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 -
Moving this here (rather late) on suggestion of the mods, with some added expansion:
Does anyone else see the way various people on the American left, particularly left leaning media, have been doubling down on "Trump is Hitler," "Harris ran a flawless campaign," "the voters are just sexist, racist, stupid, and evil," and so on, and that they shouldn't change policies to win over voters, except maybe by moving even further leftward (again, I'm on Tumblr, so I get plenty of this from ordinary D voters coming across my dash; there's also the Youtubers seen in this video for one) as part of an overall "strategy" by the left that strongly parallels the behaviors in recent years of "woke Hollywood" and game studios? That is, use identity politics as a tool to paint critics and opponents as bigots ('you don't hate our all-female reboot because it's a soulless cash grab with lousy writing and acting, you're just a sexist', 'you didn't vote for Kamala only because you hate blacks and/or women,' etc). "Schrödinger's critics": your opposition is just a few unimportant bigots who don't represent the audience/electorate and don't really matter; but when your movie/game/candidate flops, it's because of the immense power those same opponents have over the viewers/players/voters. The problem is that too many people are listening to fringe voices (whether that's YouTube movie critics, video game reviewers on Twitch, or 'purveyors of right wing misinformation' like Fox News and x.com), instead of professional, establishment movie critics/game journalists/political commentators; and we need to figure out how to mute those fringe voices. Taking your established fanbase/demographics for granted, and excoriate them if their support starts to wane ('how can you call yourself a Tolkien fan and not watch Rings of Power?' 'Sure, the Democrat party's policies do nothing for you, but you have to vote blue no matter who anyway' [a position I've seen left-wing YouTubers state in response to the election]).
Sure, the idea that "the customer is always right" — even if you append the qualifier "…in matters of taste" — is one that the "creative industries" have always struggled with. The purity of one's artistic vision versus "selling out" in order to make a living is a perennial tension. And similarly with electoral politics. Parties abandoning all principles in naked pursuit of the median voter turns electoral politics into a modern spectator sport, with the parties reduced to different colored jerseys with different mascots, and all that matters is that "your" team win the next game. ("Who will win the trophy this year, Team Elephant, or Team Donkey?") But, on the other hand, if a party wants to actually accomplish things in line with those principles, they have to win elections. Movie studios need to have people pay to watch their movies, so they can afford to make more, or else they'll go out of business.
In short, that you, the filmmaker/game studio/Democratic party, don't answer to your audience/voters, the audience/voters answer to you. You do not have to earn their dollars/votes, you are entitled to them, and if they aren't buying what you're selling, then they're wrong, and the strategy is to lecture them on what horrible bigots they are until they start watching your movie/playing your game/voting Democrat. And calling anyone who disagrees with you a fascist. (That "Unfortunately, this decision affects the wrong people" bit is wild coming from those making the decision in question — as if they have no agency over this decision, but it is instead somehow just a natural consequence somehow emerging automatically.) As Jim put it: "Doing an audit of federal government expenditures is the death of democracy, and doing a customer survey is openly fascist."
Even shorter: it's treating that Simpsons bit with Principal Skinner that's become a meme — "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong." — as a marketing/campaign strategy.
I see visible splintering in the democratic party.
Pelosi (Geriatrics) & Kamala (DEI Dems) want to hold onto their remaining power. They have been doubling down. Basically milking the population for the last bits of anti-Trump hysteria that won them the 2020 population.
Younger Vanilla Dems (Pete, Newsom) think their best years are ahead of them. They are trying to gain power. They've done full U-turns on woke era issues (Pronouns, trans people in sports, DEI). Example 1 . Example 2.
Newsom is and always will be a shameless chameleon. I think Buttigieg is a better case, because not only is he gay and married himself, but he's already been a good example of 'smart guy, knows which way the wind is blowing, but limits himself to smart political pitching rather than lying or deceit'. Like if you look at him appearing on Jubilee's video 1 Politician vs 25 Undecided Voters when he's asked a couple of questions where he clearly low-key agrees with the questioner (I think he was asked why Kamala sounds so fake for example) he puts a good spin on it but listening carefully he doesn't like, say "oh Kamala is secretly this cool person" like some politicians. At least that's my read on it.
Agreed.
I too like Pete better. (as much as should 'like' a politician)
He doesn't shamelessly exploit his tribal membership cards. (any more than standard politician amount) It would've been easy for him to ride a 'Gay' or 'Veteran' wave, but he's stayed true to an Obama-eque eloquent-statesman image.
As a shameless YIMBY, I was surprised that he took transportation. All good transportation policies are uphill battles and the head-of-department for failure. Successful projects considered underused, wasteful & go massively overbudget. (Peak usage for new infra takes years to pick up). Failed projects have all of that and also don't get finished. By those standards, he's done a good job as transportation secretary. There was the whole FAA coverup that Trace leaked, but even he seems to like Pete. So I won't hold that one against him. Pete's also younger, and I like that.
Newsom definitely comes off as slimy. Also his California Governor term has bad optics. The zombie-ville SF & LA wildfire videos will not do him any favors. He is more likeable than Kamala & Hillary, but that's a low bar.
I like to think of myself as a good public speaker, but I can recognize when someone is straight up better. This guy is so good. (Obama and Trump too). Supreme wordcels. Vance is a good speaker too, but he doesn't have the necessary flair to stick his landings.
