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 trace is concerned about cultural institutions maybe he should have some words with blues using them as cover to shovel propaganda. He knows reds don't have the temperament or interest to "show up" for museums or libraries and begs them not to nuke from orbit leaving no option but to impotently shake their fist at enemy indoctrination operations that overwhelmingly target children.
No thanks. If trace cares about these institutions maybe he should be imploring them to police themselves.
I really don't think it's a "showing up" issue. Federal vaccine mandates during covid caused a lot of institutions to shift from purple or light blue to turbo monoculture extreme left. Turns out when you find a wedge issue to forcefully terminate red tribers over, a lot of public institutions are suddenly extremely blue.
Do you have a citation for this? Asking because it makes sense to me and I'd like to be able to use this while arguing lol.
More options
Context Copy link
I think you're right and a better way of phrasing would have been that if 30% of paleontology enthusiasts are red and 70% are blue then it becomes a matter of time until social selection pressures ensure that nearly all (or all in the case of NPR's editorial board) end up blue.
You can find red paleontology enthusiasts they’re called creation scientists. You can disagree with them but basically all high-human-capital red tribers are practicing Christians(as elsewhere, secularization is a bottom up thing) and the pressure for talented individuals with nothing else to do(and I suspect the job market for grad degrees in paleontology is not good) to work in YEC apologism or research is high.
That parses a bit like "you can find spiritual astronomy enthusiasts, they are called astrologers".
YEC goes with paleontology about as well as geocentrism goes with astronomy. I mean sure, there are likely people with a mainstream degree in paleontology who found work giving YEC's a veneer of respectability, but I am doubtful if in their heart of hearts, they actually believe in YEC. It would be like someone studying electrical engineering and then denying that electrical currents exist -- sure it might happen, but I would call that person either deceitful or insane.
Did you think coming up with epicycles was easy work? The actual job of a creation scientist is to introduce epicycles so that otherwise educated and scientifically literate people can believe it with less dissonance. This is necessarily a job for a knowledgeable and intelligent true believer.
Ken Ham's audience has a negligible chance of listening to Dawkins instead. Apologetics doesn't exist to argue against evolution. It exists to make creationism give equivalent results. This requires a dedicated person who understands both theories very well, and who has the theory of mind to explain things in a YEC-friendly way.
More options
Context Copy link
IIRC there was a funny thing where YEC paleontologists/geologists were presenting posters and research with timescales measured in mya despite the universe, like, not existing at the time (according to them).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is your belief that a certain zealotry is necessary to motivate achievement?
I believe that functioning people generally like belonging to institutions, even small ones, and churches fit the bill for the red tribe. I also believe that practicing Christianity makes people better, practicing Christians are generally a good influence on each other and this attracts human capital.
The equivalent might be something like 'nearly all high-functioning blue tribers obtain a college degree'.
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
No, part of having a culture is to fund it. You can in fact FORCE the people who do show up, to be much less liberal in how they act in institutions. Look at the effort the Trump admin is doing to try to force college people to be more pro Jewish. You could exert pressure in a pro conservative direction in all sorts of ways. Not just by directly funding, but obviously defunding woke ideology.
I do admit that culture funding shouldn't be unlimited and defunding things that are a waste of time is good idea, but there should be some culture related activities funded.
In regards to what Trace is after, he is pretty anti right wing and he isn't going to be for that.
Do I object to defunding left wing patronage networks? Nope. But a culture needs museums. It doesn't need the holocaust and slavery museums though or for the Smithsonean to have an exhibition for white supremacy.
Rather than general anti spending on culture, be more for directing the spending for culture. This is different than what Tracing claims, since I don't think that he and likeminded anti right wing leftists should be allowed to do as they want and run such institutions based n their ideology. It is about dictating culture and taking it away from people like Trace. The purpose should be for the culture and arts to achieve positive goals which includes many areas that goes against the agendas of mainstream liberalism.
Part of this does include defunding the various slavery museums, simply because the issue is framed and presented and overpromoted by them, in a manner that is for a negative goal of grievance and the agenda it serves is blacks as a superior caste and whites as permanent oppressors. History is also presented in a distorted very one sided manner in line of such oppression narratives. I think (at least most) Holocaust museums should also be defunded and private donors should NOT be allowed to fund them as well.
