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 -
For years I have heard on this forum and other places that Trump is an idiot who can't govern, doesn't know what to do to effect change, is to vain to do the right things, or won't simply because he doesn't really care. It's futile to vote for Trump. He doesnt know what he's doing. And I have been called unserious for believing in Donald Trump's excellence. Today I would like to start taking my victory lap:
https://x.com/awprokop/status/1881900975851708751?t=8OquEiW6cV89zAtXmm9kng&s=19
Trump is abolishing Affirmative Action in federal contracting. He is going to order the government to pressure private companies to end Affirmative Action. This directly benefits my career. This ends bad policy that is massively unpopular and is the kind of thing many people predicted Trump would never do. I voted this. I am thrilled!
I am doubling down on my prediction that Trump Era will be remembered as a Golden Age, will fundamentally reshape American history for the better, and will in fact be enjoyed even by thosr who have been most skeptical!
No, he's merely giving an executive order to a nominally-subordinate vast bureaucracy, ready to delay, leak, disobey, to cease these things. Whether they obey? Well…
…
More options
Context Copy link
Do you know if any of the new Trump EOs will affect MBEs? There are massive federal subsidies and quotas to companies that are owned by minorities and in my experience it's grift at every level - state, city, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm happy with this EO but I think calling Trump an idiot who couldn't govern was reasonable during his first term. He spent like a drunken sailor on non Covid stuff (more than double Biden!) to purchase a tax cut, a trade war, remain in Mexico, Space Force, and he warp sped a vaccine. Negotiated with the Taliban to end the war. No new wars. Pressured NATO to up the price of admission. And as an indefatigable culture warrior, he got the ball rolling on a vibe shift. Okay, all great.
But no wall. Lots of illegals regardless. No Trumpcare. Domestic manufacturing barely budged. People in his orbit regularly went to prison, were disbarred, or quit. The trade deficit remained the same. No critical infrastructure. No strategic industrial policy. Covid was a disaster despite him publicly saying it'd be gone in a few months, while saying on private tape he knew it wouldn't be. Initiated the stimulus stairway to inflation. Total of 8.4T added to the deficit (also double Biden). Nationwide riots under his watch. Historic amounts of golf. Told Brad Raffensperger 'I'm informing you that certifying the current GA votes is illegal, so certifying them will cause big problems for you' thus igniting the embers of J6. All this while The Blob remained unaffected.
I think its fair to ask for better, and notice that Trump 1.0 wasn't the most effective leader. Trump 2.0 could deliver, but a victory lap now is retro causal. Trump is energetic and with it for a 78 year old, and JD Vance is sharp and hardworking. Here is to hoping for a golden age!
Trump term 1 was great. The negatives you're describing are almost entirely the outcomes of people opposing Trump: wall not finished, "nationwide riots," no infrastructure bill, Trumpcare failing because of McCain, etc. The lesson isn't that Trump couldn't govern, the lesson is that he faced unprecedented opposition and still kept fighting! That is why I can correctly predict that Trump 2 is even better than before, and you could not
A central part of being an effective leader is allaying opposition to actually get things done. Blaming people he failed to lead makes no sense unless everyone is a good leader, people just don't listen. Despite the massive debt, Trump didn't even start the wall he promised. He won the popular vote this time, and seems better prepared and better supported. I expect it to be better than before, which is a low bar.
This is flatly not true btw I think you're probably too deep in despair to recognize what is and isnt true
I mean he did say repeatedly that he would build a concrete wall. And along the whole border. And Mexico would pay for it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On a certain level, yes of course, but it's rather reductive to judge someone only on the outcomes. Like, sure, a good general is supposed to win battles (or at least rack up Pyrrhic victories for the opponent), but to call one an idiot because he lost, with no regard for the resources that were on his disposal, and for what his enemy could muster, is a bit silly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems to me that the "idiot" part of it is wildly overplayed. The explanation that seems more consistent with everything that has come after is that he was a neophyte that hadn't learned how to do politics beyond having such incredible retail political ability that he was able to defeat entrenched opponents and take command of their party. Not knowing how to run the government machine once he was in is absolutely a reasonable criticism, but it doesn't imply that he was an "idiot". To all appearances, he spent his four years out of office professionalizing his campaign team, creating a ready-made staff that's ready to actually implement policy plans, and allowing that team to draft orders to override the recalcitrant bureaucracy. It seems unlikely to me that an "idiot" would do that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What’s the likelihood that this just ALL flops back in 4 years?
Just one giant omnibus EO that every flipping presidential party signs which renames the gulf of America, Mount McKinley, Fort Bragg, re-establishes affirmative action, cancels the keystone XL/Stargate/Moonbase etc?
