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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
About a month age I made the argument that essentially, future historians will draw parallels between Gorbachev and the Kamala Harris presidency, which at this point seems to be rather likely to come around next year. I can understand why it was downvoted because I made it deliberately vague, thinking that spelling my assumption all out in detail would narrow the discussion down too much and derail it at the start. Anyway, I recently read the New York Magazine article titled The Joyous Plot to elect Kamala Harris... by Rebecca Traister, and while I wouldn't say that it strengthens my argument to the full, it certainly doesn't include anything that would contradict it, I think. She's being lauded as a champion of both Democrat party leaders and grassroots organizers (mainly of female ones, that is), ushering in a new era of hope and political change after long and disheartening years dominated by old farts in leadership positions.
This is just goofy. First off there's only like a 50-50 shot she'll win the election.
Next, the implicit argument of your claim is that Harris will lead to the political collapse of the USA, a doomer take that the far right has correctly predicted 4929 of the last 0 times it's happened. This is another motte post claiming something bombastic with little evidence. Another broken clock.
What's "just goofy" here is the idea that Trump has even the slightest chance of winning, let alone 50%. I think Curtis Yarvin, in this interview with "Jolly Heretic" Ed Dutton, makes the case as to why Harris's victory is foregone conclusion: "Trump will LOSE."
This interview is silly. Yarvin claims without evidence that Democrats know how to steal all the elections without leaving any evidence. When asked how Trump won 2016, he handwaves it away by claiming they "didn't have the technology back then".
This is just pre-cope for if they lose. If they win, they can claim "we won despite all the Dem fraud, we must have actually won by 40 points!"
Maybe there's actual evidence somewhere but I stopped watching after a few minutes.
Again, as I said to the other guy, if you're so sure the election is a foregone conclusion, put your money where your mouth is.
What money? My new landlords just raised my rent. I'm basically broke.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think I have at least a vague idea of what the usual so-called “far right” accusations were against Biden, Obama or Clinton and I’m rather certain they never included that “he’ll accelerate the decline of the US empire and cause political instability/collapse due to failed reform attempts”. I can think of a dozen other accusations regarding abortion, gun laws, overreach of federal power, BLM etc. but not this one.
Also, I think the notion that Trump has a 50% chance of winning the upcoming election is, in light of what happened the last time he tried, is rather far-fetched.
If you haven't heard this from the right, you haven't been paying attention. Stuff like "Obama is ruining the country" was common back in 2009-2017, especially in regards to stuff like TARP and Obamacare. Lots of breathless exclamations that a Kenyan was turning us into a Communist nation, with a leader who was definitely going to pursue a third (and fourth, fifth, etc.) term subverting the constitution.
Put your money where your mouth is then.
No, thanks.
I don't get it. If you think Trump has lower chances of winning because of fraud, bet against him?
I don't want to bet on what three news organizations decide.
Do you expect them to announce Trump, but make a switcheroo for Kamala at a later date?
I expect them to do the same thing as last time, jump the gun to declare first, then follow whoever went first out of pressure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Kamala isn't a reform candidate at all. And she isn't young at 59. Vance is the true harbinger of reform in this election. Trump is at least partially anti-establishment. Kamala is the candidate of the politburo if ever there was one.
She's relatively young. Gorbachev was also 54 when he assumed power, and was the protege of the former head of the KGB, and voted into power by the Politburo.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I just can’t believe she’s the focus on a movement. Trump definitely is, as he represents something different from the status quo. In pretty much every way imaginable, Trump is just built different from other political leaders. He isn’t lawyered in his speech, mincing words and using “technically the truth” statements to lie. He’s loud, proud and brash. He’s not an institutionalist. He does things and if the state apparatus doesn’t like it, so much the worse for the deep state. That in a nutshell is why Trump ever got so big — he’s not like anyone else in the political class, he doesn’t act, think or speak like they do. He’s his own thing.
Kamala is the status quo. The biggest difference for her is her race/class and her age. If she were a white male democrat, nobody would be excited for her. She’s not special, she talks and acts like anyone else in the field. Her positions are the same as Biden’s, except girlboss.
Future history will consider this the age of Trump, because like him or not, he’s the zeitgeist of our era. He’s the one calling the shots whether by advocating things or by causing extreme reactions in his opponents.
You're right. Maybe it's all just gaslighting, astroturfing etc. But I'm sure she has more political influence behind her than Trump.
I mean thinking about how we define political eras, it’s almost always the political forces that are making changes or doing big things that get the notice of historians. Lincoln is important because he ultimately freed the slaves and saved the union. Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts. FDR did the New Deal. Even in the revolutionary era, the ones that got eras named after them were the ones making things happen.