Before anyone comes around calling Pete a 'McKinsey consultant lite'.........I view that as a positive.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, it's catering to the most-engaged activist base and internet discourse, which disproportionately leans Sanders-y or woke.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean this tension isn't unique to politics. I think a music analogy is also appropriate here. Is the most popular, listened-to music actually the best? Personally, I do actually think that popular music must ipso facto be almost definitely of decent quality, but if you ask most people on the street if they think the current top song is actually good music, they might often disagree. You brought up film, which is a good analogy, but I think you make a mistake in limiting the analysis to just poor performing films = must be bad films. The dynamics of unpopular things is not fundamentally the same as popular things. A film can not do well because it has a niche audience in the first place, but a film can do well because it does all things at least somewhat competently, even if it does nothing particularly well or best-in-class. At least that's my take on the popular vs quality tradeoff that's present in many forms, including politics. But many films don't even explicitly attempt to do well - not every Oscar Best Picture winner expects to top the box office, and in fact often there is a concession that the two goals are often mutually exclusive. That's why I think the analogy isn't perfect, because in politics, the goal IS to get the top box office! You can't redefine electoral success. I don't think Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking something other than electoral success is the goal. And honestly, I don't think they are doubling down on guilt-based politics either. At least, not yet. Right now they are just in the "milling around confused" phase still.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, a core part of the ideology is that they are, axiomatically, on the right side of history. Not just morally, but inevitably. The march of history is in their favor. The future will be progressive, liberal, left-wing, and it's just a matter of waiting for the olds to die to make way for the new utopia. This has been their assumption throughout my whole life. The "modern audience" was prophesied, and they have been preparing for its inexorable arrival. It has only been delayed. The faithful must hold strong and doubledown.
More options
Context Copy link
The core problem is that yeah, the general public is stupid. You can’t build your political ideology around asking the voters what they want. For one, they don’t know how things work. Their opinions are not constrained by the laws of reality. For another, the opinions of the public are ephemeral. The average voter cares little about policy qua policy. They only care about whatever thing is going on in their media sphere. Have you ever once pulled up the most recent edition of the Federal Register to see what newly-promulgated regulations the government is issuing? Have you ever once commented upon — or even just read — a notice of proposed rulemaking on Regulations.gov? Probably not, because you don’t actually care about that stuff, and neither does anyone else in the general public. The average voter has no opinion on (checks today’s edition of the FR) what the proper licensing regime for the 6 gigahertz radio frequency band should be. If tomorrow everyone suddenly had an opinion on that for some reason, it wouldn’t be because of any personal reasoning or thought, it would be because someone they trust told them what to think.
Federal overregulation has obliterated ham radio while simulataneously oversaturating the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands to the point of uselessness in urban areas. It's clear that these regulations are written not for the benefit of the general public but to protect the monopolies of telecoms and television broadcast. Electronics have to be sewn up in a lead box to avert the minute chance it might add a bit of static to watching a football game but corporations can sit on empty swaths of frequency for decades because they paid for it and haven't found a use for it yet.
More options
Context Copy link
I have read a few and commented on one.
More options
Context Copy link
I didn't even know that existed - my impression has always been that "contact your congressman" was the appropriate action if you liked or disliked some proposed regulation, and that you learned about upcoming regulations by being an insider / hoping the media surfaced something relevant to your interests.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's something to this. But… a political party isn't an unbiased entity trying to maximize the number of votes whatever it takes. At any rate, it shouldn't be. A political party has principles, values, an agenda; and it wants votes as an instrumental goal to implementing that agenda, because they think it will be good for the world if they do. Their duty is to try to convince the voters their ideas are right; and if the voters aren't convinced, they should vote for someone else who's selling a different set of ideals. Trying to convince people they should support an agenda they're currently unsure about can look a lot like lecturing them, but that's only to be expected.
This fails because the US only has two political parties.
I mean. Primaries, anyone?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
See, the thing is, I'm seeing people on the left actively rejecting this. As they see it, the party doesn't have a duty to convince voters, the voters have a duty to support them automatically — "Vote Blue no matter who" — and if the voters aren't convinced, then the voters are the problem, not them, and it's the voters who need to change, not them. Voters who "vote for someone else who's selling a different set of ideals" are failing in their duty to the Democratic party, and are either stupid — and thus need "educating" — or evil — and must be punished. (I recall one lefty YouTuber talking about the various demographics that moved rightward in 2024, noting that often the Democratic party has nothing to offer them… and then excoriating these groups, because it's their duty to vote Dem anyway, and voting for any other party is never okay…)
Again, all over Tumblr, the talk is of literal re-education camps for Trump voters — as the "humane" option — because they have to extend people the "charity" of assuming they're just not smart enough to understand Democratic party messaging, or have been led astray by the vast pipelines of far-right disinformation; and because the alternative is that they knowingly voted for "obvious Fascism," and thus must be either expelled from the country or simply killed.
They're all quite explicit about this: if an election doesn't go the way you want, don't blame the party, blame the voters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't intend this to sound condescending, but this parallel has been so obvious to me for probably the better part of a decade by now, that I'm surprised that someone on TheMotte would only notice it now. Though perhaps it actually speaks ill of me and my hobby of paying attention to the culture wars around popular media that I noticed the parallels so early and found it so obvious.
