site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

To add to this: Mike Johnson claimed he had a meeting with Biden in which Biden denied recently signing an executive order to block natural gas exports. So Biden either signed it and forgot, or staffers signed it for him without his knowledge. Either an unelected cabal was the real president and/or his brain didn't work.

Or he lied. Don't dismiss the third way.

The natural gas "export ban" wasn't actually an export ban: it just gave a monopoly to the companies the US gov partnered with to build LNG terminal infrastructure. Very much a long term deep state project that started way back in the bush admin.
My suspicion is that someone made a few phone calls to the white house and got the order they wanted added to the auto pen queue. No need to bother Biden with the little details.

If the export ban wasn't actually an export ban, should we consider the possibility that this was a banal miscommunication between Johnson and Biden, not a clear-cut example of him having forgotten something important? You have to be senile enough to lose the ability to communicate normally, for senility to prevent banal miscommunication.

I don't think this was miscommunication. Mike Johnsons was referring to a recent executive order, Biden denied signing such an order. News articles phrase it correctly as a ban on new export permits. But there is no transcript of the actual conversion

We already know his brain didn’t work.