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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 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.

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