Trump is somewhere between Napoleon and Teddy Roosevelt. He believes in things he wants to do, he wrestles with the institutions of American government to get things done. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about his ideas. That’s the kind of thing that gets your name on an era of American politics. Doing things that leave a mark on society.
Kamala has some hype. But if you look at her, she doesn’t have any influence, no big signature ideas, no changes to the direction of the country, nothing really to set her own mark on the institution. She’s just a run of the mill democrat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
X
Like sure, Gorbachev was young, and relatively unknown(key word relatively), but that’s where the similarities end.
For my part, I expect the crisis she précipitâtes to be more like the crisis of the third century- driven by deteriorating relations between different parts of the state apparatus and currency mismanagement, and taking place in an era of massive cultural change.
Hey, we’re talking about New York magazine here. Get back over to the New Yorker with your weird orthography
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not anything resembling an expert on late-soviet history, but I do remember being impressed by Zubok's Collapse which argued that Gorbachev failed primarily because (1) he was really unlucky, (2) he didn't build himself a personal constituency within the state, (3) he was a true believer who underestimated the degree of cynicism and suppressed opposition present in the soviet body politic, and (4) lacked the economic chops to understand the uniquely-complex soviet economy, which was full of odd kludges, hacks, and workarounds accumulated over the years to square necessary interface with the rest of the world with Marxian ideological dogma, and so blundered into speeding up the implosion of the system in the guise of reform.
I can kinda pattern match Kamala to some of these, but I gotta be honest, the comparison isn't exactly leaping off the page...
True, it doesn't exactly do so. But I remember the days when, after years of culture-warring, Great Awokening, militant leftist SJW rhetoric, all the talk about dismantling the vestiges of structural racism, BLM riots etc, American society got to a point in 2020 when there were three rather old cishet White men remaining in the competition for the position of presidential nominee. I just found it rather ironic, and I saw a bunch of people online drawing parallels with the late-stage Soviet gerontocracy, which, considering the ongoing socio-economic crises (the opioid epidemic, rising rates of alcoholism - especially among single women - and prescription pill abuse, rising levels of violent crime and mental illness, the obesity epidemic etc.), appeared to be definitely warranted. I think it's just logical to extend this parallel when a relatively much younger candidate emerges, poised to win the election and portraying herself as the anointed one who will finally shake things up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is 8 years (two presidential terms) really so long? Bush was 54 when he was elected in 2000. Obama was 47 in 2008. Harris will be 60. She's younger than Trump (70) and Biden (78) were when they were elected, but is solidly middle of the pack among presidents since 2000.
In historical terms, it isn't long. But in terms of the cultural war and social change, definitely a lot has changed between 2016-2024, even more so between 2012-2024. So the social context is different.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No they won't. Choose the decline of different empire. You may be right that Kamala Harris presidency may be the beginning of the end of US, but it is not because she was chosen as a nominee by the democratic politburo.
I don't think that you fundamentally understand the challenges in front of the Eastern bloc and USSR. If the Soviet Union had figured out how to make a washing machine, color tv and a car as cheap, affordable and abundant as the west, we would have been communist. (But we did make damn fine hand mixer - nothing the world has ever produced can compare to the RG28 - this thing is immortal and the best piece of consumer good in its class ever created). Because that was people wanted - the standard of living the western Germans had - nothing more nothing less. Because communist didn't allow failure of state enterprise there was no feedback to push them to be better. And because all enterprise were state there was no innovation at all. So the soviet union fell behind technologically (not scientifically, we just couldn't convert science into consumer technology). And with this technology fail came diplomatic isolation.
The US have strong economy and it's biggest potential problem - the debt is not really a problem. They can just refuse to pay. Here is prediction what will happen - one party will cut SS, medicaid and medicare, the other will come to power from the backlash and fiddle their thumbs to do nothing because the math will still not work. Or they may start putting printed money into the programs and cause inflation that will dwindle the external debt away. In 10 years people will grudgingly accept it.
The other problem is that if Xi doesn't wreck china's economy (on the fence, but probably will, he has some soviet vibes) he offers a very alluring model for the authoritarians - democracy is optional as long as you make sure that people can buy a car, washing machine and color tv. And top it with AI powered surveillance state. A carrot and stick - forever. I think that O'Brien would find it amusing how this strain of Angsoc works. Which will lead to waning US influence - or turn US towards authoritarianism - it is not as if the culture war has not eroded people's beliefs in the democratic system. Everyone wants to be on top and impose their values on the others right now.