The all-woman Ghostbusters remake came out in 2016, almost a full decade ago, and that was one of the earlier big examples of the whole "we didn't fail the audience; the sexist, misogynistic audience failed us by not giving us money to spend 2 hours watching our film" narrative being made. That was 2 years after Gamergate, which wasn't quite that specifically, but it was a major flashpoint in video game culture where major video game journalists, devs, and commentators were explicitly telling their customers that their tastes were wrong, and that they had a responsibility to submit to the enlightened, correct tastes of the then "social justice" (equivalent to "woke" today) crowd. This knocked over some dominoes that resulted in many video games designed to appeal to that SocJus crowd being released 5-10 years later, i.e. the last 5 years. Examples of these include failures like Concord or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League from last year, as well as successes like The Last of Us: Part 2 and God of War: Ragnarok (I suspect that it's not a coincidence that these successes were both sequels to hugely popular games that built on a strong base).
In film, besides 2016's Ghostbusters, 2017's The Last Jedi, as well as most Star Wars works that followed, and 2019's Captain Marvel, as well as most Marvel movies that followed, were major examples of this phenomenon. And though many of these films did fine or even great in the box office, they had plenty of controversy around more old-school fans reacting negatively to various plot points and characterizations, and then being called bigots in return both by filmmakers and commentators. There were smaller examples as well, such as Terminator: Dark Fate or the Charlie's Angels remake-remake, both of which bombed in 2019.
A big part of it, I think, is that SocJus mentality, of all of reality being dominated by power differentials, and as such, each individual of [demographic] is necessarily disadvantaged compared to each individual of [some other demographic]. This means that if that individual of [demographic] fails or just doesn't succeed as much as they imagine an individual of [some other demographic] would have, then their failure is due to the bigoted society that created these power dynamics that made them disadvantaged, rather than due to that individual's own flaws. This, of course, is how millionaire stars can claim to be lacking in "privilege" - the claim isn't that they're not wildly successful, but rather that they aren't as wildly successful as an equivalent person of [some other demographic] would have been. Also of course, this is completely unfalsifiable.
And if you approach things with that mindset, that belonging to [demographic] means that any failure is due to the structural bigotry that reinforces the power dynamics of society, then naturally, when your film/video game/electoral candidate fails, you're going to blame structural bigotry. I.e. your audience, the gamers, the voters.
Also of course, if you just blame external factors, it hampers your ability to self-improve. But you can still succeed as long as all those external factors submit to your demands; if calling someone racist can get them to buy your game, then that's just as good as just making a better game. In practice, this doesn't really work. But the people making these decisions seem to be in echo chambers where calling people racist does get them to submit to their demands. And while everyone lives in echo chambers to some extent, the left/progressive/Democratic crowd has been very openly and very explicitly calling for strengthening the boundaries of their own echo chambers through censorship of opposing voices. Which leads them to model the general audience very poorly. Which costs you money. If you have a big bankroll, you can keep going with that for a while, but eventually, that money runs out. I think 2024 was a big year for when many of these decision makers finally recognized that they were able to see the bottom of the barrel of money they've been feeding their projects. In video games, we might see an actual closure of Ubisoft this year, depending on how their next Assassin's Creed game - one that had direct inspiration from the BLM riots of 2020 according to a developer, IIRC - does, after the mediocre reception of their Star Wars game last year.
I wonder if the Democrats will eventually have a moment when the stark reality of their failures simply can't be tolerated anymore, resulting in a change in tact. I was hopeful right after the election last year, but most signs since then have made me pessimistic. I just hope it comes sooner than later, because, as bad as SocJus is, I fully expect Republicans to be just as bad if they find that they have nearly unchecked power without a strong opposition party.
The Democrats might change, but the woke won't. Wokeness is reinforced by and in service to social dynamics; so long as there's an army of braindead leftists out there to like and share your lazy slogans, so long as being a Queer Marxist Male Feminist gets you laid, so long as there's one blue-haired HR lady with kindergarten sensibilities towards everyone but straight white men and scathing hatred towards the latter, the woke will keep at it. They already live in a fascist white supremacy anyways.
More options
Context Copy link
This has pretty much been because of the zero-interest-rate regime, which was recently-ish brought to a close with help from the pandemic (which itself served as one last turbocharge of money and growth for entertainment and tech). Now the growth has slowed down, and wokeness is not safe from the chopping block, even if the blade has not yet fallen.
More options
Context Copy link
It's not actually clear that "the oppressed" succeed less in the industry. They succeed at different things because groups are different. Barbie dragged up Oppenheimer's numbers, not vice versa. It's just a naive form of blank slateism at play.
AFAIK Marvel movies usually skew at least 60% male* . Is it a shock that it takes them longer to have a female lead? Is that oppression?
The blank slateism is what convinces them that a boy brand like Star Wars is just as equally marketable and valuable if turned into a space princess brand. Hell, moreso. Since boys and girls both want to watch the exact same things you can just keep all of the legacy male fans from when the fandom skewed male and gain new fans who have the same autistic fixation on just how the hell Han did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs when that is a unit of distance not time. You can swap in a five foot woman for a scarred John Connor and who but a bigot could feel their suspension of disbelief straining?
This might even be viable; these brands skew in one direction but have plenty of fans of both genders. But they can't sell it because they're in an echo chamber that validates their contempt for the audience. Claiming oppression is not just a way to try to create jobs for themselves, it allows objectively privileged people to "punch down" without that term ever being applied.
EDIT: apparently this is worse in the opening weekends, might even out more later as some sources claim. The Marvels was apparently 65% male, funnily enough
I'm not sure it's blank-slate-ism; it could equally-well be pure greed in the form of "Undecided Whale"-chasing frantically casting around for a moral-sounding justification post hoc after flops.
