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 -
An attempt at synthesis of your point and FC's (plus some others, like Zvi's notion of the Incorrect Anti-Narrative Contrarian Cluster): Governments in the 90s (or whenever) were Right. SJ governments were Wrong. Trump and Musk seem to be Not Even Wrong.
At greater length: there used to be coherence-producing mechanisms in society that kept everybody on the same page and kept policy making sense. Then when SJ nucleated, it hijacked nearly all those mechanisms and put false stuff into them, leading to obvious falsehoods being promulgated (and multiplying due to the principle of explosion) and policies that didn't work. The Trumpian reaction to SJ realised that it could not restore neutrality in those mechanisms (because SJ did too good a job of installing political commissariats in them) and it was excluded from the Overton Window those mechanisms had produced, so it took a sledgehammer to their credibility and turned much of the right-wing against them. However, it failed to build new coherence-producing mechanisms to replace them*, leaving much of its base and apparently also Trump/Musk without any way of identifying and co-ordinating on truth and on rational planning; they're just saying things. And, well, a government that's working with no map at all is going to do worse at a large number of things than one with a map that loosely resembles but does not match the territory.
Of course, a little buffoonery until Trumpism can sort itself out wouldn't be the end of the world... except that we have a certain drooling dragon at the door watching our every move, which means it might actually be the end of the world as we know it. Oh, well, I live in Bendigo and have most of my prep done**; "I'm clear. Are you?"
@FCfromSSC, thoughts?
*There are rightist intellectuals capable of identifying truth, and there now is an alt-media apparatus capable of dispensing it. The problem is that one isn't plugged into the other - not in the USA, at least, although we seem to be doing a lot better in Oz (the UAP is showing some signs of Trumpian brain rot, but it's not even our biggest alt-right party, so I'm not very worried). A lot of us were counting on Musk and Vance to be lynchpins, but Musk appears to have gone nuts and I haven't heard much about Vance in all this.
**There's a reasonable amount that's best left to "when the war starts" because it's got downsides and/or a use-by date plus isn't panic-buying bait.
Good post, my only concern is that it goes too far in an attempt to make order out of chaos. Trump isn't flying blind because the sensemaking institutions he inherited are so corrupted as to be worthless. He is flying blind because he is an unrigorous vibes-based thinker. I too hoped that Elon would form some sort of intellectual foundation for this administration, but as you note, he has gone off the deep end. Vance is a clever guy, but he is also a suckup. I don't think he has it in him to actually stand up to Trump, and I think he knows that even if he does Trump will just burn him.
Scott, "Planet-Sized Nutshell":
In a sense it's both. The reason Trump is that way is because he's Trump. Why is Trump POTUS, though, rather than losing the Republican nomination back in 2016? Well, because all the sensemaking institutions said "Don't nominate Trump" and the Republican base treated that as an endorsement. "Be a huckster" was no longer a losing strategy to get the Republican nomination, because the Republican base no longer trusted the institutions that normally filtered out hucksters, because those institutions by then also filtered out anyone loyal to the Red Tribe; indeed, the base went so far as to anti-trust the institutions and deliberately do the opposite of what they said.
Well, as they say, reversed stupidity isn't intelligence.
It's just, it's probably not going to be stupid in the exact same way as the existing stupidity that it's trying to reverse. And a plurality of voters might see that as a good enough option to try out compared to the existing stupidity. This is roughly how I perceive most Trump supporters, especially the subgroup that was behind the shift of, I think, literally every single one of the 50 states shifting towards Trump in the 2024 election compared to the 2020 one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link