It is completely feasible through policy to successfully dictate that this kind of manipulative guilt culture under antiracist pretension would not exist anymore, by also removing from positions of influence and punishing those who engage in it. It is possible for these kind of grievance movements to come to an end.
Maybe a type of museum that covers subject matter of attrocities can exist if it is in a limited manner, and not used in such propaganda and also focuses more of the suffering of the respective people that is situated at. Or even with minorities if it isn't abused in the manner I have been criticizing and there exists elsewhere sufficiently funded perspectives that aren't narcissistically obsessing with only that group's interests. What is absurd is to allow enormous amount of propaganda including with museums about the grievances of foreign, or minority groups.
To be fair here, the national Holocaust museum in DC is one of the most powerful and memorable experiences I've ever had in my entire life. That museum is great, or at least it was 23 years ago when I went. Maybe it has gone down the drain since then, but I would be in favor of keeping it assuming it's still the same quality. We don't need more than one, though.
While numbers of museum are important, if too many people visit the one holocaust museum and is made a ritual that would still be a problem. That and how such museums present history also matters.
The issue is that indeed people do experience religious like powerful and memorable feelings in the summer of floyd, in regards to both visiting museums, but also tv shows, lessons, about slavery and holocaust, in a manner that leads to a grievance culture and in treating groups like Jews and Blacks as utility monsters. It leads to preferential treatment but it also leads to identifying groups like Europeans as permanent oppressors.
Both the way such issues are presented and their central importance is a problem. It would be better for Americans to have museums of history that desacrilize the holocaust and treats Jewish suffering in WW2 as one suffering among others and puts greater importance to American history. Maybe with a slight mention of them being targeted more by the nazis. If that is the central way it is presented, and in rare cases it is focused more, but still contextualized in a manner different that it tends to be presented now, then that would be fine.
Even from a universalist perspective too much has been made of holocaust, colonialism, slavery, in a manner that is used both by ethnic chauvinists who have grievances but also by general far left activists who support any of these specific movements. And also their right wing equivalent that compromise with this.
Also, it would even be better if blacks and Jews had less powerful experience in relation to slavery and holocaust, for the aforementioned reasons. Same applies of course to people who don't belong such groups who share such experiences.
Not saying we should go to the opposite extreme of say censoring anyone who ever mentioning it, but I do think it would be good if people who use them to justify "You don't get to have a nation anymore because holocaust, slavery, colonialism" were to be treated as extremists to be suppressed, instead of treating the whole movement as something sacred. In fact, such movements are not sacred but damaging. And of course there is also the issue of the amount of money taken by the goverment to fund activist groups including Jewish activist groups, holocaust centers, and so on. But certainly, there is some room for groups, even minority groups to care about their particular suffering, but that room must be limited and not limitless, and can't be an imposed dominant culture. Even for such groups, it can lead to too much disregard of the interests of other groups and in a different country part of the social contract ought to be not to prioritize such things too much. So it matters how such things are presented by museums, where there must an actual effort to not only stop the way such narratives are presented, but also to make such sensitivity part of the message.
I.E. Don't present history as a narrative of oppressed Jews and Blacks who never didn't do nothing wrong taking revenge on oppressors but a) talk about how such framing has been common and a genuine a problem, and mention things like opposition to european self preservation as an example of extremism and even make analogy to how nazi disregard of other ethnic groups preserving themselves was bad, and this agenda is also bad b) present sufficient elements or at least a taste of history to counter this that does enter into territory of such groups wronging others. For example the truth of black American violence and the history of discrimination in the postcivil rights USA would be a narrative that ironically provides more balance and counters the actual racist narrative that is dominant today.
Jews could be told that polls that shows that 70% something American Jews oppose European self preservation, more than even American blacks, with Hispancis even supporting it, illustrates an anti european racist attitude that Jews should not have. That some of the hostility towards Jews has been due to Jewish disrespect of other ethnic groups rights which at times Jews pursued through the means of left wing activism (including making right wing movements adopt such left wing agendas), and they have a duty to avoid engaging in that and to respect them. There is plenty in Jewish history in modernity to influence people to not have a perspective of Jews as just an innocent oppressed group that must be privileged and must take revenge. Even more so when it comes to holocaust jewish lobbies since the bad behavior of ADL is undeniable and includes even less well known facets like engaging in Armenian genocide denial.
