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 -
So that we don't lose again, pretty much. I've said my thoughts on Trump in another post: it's not just the election claims, it's everything. I don't understand why some people are so attached to him. He scares the hoes.
With a partisan media on their opponent' side, Trump supporters believe that anyone they can get through a primary that isn't actually working mostly for the other side will be cast in a way that scares the hoes. Trump's affectations are protecting him, they're not liabilities. In MMORPG parlance, he's a tank; he's such a big juicy target that his opponents can't help but focus all their fire on him, but he's also uniquely good at shrugging it off.
If Trump wasn't their number 1 obsession, and Vance was the most important target they had, couch fucking insinuations would be some of the least vile things the media would be saying about him.
My problem with that is that Trump is not just affecting Trump, he's affecting any Republican out there by pressuring them to align with him. If they do, they endorse all the utterly stupid statements he makes and have to defend them, or slip out of questions about them somehow. If they don't, they're weakening the party and lose support from MAGA diehards. JD Vance really couldn't answer properly on the "was the election stolen" question. He couldn't outright say he thinks it's stolen, and he couldn't say that Trump is wrong on this. Trump has forced his own side at large to confront similar conundrums.
This will not end after Trump wins or loses. This will hang over every Republican Party member who endorsed Trump for the rest of their careers. And the ones that didn't endorse Trump have to shut up about their Trump supporting friends get screwed over in the media, showing themselves as weak in the process.
He should not have run again.
This kind of thing is not a result of Trump being uniquely bad for the Republicans, it's a result of a partisan media using this tool, forcing to confront conundrums, in a single direction.
A fair media would at every opportunity, at least as often as they ask Republicans about the 2020 election, ask every Democrat how it's somehow acceptable that the sitting president be, at least for months, months during which the rest of the world keeps happening, as senile as the man everyone saw in Biden's last debate.
And that's just one example, you can find gotchas or flipflops or embarassing statements for every politician, and if not you can find people they've endorsed or publically approved of that have such gotchas or flipflops or embarassing statements that you can then put the politican's nose in. You can find far-left terrorists that are close friends of Obama, an honest to goodness Klan leader that Biden considers "a mentor", for the same Biden a record of voting against the progressive politics he now claims to espouse,etc... These are not liabilities for these people not because they have been satisfactorily answered, but because the mainstream media shield them from these questions instead of asking them. If they crop up in right-wing media, the mainstream media will rush to write excuses and rationalization (often as "fact-checks") for them.
Of course, Trump generates his fair share of those conundrums, but I don't see him as unique this way. The volume at which people are asked to defend them is a function not the amount or heaviness of these conundrums, but of who holds the microphone.
And to be clear, the answer to pretty much all of these conundrums is the same, it's something everyone in politics knows, and everyone savvy outside of it knows, but that cannot be said out loud or else you create gigantic weak spot for your enemies to attack. It's that politics is in large part a competitive team sport and to get anywhere in it sometimes you just have to put being a team player ahead of personal beliefs, truth or your constituents. Of course the moment any politician admits it his opponents will jump at the chance to lie that they're different "Well, I would never put my party before my constituents!"
More options
Context Copy link
Even keeping it to the 2020 election, why was no one who claimed that 2020 was "the most secure election in history" asked for the data on which that statement was based? By what metrics, and how do those metrics compare to past elections? Or was that claim based on partisan wish fulfillment and yet accepted as fact because we don't like the people claiming otherwise?
More options
Context Copy link
You're right. I still think Trump shouldn't have run, but this is no longer one of the reasons why.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Personally, I'm attached to him because he's an honest-to-god political outsider, and the hoes he's scaring are the uniparty, the deep state, the military industrial complex, or whatever you want to call it. FDR's imperial legacy. The Federal Bureaucracy.
He broke the GOP in twain and then picked up the pieces. This is an unmitigated good, in my opinion, because before he came the GOP was the party of the Iraq War.
He's also the only one to take the majority stance on immigration, and say it out loud.
There are many, many reasons to be attached to Donald Trump, and they are due to his uniqueness. Vance may be a suitable replacement, but there are few likely candidates, making Trump all the more precious.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link