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 -
Yes, I think this is correct. From what I can see, Hispanics often aspire to become American, and that means owning a small business, getting married, sending kids to school, having enough money to have a nice house...all the things that make you a quintessential GOP voter.
I'm reminded often of the fact one of the first, if not THE first, official Presidential campaign ads in Spanish was from the Bush 2000 campaign. The fact that hispanic voters are by every metric natural GOP voters (religious, family-oriented, anti-socialist, pro-immigration control) yet continued to vote Democrat was one of the great political headscratchers of the 00s-10s. It's been surprisingly vindicating to watch that vote trend in the way I long believed it "should" trend.
Hispanics aren't that religious(less so than blacks) or socially conservative(again, less so than blacks, muslims, or republicans). Notably up until recently church attending white Catholics were far more likely to vote D than church attending white protestants, too, and we can probably expect that to generalize.
Hispanics are normies with some quirks. When the democrats are wedded to insane ideas about gender and an anti-growth mindset, that makes them natural republicans, but in 2010 democrats were not, so hispanics voted mostly D because they're poorer than average. Assimilation(and red tribe culture is much easier for poor second gen immigrants to grok- football might not be their sport but they understand the concept of sports pretty easily, country music might not be their genre but it's closer than rap, upward mobility as a good thing even if it isn't huge status boost, suburban lifestyles are popular with anyone who has access to them, etc), the move of church attending Catholics towards the republicans(driven by social issues polarization changing from 'one party is mostly liberal and one party is mostly conservative, with considerable exceptions' to 'one party wants to make social conservatism illegal or at least officially frowned upon and one party wants to enshrine protections for social conservatism'), and the recent insanity of the democrats are the main factors. Add in racial/ethnic tensions between blacks and hispanics(seriously, the two groups do not like each other) that don't exist between hispanics and whites, and upwards mobility which makes the GOP more appealing, and you've got a formula for hispanics moving towards the right.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link