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 -
There's an argument that Trump/Elon have disrupted the left's nexus of command and control: a combination of social media/mainstream media/NGOs who could be mobilized to astroturf protests or to fan the flames of existing protests. In this model, a "movement" might start on Twitter with a hashtag #DCsitin and then mainstream media would report on it favorably, people would turn out in the streets (including paid protestors), and the government would feel pressured to do something to make it go away. Some have called this the "color revolution" playbook. I think this is a bit conspiratorial but maybe descriptive of a system that evolved organically.
Note: On a meta level, sorry for posting my top-level comment right after yours. When I see a stale front page I sometimes get motivated to write something. Next time, I'll double-check that no one posted while I was writing.
I mean, this is very much the thesis that Mike Benz keeps putting forward. USAID and it's network of NGOs functioned to almost completely manufacture reality. He's so far down that rabbit hole, he believes that almost everything we perceive about politics and where the consensus lies is a carefully constructed lie by USAID and NGOs.
I had an article once, I can't find it now, talking about the nuts and bolts of how these protests work. Which is basically that a network of like minded (the article doesn't go into funding) activist embedded in various organizations start working the phones and collaborating with each other, and they do so with such speed and behind the scenes deft, the entire effort seems natural. The "community organizer" calls their local representative who calls a friendly reporter. At some point the perfect "victim" with a sob story is selected. Sometimes it's even true! The reporter is networking with the totally doesn't exist anymore Journo Pros mailing list to get their little set piece national coverage. A local affiliate goes out to get the B-Role footage that every cable news network is going to use. And the key to this whole thing is speed. Within 4-8 hours of whatever event occurred that could boost a narrative it's been done. A layman might think it was totally organic, when in reality it was just a rolodex of numbers.
And possibly a bunch of USAID funding...
IF USAID funding was such a key part in all this, it being cut off says a lot about why the Democrats seem completely adrift and feckless. During the Summer of Floyd, Maxine Water's used to be able to nakedly call for violence in the streets, and next thing you knew a mob was harassing random diners in Baltimore. Now, it's like someone took away whatever causal mechanism turned Democratic politician's speech into flashpoints on the streets and then national news stories that bolstered their narrative.
I mean, maybe the nation just isn't feeling it anymore. Maybe 4 years of Biden's "The adults are back in charge" just destroyed something in people's minds about how responsible D's are versus R's. Maybe the skill level of the D leadership has fallen off a cliff and they forgot how to do this shit. Maybe more than just SV billionaires defected to Trump.
Maybe it was USAID the whole time. It's a convenient explanation.
Whatever it was, it seems like the Democrats have lost their mojo.
I have started almost completely writing off news stories about filed lawsuits for this reason. The bar to file is so low that except in situationally interesting cases (IMO: raises novel legal questions), I just can't be bothered with "patient says doctor didn't tell them about side effects" or "plane crash survivor sues airline". It genuinely seems to me like many of these articles are really (
goodeffective) lawyers exercising networks with journalists to put public pressure on their counterparties to settle, or, less often, to raise the prominence of their clients. It'd be one thing if the articles had substantive analysis and outside facts, but they typically lazily repeat one party's claims from the filing.More options
Context Copy link
The most hilarious theory I’ve heard is that Gaza caused democrats to purge the Jews from their leadership and replace them with incompetent black women. Don’t know if it’s true though.
That sounds like nonsense. The Democratic organizational base has been Black women for decades. That's why the party hasn't moved left as much as the very-online contingent of progressives want it to. Those Black women are a lot more conservative (both in the "further right politics" sense and in the "less willing to shake up the status quo" sense).
In other words, Black Women Are Less Likely? (Slate Star Codex, February 2015)
More options
Context Copy link
This is news to me, I thought it would have been Black men who'd be the more conservative type.
Sure, men tend to be more conservative than women. But community organizer types are mainly women not men.
More options
Context Copy link
Blacks as a whole tend to be overwhelmingly Democrat to a stupid degree - it's why the various polls over the recent years showing movement at the margins tend to result in such concern from the Democratic party as a whole.
When you've spent decades having a solid block of voters and not having to expend any resources to keep said voters, the moment you start to notice a ground-shift often results in panic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Speaking of compelling theories...
There's been some chatter going around X about how the Democratic Party is a casualty of Hamas. I think the logic goes something like this:
A large percent of Democratic Party operators are/were high human capital Jews
After 10/7, the left wing of the Democratic Party became anti-Semitic
"Jew" is now a slur in leftists spaces. Jews are denied leadership opportunities or simply leave.
Within the party infrastructure, Jews are replaced with low human capital DEI hires
Result: complete incompetence, Kamala Harris, Karen Bass, etc, etc..
The slur is "Zionist" (to gives them the veneer of plausible deniability)
More options
Context Copy link
The second half of 3 as well as 4 presuppose that “leftists” control hiring, and promotion to leadership positions within the Democratic Party infrastructure. Is that in fact the case?
In a sense, it's trivially true in that Democrats are the leftist party.
But, yeah, I think there has been a bigger emphasis on DEI over competence within left-ideology. Hard to imagine that doesn't spill over into the party itself.