Post hoc justification might explain some of it, but given how much this idea of "overwhelmingly male hobbies like scifi, comic books, and video games are leaving money on the table by designing products to cater to them, and they could make unalloyed gains just by making changes in accordance with my ideology" was in vogue in the 00s well before Star Wars was even bought by Disney, I think the pre hoc justification makes more sense.
I think part of it is that they are looking at data that shows that young women are increasingly the primary spenders on consumer goods and entertainment, and they’re trying to grab that new market share whether the intellectual property is fit for purpose or not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is these arguments have been applied before the movie flopped (see Ghostbusters 2016) and even for ones that didn't flop (like Captain Marvel)
In the specific case of the Captain Marvel movie, there are two reasons why it was successful that I would like to bring to light:
One was reports of empty theaters showing the movie circulating in social media at the time, not confirmed or anything (just photos of empty theaters) so it remains a theory at best. The second and more credible reason was that, as part of the run up to the wildly popular conclusion to the Infinity Gauntlet saga, the movie felt like required viewing to fans and thus it accrued an audience independently if it was good or not (it wasn't) just due to its release timing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The rest of your comment explains the blank state-ism causing these issues well, I think. But this part, I don't think it even goes that far. Oppression and privilege, as used and defined by SocJus/idpol/progressive left/woke/whatever the fuck they refuse to be called on this particular day, are fundamentally faith-based. There's a veneer of science based on academic literature, but even the most cursory look at the primary documents shows that it's all just made up ad hoc, with essentially infinite degrees of freedom. And when you have that many degrees of freedom, you can always position [person you like] into [position that will allow them to extract resources from others] and vice versa. The underlying facts simply don't matter, since you can always add more epicycles as needed in order to land at the correct conclusion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Although they'll play at the role when it suits them for political advantage, Democratic elected officials are not ideologues. They have plenty of ambition, and when it's advantageous for their careers, they'll happily take whatever stance best straddles the line between electability and donor support.
Newsom calls trans athletes playing in women’s sports ‘deeply unfair’
Does it take a complete cynic to think Newsom didn't come to this position honestly, as opposed to sticking his finger in the wind? One might even suggest that he has Presidential ambitions. And, keep in mind, Newsom is thoroughly integrated into the Democratic apparatus: he's not someone who has built a brand on any kind of independence or heterodox thinking.
Democrats have mispositioned themselves for the past couple years, but they can jettison the most unpopular parts of their electoral coalition and come back again and win.
Absent evidence to the contrary, I would assume that someone with no personal stake in the issue and enough of a brain to be an effective California machine politician came to the position "Men should not compete in women's sports" because it is obviously correct, and the position "Men who self-identify as women should compete in women's sports" as a cynical attempt to appeal to a locally powerful activist group.
I assume this regardless of which order they assume the two positions in.
More options
Context Copy link
He did in fact originally build his brand on being a cutting-edge progressive on woke-ish issues; he was the mayor of San Francisco who started issuing same-sex marriage licenses in open violation of then-applicable California statute as a way of ginning up a test case.
Kind of, but San Francisco politics is complicated. Newsom was known as a business-friendly moderate in San Francisco politics. "Progressives" absolutely despised him, for being anti-homeless, friendly to real estate developers, and a crony to a certain corrupt state machine politician named Willie Brown (there's that name again...) In early 2004, he wanted to shore up his left flank a bit after a fairly close 2003 election against Matt Gonzalez, a Green. The gay marriage stunt was perfect for that: it distracted angry progressive voters by positioning him as an enemy of national conservative political figures, and it cemented his dominance of California's LGBT donor class.
He's a Willie Brown disciple? I thought he was a Getty guy...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They certainly can. I hope they will. I'll just say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me... you can't get fooled again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've lost all capacity to steelman the DNC. I can barely form a notion of what motivates them that doesn't come across has a hateful parody. And yet clips like this exist and I find myself going "What else am I supposed to think?"
I know left leaning people want a DNC that improves their quality of life, some form of socialized health care, living wages. I'm not hating on them.
But the DNC, the organization that tries to develop a bench of candidates and spend scarce political capital and state capacity on it's top priorities seems absolutely insane. All we got was infinity immigrants, trans kids and censorship. Oh, and lots and lots of graft for a DNC patronage network. I can only possibly model these as top priorities for people that are stupid, evil, or both. They don't even attempt to explain a through line from open borders, trans kids and censorship to living wages and health care for their base.
Say what you want about Trump, he can at least tell a story about how deportations will lower crime and cost of living, how tariffs with improve wages, how DOGE will lower your taxes. I get that people will claim those are all lies and there is no causation between one or the other, but the case is at least made by Trump about what he's going to do, and how it's going to improve people's lives. And then he actually is seen to be doing the things he said he was going to do. If everything goes to shit and none of it works... well... at least he was honest about what he was going to do.
All I see in the DNC is weird ideological crusades, corruption, and zero sum power jockeying.
I think SSCReader explained this pretty well. Basically, if all you see besides corruption and zero sum power jockeying - which are about as universal to humanity as death and taxes by my lights - are weird ideological crusades, well, there's a good reason for that. It was way back in 2014 that I noticed that SocJus was clearly a religion that was intrinsically faith-based, and I'm quite sure I was nowhere near the first to notice that. The past 10 years has only made me more sure of this, and it has also convinced me that there's some veracity to the theory that the typical human mind has a god-shaped hole in it that necessarily gets filled by something.