Also there has been a general movement of maximalist suffering that includes the idea of black american slavery as worse suffering ever, Jewish suffering in holocaust as unique ans worst suffering ever, and this movement has fueled various copies such as the one about Indian graves in Canada. Such approach to history of sacred narratives of maximal suffering even if one were to hypothetically grant that in some cases might not necessarily be promoting falsehoods always, gives licenses for groups to take it further and further.
So knowledge of past atrocities should be used to oppose being screwed over in line with a healthy range of ethnocentrism, and a moral understanding of the universal fate of different ethnic groups, but not to allow particular groups and their champions to create utility monsters.This has happened in this case and needs to be countered.. This is in general, but even more so in particular nations, the grievance perspectives towards the historical majority should be more limited. I think slavery of blacks in the USA makes sense to have some greater presence than the genocide of the Jews in the 1940s, but even that should not be that much present, and framed quite differently as I described.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well... isn't that just a skill issue then?
Regardless of the institutional form it takes, there will always be culture of some kind, and it will indeed belong to those who show up. A purely destructive strategy with no positive program for cultural production of your own is not viable in the long term.
You can argue that. But it seems that the obvious counter argument is that these institutions positioning themselves so badly that they lose their funding is a skill issue as well, no?
That is to say, the argument that "if you lose something, it's a skill issue" has the current outcome as a perfectly acceptable option. Given that the original post is arguing for the continued funding, it can't just boil down to that.
More options
Context Copy link
Kind of hard to organically developed conservatives into institutions when they face overwhelming hostility to their presence there. The lack of conservatives isn’t just some organic thing - it was explicitly designed that way
More options
Context Copy link
Knocking down the old, controlled-by-the-enemy, institutions can be a precondition to having production of your own. Note that they have been pushing out conservative culture for a very long time. In the Floyd push ABC canceled their top-rated show because the actress offended their sensibilities, a popular Disney actress from their most popular show was fired for similar reasons, and other popular conservative shows (like "Cops" and its imitators) were also canceled.
Which show was this?
Roseanne
That happened before the Floydenning, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Some three or four years prior to that they also cancelled Last Man Standing when it was the second highest show on their network for reasons that definitely had nothing to do with Allen's politics, they just didn't want to do comedy any more. It ended up moving to Fox due to public support.
Your point would be better taken if they didn't continue to make the show (Roseanne) except under a different name (The Conners) and just say that her character died.
For the most part ratings don't matter anymore because they're all too low. And anything that just says "ratings" is likely bullshit because the amount of people that watch it also doesn't matter or hasn't in the past, it was all the demo, 18-34 year olds who watched. Years before what your talking about Harry's Law was I think also the second highest rated show on NBC but it got abysmal demo ratings so they cancelled it despite it being owned by the network.
Last Man Standing was not owned by ABC it just happened to air there and at that point they're only making money on commercials so while ratings might matter there, the fact that FOX actually owned the show makes more sense why they'd pick it up if it was cancelled elsewhere.
More and more shows have very little value if they're not owned or anomalistically high in ratings (speaking for terrestrial television). Funnily enough, both of those things were true for ABC and the Roseanne revival. Though the Conners didn't drop much in the ratings so they probably saved an enormous amount of money, but it remains to be seen how much value they lost in the brand, because selling The Conners to a streamer probably loses you money if you instead had seven more seasons of Roseanne.
I'm pretty sure last man standing was developed at ABC and purchased by Fox after the cancellation. And while I am all for abandoning ratings, they are still the metric the industry uses to gauge success. Also I think Roseanne Barr getting ousted despite being a top earner is still a pretty solid point, although it wasn't mine.
I'm nearly certain it was 20th Century Fox but I can understand the confusion as by the time show actually ended 20th Century Fox didn't exist anymore and became 20th Century Television when Disney bought them which also happens to own ABC so really the show ended in the hands of ABC anyway in a roundabout way.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link