The problem with the United States is that it’s very interested in imposing all of the shitty and mean parts of authoritarianism without the parts that make the trains run on time.
More options
Context Copy link
This. The Soviet Union fell because the Brezhnev generation of CPSU leadership (Andropov and Chernenko were not significantly younger than Brezhnev) was not able to recruit and develop a next generation of leaders who believed in the system to the extent that they were willing to fight to maintain it. (I don't know how long Gorbachev could have stayed in power if he was willing to be as brutal as Brezhnev, but ultimately the reason why the Soviet Union fell was that he didn't try, and Yeltsin, who was the other pre-eminent CPSU leader of his generation, actively sabotaged it when someone else did (in the 1991 coup).
And the secret weapon, the mind control ray that turned Yeltsin into the double agent who would end the Cold War with a crushing NATO victory, was a supermarket.
More options
Context Copy link
This assumes that authoritarian societies will be able to match open societies in harnessing new technologies and making them available to the public. A key thesis of Acemoglu & Robinson in Why Nations Fail is that authoritarians are bad at this because vested interests prevent disruptive innovations and markets from coming into being. Xi's reluctance to facilitate greater consumer spending on goods like healthcare in China is not a good sign for China in this regard. While the CCP have done a brilliant job of incorporating the technological stack of the West, it's less clear they'll be willing to tolerate new products if they create threats to harmony.
Until there are no open societies, at which point it doesn't matter, and was 1984's premise.
More options
Context Copy link
I’m not sure that non-western authoritarian societies need quite western tier standards of living- China isn’t as prosperous as South Korea, but it’s still much more prosperous than China was, and most of the low hanging fruit is there. People care a lot more about the difference between the third world and the second than between the second and first, and even less about the difference between upper first world places like the US and lower tier ones like southern Europe. Washing machines, climate control, and meat every day count for more than tv sizes due to diminishing returns.
More options
Context Copy link
Healthcare is unsolved problem in all of the world right now. I don't think that there exist a system in the world that is affordable, immune to brain drain, sustainable and high quality. So there doesn't seem to be obviously wrong policies there. His management of real estate and banking sector is probably more worrying.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do consider Harris and the people surrounding her incompetent but I see certain important differences.
Harris wants to double down on the elements of the regime and push things in a more totalitarian direction.
Gorbachev wanted to strongly reform aspects of it although he didn't want the USSR to fall.
Also Gorbachev was more in control, until he wasn't, while Kamala is less independent.
In my opinion people like Harris and the general elites of this type, represent more the leaders of USSR prior to Gorbachev. Incompetent, but authoritarian. Unlike them they are willing to double down in authoritarianism, and are more radical so maybe she has both parallels with earlier Communists and those of the time of stagnation. Although, the system is more oligarchical and the central figure is less important.
Someone who isn't out to be a revolutionary but sincerely wants to positively reform the regime and not in a 50 Stalin anti-dissident direction, without desiring to dismantle it, but in a manner that will cause its end, will fit more to the Gorbachev role.
Edit: Although doubling down in the areas Harris wants to double down, could lead eventually to a collapse. Or it could lead to a 1990s and after South Africa situation of the same and similar but more radical types in charge, of an increasingly failing society. This counts as a collapse in important ways even though similar type of elites are in charge but admittedly South African elites exercise less control over some parts of the country.
More options
Context Copy link
Again, please write something that strengthens this parallel other than that she is relatively young compared to other politicians. What issues can be her Perestroika, her Glasnost, her liquor ban?
It's not merely that she's relatively young, it's that she's much younger than the two presidents who'll have preceded her.
You can also name about a dozen potential issues, can't you? The college debt bubble, the NIMBY vs. YIMBY struggle, the opioid crisis, economic stagnation, the housing bubble, Medicare, women's rights etc.
We can all name issues present in society, but is Kamala Harris going to solve any of them? Is she even going to try?
She strikes me as a political opportunist who wants to be President just so she can be President. Does she even have any policy proposals? You would think that, if she did, she would be putting them into action right now as the de-facto leader of the Democratic party.