More options
Context Copy link
That's the error in your model. If you think supporting trans kids is good, or open borders is good then whether it costs money or makes money is not the relevant distinction if you are not a consequentialist.
Consider the evangelical wing of the Republican party, they were still pushing for further abortion restrictions even though much of the polling was showing that was a position that might cost votes. Why? Because they really truly believe that it is wrong, and they should not compromise on that even if it means losing. They are not utilitarian. But they did not hold enough power within the party to force that decision and so Trump backed off it somewhat. Pragmatism won there. De-emphasize and move away from policies that are unpopular.
Supporting kids who want to transition will not help the economy or help people with healthcare in general, in fact it will probably cost money that could be used in other healthcare. But if you think those kids need that help badly ,then you should do it (from this point of view to be clear!) even if it costs votes and/or money.
They are NOT being pragmatic, so if you try to judge them by that measure their choices will look crazy.
"Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, ‘No, you move.'”"
In other words currently the ideologues hold sway within the DNC. Usually in a political party you'll have wings that are more pragmatic and vice versa and the power will move between them. Often a defeat will cause a realignment. Like New Labour moving towards the center in order to get away from all the "Winter of Discontent" strikes in the past which doomed them electorally against Thatcher. Pragmatically (or cynically!) abandoning some core Labour principles in order to become more electable. But those wings don't go away (see the resurgence under Corbyn for example).
It's too soon to know whether this loss will allow a more pragmatic core of the DNC to maneuver into power. A lot will depend on who the next flagbearer (Newsome?, AOC?, Someone new?) is going to be, and what direction they decide to go. Right now things are still shaking out, but within the next 6-10 months we'll have a better idea. I think there is some early evidence it might, as the more extreme left is already complaining about Democrats not fighting back enough, and that the handover of power was straightforward and peaceful. That indicates that the adults at the table have some understanding that Trumps popularity is based upon actual positional support at least privately.
To be clear I think that political parties need to be pragmatic, a lot of my job back in the day was to advise them on what areas should be de-emphasized because public support was low, and I think that the Democratic Party is going to struggle once again in 2028 unless they are able to shed some of the more ideological components (though if the economy tanks that will still be the biggest factor).
The problem of course is it is often your most committed ideologues which are willing to volunteer significant amounts of time and effort to your cause. Keeping them on side while transitioning (hah!) to a more pragmatic approach can be tricky.
Except the essentially-pragmatic wing of the democrats was in power recently- that's what Biden was, that's what the black political machine is, that's what the gerontocrats mostly are. They still do the stupid woke unpopular stuff. The gerontocrats vote for trans kids. Biden was big into woke.
Remember who looks to be in charge does not mean they are.
Consider that David Cameron agreed to a referendum on Brexit he did not want because of the internal politics of his party. He was reliant on the euro-sceptic wing and so was forced into calling for a referendum he explicitly campaigned against. He was in power, but he wasn't THE power. He was constrained in his actions by having to satisfy ideological power blocs within his party. He was pragmatic but he needed the ideologues. So he compromised his principles for power.
Further to that Biden won in 2020, you only have to dial your pragmatism up when you fail to win. Otherwise you can satisfy your ideologues and STILL get power. Biden is an experienced politician whose positions shifted overtime. Which ones are his real principles and which he was just wearing because his party politics wanted them, is very difficult to tell.
Thats why it is often losses or long periods in the cold that cause these realignments. Its easy to "be" an ideologue when you're winning. It's what you do when you're losing which shows whether you are an ideologue or are willing to sacrifice principles for power.
This is probably incorrect - at the time Cameron agreed to the referendum there weren't enough Brexit-supporting Tory MPs to force the issue, and the grassroots have very little ability to change the direction of the Conservative Party other than by selecting the candidate for an open seat. The conventional wisdom in UK politics is that Cameron promised the referendum to stop the Conservatives leaching votes to UKIP and losing seats to Labour as a result. If so it didn't work (UKIP did well in the 2015 general election) and wasn't needed (UKIP's performance didn't cost the Conservatives many seats - in fact they won a surprise majority). Dominic Cummings claims that this was obvious if you actually spoke to UKIP-curious voters and that promising the referendum was an unforced error.
Remember when Cameron promised the referendum in 2013 he was in charge with a coalition. That gave groups an out-sized power. There absolutely were enough in the euro-sceptic camp to cause him problems with votes because he didn't even have a majority on his own. The conventional wisdom as shown below was primarily because of the euro-sceptics with SOME others because they feared UKIP would cost them seats. But the biggest concern was the euro-sceptic bloc. Without them he probably could have wrangled the rest, because it was the euro-sceptic wing which was feeding the fears of the others. Cameron did not want a referendum. He did so because of the pressure he was under driven primarily by the euro-sceptic power bloc which was able to muster first 60, then 80 MPs to defy the government in votes, then over a hundred demanding a referendum. He only had 306 MPs at this time so over 100 is definitely enough to force any issue. As they did when they rebelled and sided with Labour.