My point was, there are (as in any big-tent party) multiple wings/factions within the Democrats. The hardcore idpol progressive leftists—the sort who are alleged to be antisemites who care more about DEI bona fides than competence—are one such wing, but there are at least 2 others: the anti-idpol class-first leftists (roughly corresponding to Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren supporters) and, for lack of a better term, “The Blob”, aka the centrist PMC/technocrat wing who may pay lip service to DEI but remain staunchly pro-Israel (basically Clinton and Biden supporters).
It’s not obvious to me that the idpol-left faction has taken over the Democrats to such an extent that they can purge competent Jews as mentioned above.
The black political machine is another important wing for the democrats.
So you have a minor class-first wing, an establishment blob wing, a far left wing, and a black machine politics wing. I’m guessing the blob can’t carry the other three on it’s own.
Man, hearing you break out the various political machines made me wonder how much the other competing rackets in the DNC coalition treat the black political machine. Especially when time after time, under the slightest amount of public exposure, they turn out to be literally retarded.
But instead it got me thinking about how much of politics is just ritual. It doesn't matter that people like the Philadelphia mayor are nakedly retarded. At some point a consultant will give her the magic words that say "I'm electable". The press will go "She said the magic words that make her electable". And all the voters will think to themselves "Well, the
priestnews said she said the words that mean I should vote for her". So she's mayor. Apparent illiteracy aside.And I single the black political machine out for their politicians just nakedly being unable to speak properly, display a 5th grade level of education (see above), or provide believable explanations for their preposterous behavior. If machine politics weren't at play, it's hard to imagine how these people could have ever gotten anywhere close to the positions they hold.
I mean, here we are, this lady couldn't spell Eagles despite it likely being somewhere right in front of her, I doubt it will impact her electability one iota. Howard Dean's political aspirations were destroyed by one awkward scream. "What's Aleppo?" will haunt Gary Johnson in his nightmares until the day he dies he was beat over the head with it so many times. Overwhelmingly the priest decide what matters and what doesn't, and their congregation just receives that opinion.
Obviously, politics as ritual is responsible for people like Mike Pence too. All I ever heard about him was that he was "electable" despite not knowing anything about him, or anything he's ever said, or any accomplishment he could ever lay claim to. There is very clearly a ritual to rightwing politicians as well, with different magic words and a different priestly caste conferring "electability" unto them.
Which is clearly what drives many of these people completely fucking insane about Trump, and now many of the people who have rode his coattails in his new coalition. These are bipartisan heretics one and all. They don't ritualize the right words, the priestly caste has excommunicated them, and none of this was supposed to happen god damnit! It was the end of history!
In theory, there should be a DNC bench of outcast that could take over the DNC just as hard as Trump and 8 years of Trumpism took over the RNC. But instead, Trump stole many of their best outcast too (RFK Jr, Tulsi, Elon).
It's going to take a new DNC to have any hope of keeping up with the new RNC. If rumors of the Black Political Machine filling in the gaps left by a withering coalition are true, jeeze.
That is indeed a believable explanation. My wife's grandmother did not trust banks and kept almost all she owned as cash at home. You have to remember there is a certain level of distrust towards white or governmental institutions particularly (and understandably) in black Americans of a certain age or that they inherited from their family members.
Now it may not be true in this case, but if so the reason he reached for that as a lie is precisely because it is indeed believable, it is an actual thing if you have exposure to black communities. My wife to this day keeps more cash at hand than I ever would (though in turn I keep more emergency supplies of food and water than she considers "normal").
Also why disliking taking the "government needle" of Covid vaccinations resulted in lower vaccination rates in black communities. It's certainly less common than it was, but it is still a thing.
As another coincidence between black and Ulster-Scots borderer behaviors MY farmer grandfather also kept large sums of cash in his house rather than in banks because he didn't trust them or the government, which led to us randomly finding money in bags with things like "8 cows to Smith" written on it after he had passed.
Perhaps not quite to Ron Swanson burying gold in the woods levels though.
More options
Context Copy link
I will say one good thing about the black political machine- it’s very thoroughly non-ideological. When the DNC decides to settle on something that isn’t insane race communism, they will always have been at war with EastAsia. And it’s worth noting that the ridiculously unpopular insanity mostly comes from the far left wing which itself doesn’t get along great with the black wing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're forgetting intersectionality.
Ironically, the ideology that presumes to be about collectivist organization is, in practice, extremely individualist. There are no factions, not in the traditional sense: but thousands of extremely self-interested individuals who have been handed a superweapon to destroy the 'pale, male, and stales' in their way of sinecures and political power.
When you get cancelled, the factions cease to have all meaning.
All of their hands are stained with this blood. Internally, they are just as paranoid as Stalinists. They may internally not believe in idpol but they are forced to because there are hundreds of people after their jobs. They are all replacable, mediocre nobodies that can have everything taken away from them because all they have was given and that is by design.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I thought it was very convenient: "race and IQ poaster concludes problem is race and IQ". But it is interesting to see the left-wing version from Cenk Uygur posted above. Both sides seem to think Democrats lost or alienated important human capital.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Don't worry about this. I for one welcome more and more top level posts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link