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 -
If the Chinaman is even in the 20th century apocryphally reluctant to make definitive statements French Revolution, it seems the American will less than two months into a presidency declare a new era.
Personally I would mark the end that time period on 2022-02-23. Not only are there a lot of 2's making it easy fir future schoolchildren to remember, but crucially it is the day Ukro-Russian War began. It marked the end of the peaceful cooperation of the West and Russia, the end of peace in Europe, the end of disarmed Europe.
Trump's legacy lies in the future, while the Chinaman is too cautious, the American much too eager. American judiciary is, unlike under FDR, eager to constrain the president. Then even the Supreme Court bowed down to the Executive, now each of the hundreds of federal thinks he obstruct the President. As we have seen already EOs are getting blocked, there is no telling if they will ever come into force.
The idea that after WW2 even looking only at the US the consensus until Trump's second term was anything resembling DEI is absurd. Segregation wasn't ended on VJ Day, Operation Wetback happened in 1954.
If people in 1945 US would be given a charitable explanation of the principles underlying DEI, and asked to come up with policies in-line with these principles, they wouldn't come up with exactly what DEI means in practice in 2025. Maybe they would even suggests policies which DEI advocates today explicitly oppose. This show that one cannot just view history as a sort of cableway up the mountain of DEI, but more like a walk on its mountainside: sometimes down to get up, sometimes up but quickly down, sometimes just down.
This seems to be recency bias in action. Unless it leads to nuclear war, the Russia-Ukraine war will be a footnote in history. It's a final pimple in the denouement of the Cold War: Russia's last attempt at global influence despite representing only 2% of the world's population and GDP.
No, the story of this era of history will be told with two letters. And it will change everything.
This is within the context of defining the "Long 20th Century". Maybe 9/11 fits better, it certainly is closer to the end of the actual 20th century. But I am not married to any of these events, and "recency bias" is something the article linked by OP is even more guilty of than me. The War started before Trump came into power the second time, and the consequences thus had more to manifest than for the former. And they have, meanwhile Trump's reforms haven't changed anything other than regularly scheduled denunciations by the Reliable Sources of the republican president.
I would argue the cultural 20th Century ran from the summer of 1914 to Christmas of 1991. The 21st century began on September 11, 2001. The 90s is a historical liminal space that serves as both an epilogue to the 20th century and the prologue to the 21st.
Great comment, I think you’ve convinced me. There was a lot of really weird stuff about the 90s, from the eXtrEme monster truck era to weirdly grotesque trends in western cartoon animation, all the way to that end of history emptiness of suburban prosperity thing, which you saw especially in 98/99 in American Beauty, The Sopranos, Fight Club, the Matrix to some extent, all of which gets more interesting the more you think about it.
90s were indeed the golden age of the west.
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
Trump has not yet abolished FDR's America, but he's making a serious attempt on it, and that alone is extraordinary (especially in light of the fact he failed to do so the last time around).
Whether he succeeds and solidifies his win will be the true test of whether we entered a new era. But even if he fails, it's hard to imagine by which miracle the legitimacy of the managerial state could be revivified at this point.
Who knows what's going to happen, but we certainly stand at one of those crucial points in history, and the protagonists are well aware we are.
Trump isn't trying to abolish the New Deal. The main radical thing he is trying to do is to abolish the nominally apolitical permanent civil service - including bringing the USPS back under political control. That takes you back to the immediate post-Civil War era before the Chester Arthur administration and the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.
The stakes are a lot higher when Federal spending is 25% of GDP vs 1.5% in 1883.
But of course, the whole reason we're here is the civil service is not apolitical, but 90% in the bag for one party. Even if Trump replaces whole departments with political appointees, the federal government will still be a Democrat-dominated institution.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link