"For Clegg, the reason Cameron moved to a referendum commitment was to manage his divided party.19 Echoing Harold Wilson’s 1975 European Community plebiscite, rather than a conversion to the merits of direct democracy, Cameron needed a mechanism to control an issue that was destabilising his party.20 As early as October 2011 Cameron had ‘faced 22 rebellions on Europe, involving 60 Tory backbenchers’.21 However, the pressure ratcheted upwards later in October when 81 Conservative MPs voted for a referendum in defiance of a three line whip. Both Cameron and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, spoke forcefully against the motion in the House of Commons yet could not prevent a larger rebellion than anything seen during the Maastricht legislation in 1992.22 Political pressure from Conservative MPs continued to grow. In June 2012 John Barron MP collected over 100 signatures from Conservative colleagues asking Cameron to commit to a referendum after the 2015 general election.23 The PM publicly rejected this from Brussels which angered his critics and eroded his ‘authority over the party’.24 Pressure rose further in October 2012 when Conservative rebels united with Labour to defeat Cameron in Parliament over EU budget contributions."
"Cameron chose to commit to a vote, not because the country’s population was clamouring for one but because a significant minority of his own MPs, many of them frustrated by the constraints of coalition, were demanding that he do so – some because they feared that UKIP would cost them their seat (or the seats of too many of their colleagues) at the next election, some because they wanted out of the European Union and were more than happy to leverage that fear to their advantage."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Biden won thanks to the basically-pragmatic black wing of the party rigging the vote-counting in a handful of major cities. He was beholden to pragmatic types who didn't want to be a trans-issues party and are often mildly uncomfortable with LGB, nevermind T. He got along badly with the idealogues and was closer to the gerontocrats than to the progressives.
The progressive idealogues still got everything they wanted- despite Biden assembling an extremely moderate political staff which was frustrated with the progressives.
Setting aside I think you're just wrong about the vote rigging, and that the black voting bloc has its own ideological things it wanted from Democrats, that make it willing to put up with some LGBT stuff, thats just reinforcing my point, the ideologues in the DNC were the ones pulling the strings, they had good control over congressional Democrats, doesn't matter how many moderate officials you appoint. Doesn't matter if the President is a pragmatist who just wants power, as long as he has it theres no point in going to war with the ideologues on his own side.
Sure trans kids, sure DEI and affirmative action even if unpopular. Sure flipping your own views from a few years ago upside down, Why would they care? The pragmatist just wants to win. If he can win without having to dial down his own side, so much the better, its political capital he doesn't need to spend.
Just to say, a black pastor telling his church 'y'all going to vote for the champion of African American values (who is Mr. Goodwhiteguy) tommorow' and 90% of them dutifully doing so may not seem like vote rigging (and is not) but it absolutely does stink. Black machine politics is dirty as it gets and the only reason it doesn't get more attention is because it's embarassing to the liberal press, who would rather glaze them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well the Brexit referendum actually winning was a pretty unlikely outcome at the time Cameron approved it, so it seemed like a rather small bone to throw to the base.
Indeed, but it was still a bone he had to throw. He isn't in power without that bone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It can be argued that a lot of these things actually suit the class interests of the symbolic capitalist class.
Immigration, for example, is defended by the business elite on economic grounds. These people are not overly rich but they often work to manage these corporations and are not directly threatened by Uber drivers and can in fact make use of them to benefit from services that are far cheaper than they would be in a tighter labour market.
Censorship isn't even hard. It's a demand that power be taken from unaccountable social media billionaires (or just the general public) and placed in the hands of another group of allied bureaucrats in an organization filled with people they went to school with. Journalists and other groups demand outsized respect in the name of the special role they play in a democracy: informing people and, now, fighting "hate".
It's a noble lie. But a noble lie with some value.
This doesn't mean that they're actually purely pragmatic. In a more responsive system they would have tossed the worst excesses like trans nonsense overboard. But a religion acts on the elites who coopt it just as the elites act on it. The Saudis lived under some constraints too.
Well all ideologies do, not just religions, but regardless of that in politics you will inevitably have a mix of true believers, slightly less true believers all the way down to people who don't believe at all and are just in it for advantage. And you will also have a mix of exactly what ideology or what part of the ideology they believe or value most. So it's certainly more complicated than just pragmatists vs ideologues, I agree. You'll also have your alliance of groups (Evangelicals, business neo-liberals etc.) who also have their own internal balance of pragmatists vs ideologues.
You will have people who do not in fact care about the ideology whatsoever, but are in it for the power. They will push the most pragmatic approach (do whatever we can to win) and will be in tension with the truest believers (maintain our principles at all costs), and they will have varying webs of people who are on the scale at different levels and in different parts of the coalition to convince. That's why pivots are generally not immediate until an internal tipping point is reached.
In my direct experience at a national level most politicians are closer to the pragmatist end and will pretty happily jettison any principle they can get away with for power. It interests me that the Democrats may have accrued more true believers (or at the least truer believers) as it stands, because I think that generally makes it harder to win.
Until just recently there was no need for this kind of hard discussion between pragmatists and true believers because both were winning. It didn’t really start to conflict in a big way until after the October 7 attack. Even during the first Trump administration the strategies to resist it were still more or less in sync.
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
Probably not coincidence that both are also substantially weaker than their part ones.
It is understandably shocking to sexists and racists that one cannot, in fact, make successful media based solely on those hatreds.
Most sexists/racists have seen [classical] liberal media built on spewing hate at them and be overwhelmingly popular, and they think they can do the same thing by spewing hate back at the liberals. (Progressives have a larger blind spot here because some of them think they really are liberals- they're not, they just borrow the name.)
The problem is that the reason liberal media works and progressive media doesn't is that the hatred isn't made core to the experience. Contrast Alien (or to a point, Terminator), where it isn't played or intended as subversive to have a woman in those roles, to Ghostbusters 3 or Star Wars 7-9, where it is.