I think she’ll have every conceivable incentive to try. She’ll be pimped by the MSM and the Dem establishment as the first woman of color to become President, and they’ll push the narrative that she’s set to leave a great legacy and accomplish great things for a society still tainted by the vestiges of structural racism etc. Also, the polycrisis (I wasn’t even aware that such an expression exists!) will probably continue and worsen, so the overlapping negative socio-economic tendencies will reach a point of escalation sometimes between 2025-28 where Kamala’s supporters will compel her to act – if she doesn’t initiate reforms herself first, that is. Also, she derives whatever level of political legitimacy she has from not being an old white fart who failed to cure the nation’s ills i.e. Biden and Trump. She’ll have to continue to demonstrate that she’s different from both of them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do not see concrete proposals from Harris that realistically will be enacted for any of these issues you mention except for abortion access (same for the other candidate). I think you might be buying what the candidate is selling a little too much. If she solves all these issues, then great (except abortion access I differ from her viewpoints on that) but don't tout her as a greater reformer rather than standard democratic candidate 2.0 especially before she's done anything of substance. Its possible I just don't have the information, can you elaborate on Harris solutions for college debt, housing, the opiod crisis or fixing Medicare? Economic stagnation has J. Powell on the job. To me it sounds like every Presidential state of the union type of address where grand vague future plans are proclaimed, but the issues linger year after year.
See my reply to Sunshine.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Who cares? John Q. Adams was younger than every previous President. Then Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Pierce…I’m too lazy to count up the “two old, one young” pattern, but it’s so specific. Congrats to Joe Biden for breaking the website curse!
Also, all of Gorbachev’s predecessors died in office. I hope to God that doesn’t apply here.
As for issues—I can think of plenty. They’re just not particularly textbook-worthy. We’re taught about perestroika because it represented the decline of Cold War ideology. Glasnost for similar reasons. It has to be a pivot of the political landscape, and nothing Harris has said fits the bill. She’s stumping for the same old Democrat stance on all of your example issues.
More options
Context Copy link
Gorbachev wasn't that much younger. Andropov was 1914, Gorba 1931, barely 17 years difference. Why fixate on Gorba? There have been younger presidents since forever. TR had 15 years on his predecessor, JFK 27 years, both promised plenty of new policies. (Kennedy was born during WW1 while Eisenhower and Truman fought in it).
The Soviet gerontocracy problem was not simply about age of the general secretary. The problem that in 1980s, the politbyro had been staffed by generation of Brezhnev, implementing Brezhnev policies since Brezhnev. Then Gorba decided to try to implement large-scale changes to the Soviet state that weakened the authority of the dictatorship.
True, but Kamala isn't that young either, in fact she's 5 years older now than Gorbachev was in 1985.
Again, true, but the political environment was rather different from the current one in both cases, wasn't it? There was no sense of vibecession/stagnation, disillusionment in the party leadership, general anomie etc.
I suppose one can make a similar point about the Dem party leadership?
This is very wrong; both presidents were elected as countermeasures to perceived (and actual) vibecessions.
Especially in Kennedy's case, his cult of youth and personal example were so powerful precisely because they provided an outlet for this broad but unfocused and aimless search for an alternative to what was thought to be a depersonalized, cog-in-a-machine, stagnant society. The late 50's had spawned an intense critique of percieved conformism and rigidity in culture and economy. "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" came out in 1956, the same year Mills published "The Power Elite" and Whyte (who had coined the term "groupthink" in 1952) published "The Organization Man." The Beatniks reached their apex in the 50's, and were clearly reacting to a vibecession avant la lettre: "much of Beat culture represented a negative stance rather than a positive one. It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction, and yearning, than by a specific purpose or program ... It was many different, conflicting, shifting states of mind." Ginsburg's "Howl" (most famous in this community as the inspiration for the True Caliph's "Meditations on Moloch") was written in 1954-5 and published in 1956 (what was in the water that year?!?).
I don't have my sources at hand to fully dive into the eighteen nineties at the moment, but the fin-de-siecle decades were also stuffy and conformist, which spurred cultural backlash. TR's progressives were just as much a reaction against corruption in government and established political machines as TR himself was an icon in the cultural charge against perceived Victorian over-domesticity...not for nothing were TR's progressives smeared as "goo-goos" (short for "good government").
I didn't know that goo-goos was that old. I thought it was from the 1990s.
More options
Context Copy link
Note also that the 1910s and 1920s were perhaps an even more woke time than the 2010s and 2020s; Prohibition and sufferage being the most famous wins for that faction, but Charismatic Christianity has its roots in that time as well. Indeed, the opinion of women was indeed taken so seriously in the WW1 years that they could get men to kill themselves [by signing up for some stupid European war] simply by performing certain gestures, which is not yet a power woke women enjoy quite so directly today.
More options
Context Copy link
If I had to guess, it was probably radioactive.
I can confirm that Roosevelt’s Progressives were relatively extreme reformers. We take most of that era’s changes for granted, but people were understandably upset about Gilded Age excesses. Externalities, as it were.
I would have guessed LSD, personally.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link