site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't mainly care if it's just or not, I mainly care about living with a political system that delivers to me the sorts of things that I want in my life. How is one group of people vindictively doing shitty things to get back at another group of people who did shitty things going to help me?

But how does this affect you personally? Think of it this way.

We are prairie dogs watching humans test atomic bombs. The kulturekampf is fundamentally the clash of inhuman worldviews, as impersonal and inscrutable as the forces binding subatomic particles together. As individuals, there is very little we can do to affect the outcome, unless we use our fifteen minutes in the right place at the right time.

But not all worldviews are created equally.

As distasteful and terrible the new regime may seem to be... it is closer to consensus-reality than its ideological opposite. It benefits you to live in a regime that believes in up and down and left and right. Men can't be women. There is no infinite money printer. The liberal world order is dead and gone and it's time to move on. It never benefits you to live under a regime that has delusional principles, even if makes your bellyfeel cozy.

It's easy to be cynical and just shrug it off as mere partisanry. But the left has been more dangerously deluded for a long time now. Sure, the right may be cruel in their revenge, but nothing they can do is worse than the shattering of the illusion of the end of history. That in of itself is a crime that will never be forgiven by the left, but the right was never obliged to participate in its perpetuation.

Is it cruel to tell someone they have to fight for everything they took for granted? Perhaps. But my side began that journey a decade ago. What can I say? You're not going to convince to stop anytime soon. I am full of hubris. I will die someday, but today is glory and triumph.

I appreciate many things about the new regime and their direct, bold willingness to explode old and stupid taboos. But I feel no sense of glory or triumph. The new regime, at their emotional baseline heart, is just as insane as the old. Maybe even more, because they are provoked and maddened by having been oppressed for years by the old regime. While I appreciate much of what they are currently doing, I do not trust them in any way. I fear that these are not principled classical liberals in their emotional core, they are vengeful radicals. I wish that they really were principled classical liberals, but my reading of what they do and say tells me that unfortunately, they are not. I appreciate that they are correcting the nonsense of the old regime, but I do not trust their new regime in the slightest bit.