site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Come on man, you can't even get the average conservative normie boomer to be upset about his own son being murdered. When we stop hearing "I wish that my son was killed by a 60-year-old white man (instead of a black illegal)", I'll agree that the right has decided to stop crippling itself with one-sided social norms. Until then they're just punching bags for the left to torture for fun and profit.

I can't speak to the boomers in your family, all the boomers in my family have passed.

Boomers as a population will only continue to decline.

Graph made by Claude it's likely directionally correct if not accurate.

/images/1745594968248754.webp

You're the one claiming elsewhere in this thread that there's a literal government agency that exists to threaten people in this situation into making these sorts of statements. I'm inclined to believe it! I'm certainly confident that the victim's family is under tremendous social and likely legal pressure to toe the line.

That wasn't enough to get Rittenhouse convicted. It wasn't enough to prevent the J6 pardons, or to cause those pardons to have significant costs. It seems to me that neither of those outcomes were predicted by you or others arguing the "Red Tribe is powerless" thesis.