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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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(let's face it, this place is very, very red tribe-bent)

Is it? It's very, very right-wing, but that's not the same thing. From "I Can Tolerate Anything except the Outgroup" by Scott Alexander:

The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting “USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!”, and listening to country music.

The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.

(There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football “sportsball”, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk – but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time)

From what I can tell, most of us are Grey Tribers who refused to go along with the blatant falsehoods of wokeness and got thrown into the pit with the rest for it. The surveys support this. From the same essay:

On last year’s survey, I found that of American LWers who identify with one of the two major political parties, 80% are Democrat and 20% Republican, which actually sounds pretty balanced compared to some of these other examples.

But it doesn’t last. Pretty much all of those “Republicans” are libertarians who consider the GOP the lesser of two evils. When allowed to choose “libertarian” as an alternative, only 4% of visitors continued to identify as conservative. But that’s still…some. Right?

When I broke the numbers down further, 3 percentage points of those are neoreactionaries, a bizarre local sect that wants to be ruled by a king. Only one percent of LWers were normal everyday God-‘n-guns-but-not-George-III conservatives of the type that seem to make up about half of the United States.

How many "God-'n-guns-but-not-George-III" conservatives do we actually have here? I think the most prominent were @HlynkaCG, who got himself permabanned, and @FarNearEverywhere, who left after a temporary ban. We got a couple of other military vets and Christians who fit the bill, but the bulk of us would be as completely out of place in a USMC boot camp as we would be at Sunday church service or a Super Bowl watch party.

Uh, speak for yourself, dude.

Not everyone who's a military vet or into guns makes a big deal out of it.

We definitely also have a fair number of Super Bowl appreciators and Sunday church service attendees.

You're right that Scott's original classification of Red and Blue tribe now tends to get inaccurately rounded to "conservatives and liberals." But I'm not sure how many Red Tribe liberals or Blue Tribe conservatives we have here. (Certainly more of the latter than the former.)

Really? Superbowl watch party is too normie for us now?

I may have never fired a gun in my life (yet!), but I've been to several super bowl watch parties, especially when your team is in it.

Eagles looking great right about now, by the way.

From what I can tell, most of us are Grey Tribers who refused to go along with the blatant falsehoods of wokeness and got thrown into the pit with the rest for it. The surveys support this. From the same essay:

Right, things changed and it is no longer reasonable to consider "Gray Tribe" part of Blue Tribe. However, "Gray Tribe" remains inchoate; there is not really a "Gray Tribe", just an agglomeration of people who are mostly Blue Tribe but don't fit in because Blue has tightened its membership criteria. Some, like Scott, are desperately trying to hang on to being part of Blue. Some -- like TW -- adhere to it (without actually being part of it) because of their antipathy for the other side, or for Donald Trump. Others instead cleave to Red, though we are not part of that tribe either.

Don't we have everything but the creationism, soda, and divorce? We even have a football and country music thread now.

I'm out if we ever start drinking pop

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