I’m kind of in shock that for the first time in my life a politician actually seems to be looking out for me, but I’m still cynical. We have about 1200 days to run as hard and as fast as we possibly can, but after that then what?
You are describing a switch being flipped left, then right, then left. This is typically the way people talk about these things, because it is an orderly model of the sort assembled by orderly people living orderly lives. Or to put it another way, this view is constructed by people who have gone beyond taking orderliness for granted, and have moved to assuming that orderliness is axiomatic.
Our political system is not a switch, but rather a post in the ground. It is not "flopping" one way and then the other. It is being wrenched, back and then forth, and each motion travels further as the earth's hold on the post loosens. This "flip" is burning norms and systems that had stood for centuries. Those norms don't come back on the next wrench, or indeed at all. They are gone for good, and the next wrench will do more damage still, as the escalation spiral continues. Soon or sooner, the post comes out of the ground completely, and then we'll see what we see.
Alternatively, the culture war peters out. Maybe the Blues will give up! Certainly the Reds don't seem inclined to do so. The most likely positive outcome is that Federal authority decreases precipitously and permanently, and we have a go at actually leaving each other alone.
More options
Context Copy link
I believe the likelihood is quite high. In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect. I suspect in the next decade in the "after that", then "then what" will be that American culture will take a hard and final turn against social conservatism. I like to say the wheel of progress is dismally slow, but it is inspirationally grinding.
I form this opinion off of my own anecdotal experiences in observing the microcosm of my family. My socially conservative members grow less and less able to relate to my non-socially conservative members and, as a result, the beliefs "dry out", so to say. I've observed that although the socially conservative do have more children, the families tend to splinter and fall into poverty and miss the window to be relevant to the culture, so the ecosystem of beliefs is constrained to niche branches of the family.
Among under-30s, Harris and Trump were within a few percentage points overall, white men voted for Trump, white women split down the middle, black and Latino men voted for Trump in record numbers, and the biggest issue for young voters was the economy and jobs. While I agree that Millennials are more progressive than Boomers and Gen X, it seems abundantly clear that the zoomers are not as reliably Democratic as Millennials (though certainly more progressive than Gen X). In fact, the only age group where there wasn't a swing to Trump was older voters, i.e. the Boomers.
This was a referrendum on Biden's governance and the state of the economy, with cultural issues, even abortion, playing a much more minor role in people's voting decisions. We don't need to delve into anecdotal experiences of particular families; we have data on how various groups of people said they voted in the election and the reasons they said were most important to them.
I will, however, note that Millennials and Zoomers -- the purported beneficiaries of the changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect -- have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, and research suggests they cope much worse than older generations when faced with major crises like the pandemic. What younger generations perceive as "childhood emotional neglect" may well have been a more natural and healthy way to raise independent, strong children who can stand on their own to face the challenges of life, though I would argue that the last generation to raise their children in the best possible way was the Silent Generation, not Gen X.
I am a zoomer, and this accords with my own experience of friends and peers, going far beyond any sort of change in diagnostic standards or treatment-seeking that could otherwise explain the change. You've talked in the past about your experiences with mental health challenges, and I relate to this -- but I would note gently that such longstanding struggles with mental illness might suggest a genetic component (as it does for me), which perhaps makes your biological family less representative of the emotional and social stability of the average person at various points on the political spectrum.
Or, in other words: it's the economy, stupid.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It took decades to build this regime. It can be undone in a matter of days. The taste of victory is sweet and success begets success. You can just do things. We can win. So are you going to fight? Are you going to fight for the future you want? It's not something that just happens once every four years. It's a choice you make.
People are never going back. Whatever the future looks like is different now. The future belongs to people inspired by Trump
No, it can't. Not with legal mechanisms, anyway.
No, you can't. Because you need people able and willing to carry things out. Only one side has that.
No, we probably can't.
No, I can't imagine people actually doing so. They'll do a lot of pointless stuff that feels like fighting — and winning — in the moment, but doesn't actually amount to anything. (See Yarvin here and here).
Of course they are. They have every time before; if only because they'll be forced to.
Every executive agency has dismantled its DEI program overnight. Every DEI program employee is on leave pending termination. Remember the FAA hiring scandal from a while ago? Every [edit]critical[/edit] FAA employee will be subject to a mandatory performance review. At least one Biden/Harris appointee who attempted to hide herself in the "non-political appointees" pool was exposed and fired.
ICE arrested 583 people and issued almost 400 requests for detention in one day. This represents a near-doubling of the average daily arrests from September last year which stand at 282 arrests per day, the last month we have data for. The Remain in Mexico policy has been officially reinstated, and the Department of Justice has officially prioritized immigration enforcement. Deportation flights have already begun. Mexico is preparing to receive waves of deportees. Many people with dubious immigrant status are already choosing to self-deport. I say dubious because I have seen reports that people who were here legally are also choosing to leave.