It would be just as unsatisfying if it were a man in those roles- so the only reason to cast a woman in those roles, and people watching pick this up pretty quickly- is to rely on the hatred (a subset of subversiveness) to carry it.
I've made this point before for "child vs. adult media", but most of the same points apply. If you have a strong skeleton with your views painted onto it- and liberal views have an advantage because having liberal views tends to make it easier to build a strong skeleton- you'll succeed; but if you start with the views you'll generally fail unless your views are actually correct. And in the progressive case, they're not.
Compare Far Cry 5 (that understood how to do a conservative-coded villain group correctly) with Far Cry 6 (that took "conservative coded = bad" for granted)- in both cases, you're attacking a conservative-coded group, but 5 is "defend the innocents directly from insanity" where 6 is "abstract Cuba revolution cosplay, also wheelchair dog, the meme ending is the most engaging way to play the game (rather than in 4 and 5 where it's merely the most realistic option)".
I have been meaning to make a post about this on the Friday Fun Thread for a while, but I will just make it here. I don’t think Far Cry 5 meant to make a commentary about America or American politics, I think that was something it accidentally stumbled into by virtue of releasing around the time Trump started to become a controversial figure. Video games have long development cycles of around three to five years.
I think Far Cry 5 was about Syria and ISIS, and attempting to put the conflict in terms and visuals Americans can understand. It’s about a radical group with a bespoke, radical eschatological interpretation of an already existing religion that seizes an area by force and tries to impose that vision.
There are a lot of parallels between Eden’s Gate and the events of Far Cry 5 that parallel ISIS and Syria. Notice:
-Eden’s Gate’s black flag with white lettering, like the ISIS battle flag
-The white Toyota technicals they both use as their primary combat vehicle
-The bizarre inhuman torture and execution methods that seem weirdly sadistic and lurid for a group claiming to be faith based
-The mandatory politically correct disclaimer by the developers that this group does not represent the religion as a whole: the multiple scenes where the Catholic priest is obviously disgusted by Eden’s Gate, and the scene where the cult members literally knock a Bible out of his hands and force him to hold the cult leader’s manifesto instead. Odd for a game made by liberals that is supposed to be dunking on conservative Christians but perfect sense for a game that is supposed to an allegory for ISIS and it’s questionable relation with mainline Islam.
-The government’s complete lack of interest in dealing with the cult despite its violent insurgent behavior, with government intervention limited to a few special forces troops dropped in by helicopter and one CIA agent to assist. The lack of ATF involvement or the national guard showing up in force makes no sense for a game that’s supposed to be set in America but it makes perfect sense as a commentary about Western governments initially giving very little help in fighting ISIS. The CIA officer even specifically says the American government isn’t interested in helping much because it’s too busy with domestic political squabbles like verifying the authenticity of Trump’s alleged pee tape.
-The uniforms and Soviet era weaponry of the friendly militia that helps you fight the cult look strikingly like the Kurdish paramilitary units that were holding back ISIS in Northern Syria. The fact that there even is a “friendly paramilitary militia” that’s unambiguously played as good guys would seem extremely odd for a liberal critique of rural America.
-SPOILERS: The fact that this cult in the middle of some Montana county is somehow (at least metaphorically) destabilizing world geopolitics to the point of a potential world ending nuclear war.
You’re right though, Far Cry 6 is just politically and narrative schizophrenic garbage.
I disagree on the fundamental argument. Progressives/The Left have been making comparisons of the Right to Al'qaeda and ISIS for years, well before Farcry 5 came out.
So when you see comparisons between 'Right-wing Militia' as presented in Farcry 5 and Syria and ISIS, it's not because they're trying to create a parody/satire contextualized for Americans to follow, it's because they honestly think anything affiliated the American Right-wing is like Syria and ISIS.
More options
Context Copy link
I was honestly extremely impressed by how accurately they managed to get some of the Christian iconography; some of it wouldn't look out of place at a standard church (how the church looks at the start of the game, the "Wanted: Sinner" posters, which I've Mandela Effected myself into remembering outside of the game, and then there's the "say yes" arcwords).
Interestingly that's not the impression I got from that, but it had
liberalcross-aisle appeal; sure, "haha the Christians are evil" is a Progressive staple, but physically protecting people from heresy checks a few Traditionalist boxes (also, you fight a literal war on drugs and shoot tweakers).Far Cry 6 would have been drastically improved if you played the entire game as Giancarlo Despacito's kid (who was the most underutilized character in the story even considering how little screentime and interaction you got with Dictator Pollos Hermanos). At least the game is mostly mechanically fine and it looks nice, but the Borderlandsization of New Dawn that carries forward into 6 is not a good direction for the game to take.
For that matter, I'm actually kind of surprised about New Dawn's plot, considering the villains were very literally woke caricatures (and their backstory is what progressives tell themselves). I'm still annoyed you can't just shoot them right at the start of the game though.
Also, I'm tired of the Dora the Explorer shit in every fucking game. They even managed to put it into Cyberpunk 2077, though at least you can kill everyone who speaks like that.
I don't play RPGs much anymore, do explain?
This is the "use one non-English word (generally Spanish) in every sentence even though it doesn't make sense, nobody talks like this organically" thing.
It's not possible to un-notice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That’s another thing that makes me think it’s about radical Islam. Trafficking narcotics for funds and using them to hype up soldiers before an attack are something that the Taliban and other groups have been accused of doing.
