against Trump have been working the past decade

Oh, ok. I don’t really use Twitter so nowadays I just get linked to a single tweet outside of any thread. So I just try thought he said, “you morons are just trying to dredge up your old arguments,” or however that last tweet put it, and that seemed rather passive-aggressive.

Filter bubbles are valuable information. For my part, the red tribe leftists I know have mostly decided that, whatever their disagreements with the GOP and Trump, the democrats have simply moved too far left on social issues to get their vote. Taking trans kids away from their parents or very late term abortion doesn’t happen very often, but the democrats insisting on defending it really does upset some people.

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