It has been four days.
Edit:
And on the fourth day, ICE made 593 arrests with 449 detainment requests made. Again, average arrests made per day under Biden were under 300.
*Every FAA employee in a critical safety position (presumably including every air traffic controller)
Whoops, good catch.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Loser mindset. You've decided it's impossible to win. We haven't! That's why we're winning
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That realization was the most striking aspect of Trump’s first term. It hit me when he moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bush had talked about doing it for years but somehow it never happened, just like he somehow never got us Supreme Court Justices that would overturn Roe, or a hundred other things. Then Trump comes along and just does it. It could have been done all along. You can just do things.
Thanks for reminding me that Dobbs happened. Everyone predicted it would be a disaster for the GOP Then they still won. Amazing
More options
Context Copy link
Alito, author of Dobbs, was a bush appointee.
More options
Context Copy link
We'll see. The birthright citizenship order and the stop-energy-efficiency order run up against statutes (and in the former case, the Constitution), so this Trump train will likely derail the way the Obamacare repeal did.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The big asset price crash we’ve been putting off since 2018, some fiery class-first rhetoric from the Dems, and all this comes crashing down very quickly. Once they’re back in power, the decolonize-the-establishment types reassume their positions in all key cultural functions (even if the class warriors don’t care for them) and so on and so on.
We very desperately need the global big asset price crash, preferably applied to housing more than stocks (but American stocks also need a good hammering, less so other countries' stocks).
Is there a reason other than “number too big”? I thought the same as well. Ten years ago I bought into this thinking and observed that half the world’s market cap was outside the US, so I went 50% into an international index fund with my equities allocation. And my net worth is a good deal lower than it would have been if I stuck with the US!
India has been on the cusp of a breakout for decades. It somehow never happens. South America looks like it will remain chronically economically retarded. China is a power strip plugged into itself, subsidizing current industries using taxes on past and future industry. And Europe?
I think @jeroboam said it best that your adoptive continent has been sitting in a cafe, idly increasing pension benefits. They dream up extractive fines on American industries while they watch their villages turn into open-air museums and their cities turn into jumbo international airports.
In America we have armies of people vocationally dedicated to making my retirement account balances increase.
American stocks are more and more overvalued relative to earnings. This can change is AI boom actually materializes into….something. But it hasn’t, except allowing more efficient coding monkeys and cheating on college essays
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
Hopefully, they do well enough that we can elect Vance or another Republican.
It'll have to end eventually, but maybe the overton window will have shifted by then.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
no executive order for btc reserve (yet), which was way hyped-up and his donors expected.
More options
Context Copy link
Who makes hiring decisions? HR. Who works in HR, almost exclusively (especially at major corporations)? Liberal white women.
This is like SCOTUS abolishing affirmative action in college admissions, literally meaningless so long as the same people are making admissions decisions.
If you work in tech, the number of black and Hispanic engineers is so low that the impact on your career will be very limited. Amusingly, the biggest beneficiaries of a full end to affirmative action in employment would be the kind of progressive white men who work in book publishing, media, advertising and humanities academia, but as I said, it’s not going to end, just happen unofficially.
And if I’m the management who already dislikes HR maybe I fire them and out source a portion of their work.
And then hire who? The industry's biases are endemic. Even if you have a pragmatic and fair HR leader, it's insanely difficult to find non-racist/sexist HR professionals.
Then, government is its own animal. You need to both know and understand how it works, and be comfortable with being part of the grift machine. They're checking boxes. Affirmative action made things easier for them: You have two hires, they've all lied about their qualifications, and you don't have to think about work ethic or intelligence. You just say "Darkest Wins" and move on.
Sorry for the blackpill, but an EO changes far less than you would suggest. Maybe 10% improvement. This needs to be enshrined in law, and even then it can't be 100% effective.
With no one. I just don’t think HR is a valuable cost center.
And then you get sued, and the EEOC going after you, until you're forced out of business. Like Jim says, HR departments are a tentacle of the state inserted into every corporation, via threat of lawfare.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Fire them for what? Affirmative Action doesn't give private companies license to ignore Title VII. Any "affirmative Action Hires" you can find are likely going to be marginal cases where the resume was similar to a qualified non-minority candidate. The upshot is that any AA on the part of your HR department isn't going to be consequential to the point where it's worth laying off the majority of your HR department so you can pay them unemployment on top of the increased rates you're going to be paying an outside contractor to do the work. Not to mention the fact that this outside contractor isn't going to be as familiar with your company and it's policies as your existing staff. My firm outsources its billing to a third party firm and my boss has hour-long weekly Zoom meetings with them just to make sure they're doing what we need them to do. And this is a relatively small firm. In any event, let's not pretend you're going to give some company in India major say in hiring decisions.