The Taliban's US-backed opponents were also accused of drug trafficking, rather more credibly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s interesting, this is similar to my impression of the 2024 film Civil War. A lot of ink was spilled speculating about the degree to which it was an anti-Trump or anti-right-wing film, and criticizing the implausibility of the different coalitions in the civil war. (“Why are Texas and California allied? Don’t these dummies know that California and Texas are politically opposed to each other?”) When to me the film clearly seemed to want to capture the sense of fish-out-of-water befuddlement that journalists experience covering foreign war zones.
Some American journalist covering a civil war in some random African country is sure to have the same sense of “What the fuck is even happening here? Why is the Kibunda tribe allied with the Yojinga tribe, when all my research says these two groups have longstanding enmity toward each other? Why do any of these groups care about these obscure disputes, and why are they willing to kill each other (and innocents) and wreck their countries over something that, to an outsider, seems petty and incomprehensible?” I think the screenwriter wanted to get Americans to consider that their own country’s internal politics aren’t immune to being seen in this same way. To put it in terms Americans can relate to. Just like with that movie though, it sounds like Far Cry 5 hit a little too close to home and people weren’t able to view if with any sort of distance or detachment from current hot-button issues.
My impression on Civil War was that the director understood, quite wisely, that most people wanted a movie that flattered their partisan identity, where what he wanted to show was what an actual civil war would mean for America on a concrete, day-to-day level. He makes the factions a nonsense hodgepodge because he doesn't want people to frame every single thing he depicts as "their wretched villainy/our righteous triumph." By invalidating everything we know or suspect about America's actual geographical fault-lines, he throws people into a limbo where, while groping around for some sense of what's going on, they might actually view the events he depicts with something approaching objectivity.
If that was the plan, though, it didn't seem to work for most people I've seem commentating, who were mostly upset that they didn't get the partisan propaganda they were looking for.
Also, the conventional wisdom about American geographic fault lines is wrong- ideological conflict would be a window dressing for realpolitik interests in an actual federal state failure condition. There’s some baked i with the inter mountain west getting oppressed by the coast, but no inherent reason that the heartland would side with one or the other.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I can sort of understand doing that in politics. The current crop of Democrats may be doing it badly, but morally browbeating people into supporting you has been an element of politics forever. But it absolutely boggles my mind that they are trying to do that for consumer products and media. Imagine if the Cocoa Cola company had responded to the New Coke debacle with a bunch of attack ads implying their customers were just idiots with bad taste. Or if Johnson & Johnson had responded to the Chicago Tylenol killings with a series of bus ads that read “Tylenol: It’s perfectly safe, you’re just a fucking pussy”
Imagine if you grew up all your life surrounded by people who browbeat each other into certain political/ideological positions through calling them bigoted. Imagine if your entire political/ideological ecosystem of figuring out truth and values is structured around this sort of behavior. Imagine if your entire social media ecosystem is structured around shutting up people that you dislike, while creating just the right amount of space for disagreement to convince you that you're seeing arguments that challenge your beliefs and values without actually challenging your beliefs and values, and you see the people who control the social media companies reinforcing and strengthening this sandbox more and more.
You just might start thinking that this strategy would work when selling products to a mainstream audience. In fact, you might think that you'd be utterly foolish not to use this strategy.
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t see thins as a great political strategy. Yes, you do need to fall in behind a coalition. But paying more attention, this is no way to get people to actually do that. There are no agendas on offer. They aren’t even play acting like they have a serious agenda. The6 certainly don’t have a candidate of note. What they have is what failed them before— orange man bad. They’ve added Musk on the top, but it’s still “vote for us, we aren’t those people.”
The problem is that Trump isn’t bad enough for this to work. Whether you agree or not, the worst things you can say about him are things that are positive. He’s doing exactly what he said he would do, and he’s taking a sledgehammer to the federal government and cleaning up redundant positions. It just doesn’t work to make an entire political party be the anti-Trump when you can’t actually make a case that he’s doing something wrong.
Perhaps you can say that many of the "bad" qualities of Trump are actually considered good-to-neutral by many of the group of people who aren't rabidly anti-Trump. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the eating hasn't taken place in his second term yet. We'll see how the various issues play out, but I'm personally pessimistic about the economy, and that is likely to be a major factor in swinging voters if he makes things worse like many economists are predicting or even if he doesn't make things better by enough.
In terms of the strategy in 2024 and leading up to it, I'd mostly agree. Even before the election, the electorate's dissatisfaction with the status quo was a major talking point (though I'm not sure that that many people saw it as the major factor), and so without a clear vision for how the current sitting Vice President would change things other than just being the First Black Woman POTUS and Not Being Trump, complaining about how extreme Trump was not a good move. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, though, and I won't claim that it was obviously a losing move, at least not to me.
More options
Context Copy link
How does the calculus change in your opinion if he does actually doof everything up by 2028?
I mean it’s possible he does. On the other hand, for the left, I don’t see them putting anything new forward. They don’t have anything to put up against him. The best offer they have is “do you hate Trump? How would you like to go back to the good old days of … Joe Biden?” I think you’d have to break quite a lot of things for Joe Biden to look good by comparison.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The point is not to change your mind. It's to draw in the sort of audience who moralizes their consumption in the way they want, that wants to "own the chuds". They want the fans that'll go stream Taylor Swift's re-recorded music ad nauseum because it's a blow against Scooter Braun and misogyny
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link