Fire them because the vast majority of their actions actually reduce value. I think most of HR is bullshit and the very limited value add could easily be outsourced. This is just a signal that lawsuits will be easier to defend and therefore reduces the CYA of HR.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If I had told you this LBJ EO existed, you would have guessed Trump wouldn't do anything. Your skepticism is rebuked! Trump and his people are in charge now, not the HR.
OK. We’ll see if he deports more than even (a pathetic) 25% of the illegal alien population, then we can talk about winning.
All he has to do is enforce penalties on employers and they’ll self deport
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
HR doesn't make hiring decisions, do they? At least at my (tech) company, they, at best, facilitate hiring. Hiring is determined by the engineers and managers.
They frequently pre-screen applicants before they ever go in front of an engineer or manager.
That's actually "recruiting", and they're usually either separate from HR (or outsourced entirely) or a separate thing within it. At least in tech recruiters are far more likely to be male than HR bureaucrats. And tempermentally they're not bureaucrats, they're salespeople.
Our recruiters (for an engineering focused org) are mostly women, and are incredibly bureaucratic about blocking resumes. Including in situations where managers have told someone "Hey, I think you'd be perfect, I'd like you to apply". Resume not only never makes it to the manager's desk (even if there are literally zero other candidates), but there is nothing the manager can do to lean on HR other than to re-post the position with changes.
I've seen it happen multiple times, including to people who should have set off all of HR's demographic desire bells. Our HR and their control is probably the biggest reason why I'm looking at other career prospects.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
HR screens initial candidates who are then put in front of the relevant teams.
Even if HR does initial screens, they aren't throwing the resumes of qualified applicants in the circular file just because they're (probably) white. Most of it is throwing out the massive volume of garbage applications from people who have no hope of getting the job in any universe. Usually they don't even do a great job at this, especially if this work is outsourced to a recruiting company. My brother had a manager who was completely incompetent but only ended up getting fired after it was discovered that he was sharing personal information of female employees with people who didn't need to know about it. A friend of ours (who used to work with my brother) works for a company that was looking to hire a manager and the hiring team was complaining that all their staffing company was doing was sending them this loser's application over and over again.
More options
Context Copy link
Replying to @falling-star too
Well, I can say that's not the way it works in my company, which may not be quite the norm. In my company, individual teams drive the hiring process, including finding candidates. Recruitment does a call, but it's mostly to prep candidates in what comes next. If they narrowed out a candidate during an intense hiring period for reasons other then serious flags, there would be hell to pay. Managers have a difficult enough time getting candidates through the hiring pipeline as is.
If individual teams already have full discretion over hiring then presumably abolishing DEI will have minimal impact anyway (it will either continue to happen if individual managers put their fingers on the scale for ideological reasons, or it won’t if they don’t).
HR is involved and will push managers and hiring decisionmakers towards diversity candidates, but they're not, at least in tech, a literal screen. Orders like Trump's will remove some of HR's ability to push; they can no longer say DEI will be better for getting government contracts, for instance.
What I’ve seen is two-fold: (1) if we are hiring a larger class, then there are effectively AA slots and (2) people understand incentives and so if there is a URM they will push them through the interview process provided they are reasonably in the same church (if not pew) as the other candidate.
More options
Context Copy link
Clueless recruiters have often blocked people I've referred to my company so that they don't even get a phone screen. In most cases it's because the recruiters are incompetent and can't understand a resume, but there may be some DEI thumb on the scale here as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, that's my assessment based on my company. It's a big company, but I know that at least one other big company totally differs from mine in how hiring is done (it's more central, less team-owned). I don't know which is closer to the norm for others companies.
Despite all of my company's flaws, I've always been proud of the fact that I really don't know any diversity hires. The team owned and data driven process to assess candidate skills have been very effective at keeping DEI's influence on hiring almost non-existent.
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
If it rids companies of hour long lectures on microaggressions, at least that's a step.
To be replaced with more equally boring training on how to identify phishing emails, ‘interacting with coworkers from different cultures’, communications skills and networking workshops.
Sure, but micro aggression bullshit is worse.
More options
Context Copy link
Jokes on you, we already have all that other stuff.
Of course, but it can always be increased in volume.
I'd still be okay with this, comparatively speaking.
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
Damn, how can I beat lefties over the head that Institutional racism is directed at whites when Trump's ending one of the largest areas of institutional racism! It's been a good 36 hours. Some of the EO's are kind of silly, but a few of them could be the biggest political turns of my life.
Everything is possible! There is no limit. We can do the things we want to do, all our problems can be fixed, nobody can stop us we have the will and anyone who doubts is succumbing to the only sin. But we will go on anyways! Human flourishing is limitless with optimism and will and this is what America stands for!!!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link