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 -
So although I agree with you that it would be more productive if we could write these compromises into law, I can also see the OP’s point here too. It feels like there is a never ending game of:
Where I think a lot of the frustration is coming from on the right is that these deals have been made, and made many times - and each time, the deal is expanded into merely the vanguard for the next stage of their subjugation. Gay marriage wasn’t a thing, then it was only nice respectable couples, then it became leather daddies walking their subs on a leash through downtown while you have to praise them at the threat of being kicked out of society. There was a deal to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants if the border rules were enforced - instead, over 5 million illegals were let into the United States under the Biden administration.
I think if you want to see this sort of thing simmer down, you’ll need to appease the red tribe - not just give them empty promises that’ll be rolled back the moment they aren’t watching, but actually give something up.
There's also a problem where even when these compromises are written into law, that doesn't hold them very long, sometimes even without a new law. The expansion of LawDog's cake metaphor to all of public policy is going to come at some pretty ugly costs, sooner or later.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree, but this sort of disingenuous behavior seems to me like another manifestation of the same lack of trust. It's game theory all the way down. You don't feel you can ask for what you really want up-front without triggering all-out war, so you go for salami tactics and artificially shifting the Overton window. There are other dynamics and incentives at play, like the unrealistic but alluring hope of total victory which means the respective sides pursue dangerous gambits which they dream might give them the edge once and for all, instead of working towards a stable compromise as the expected end-state.
Related still, but distinct, is the endless fool's-quest for the appearance of a total consensus. We as a nation and indeed as a civilization need to be more comfortable with overt compromise. We need politicians who openly say things like "I know 45% of you really want [A] and aren't going to budge. And personally I'm with you, but another 45% desperately want [B], and they aren't gonna change anytime soon, either. Here's what my administration and I are proposing to do to try and keep the peace", instead of pretending they've invented a magic solution that will make everybody happy except for a few meanies on the fringes. I truly think, to an unbiased observer, it would look nuts that so few political issues are phrased in those terms in speeches and think-pieces. Even when they don't actually believe in it, let alone advocate it, almost everyone writes as though the 170 million guys on the other side of the fence are just a temporary inconvenience who can be safely ignored, perhaps reeducated. And yet, this. Never. Works.
If it were easier for opposing sides to negotiate with all cards on the table, we could skip all that tedious, damaging business and skip to the begrudging compromise.
Oh, I agree with that, too. The dynamic I outlined was symmetrical for a reason. Alas, I'm not in charge of the Blue Tribe. FWIW, if I somehow was the Blue Tribe Czar, and had a Red counterpart at the negotiating table, there are a number of guarantees I would be prepared to give that differ from my ideal world-state (up to and including "it's the parent's choice whether their child gets to transition before their legal majority, and we will codify into federal law that refusing to aid transition will not, in and of itself, be considered parental abuse").
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is as soon as they violate the empty promise, they'll say "Well, we didn't make the promise with wording that absolutely forbids that" and/or "Well, the promise was with those other guys over there, not us, we're totally separate". And they can maintain this forever, and half of Red will believe them too.
This is what I was trying to express, but much more succinct; this is what red tribe has seen over and over and over, and many of them are coming to the realization that there are no ways to enforce that the blue tribe actually keep their promises.
To be clear, I do not want a war between red and blue; I want to be left alone, and to leave other people alone. Blue tribe at the moment appears to have adopted the mindset that there can be no 'agree to disagree', and that they must instead must threaten to destroy me unless I am constantly affirming their decisions, and they are willing to use the full force of the government to make me do so. (For what it's worth, I think this is one of the reasons that the blue tribe hates Trump so much - I think he's willing to use the full force of the government to enforce his desires, and there are a number of people who voted for him specifically to do that, and because they perceive his desires as overlapping with their own).
One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in my cold dead libertarian heart is that there can be no 'peacefully agree to not use power against one another.' Power will always go to those who want to seize it, while it exists. If you want a credible way to defuse the situation? Splinter the power that lets the sides enforce their will upon each other, so that no one can take it and use it on the other.
I'm certainly no libertarian, but isn't this the essence of libertarianism -- that power is so seductive and so oppressive that the only way to deal with its abuse is to limit it to just what's absolutely necessary, so there's less power to abuse? It seems to me like you're just growing in your convictions rather than having to learn a hard lesson.
I believe the libertarian solution to "people are abusing the power of the public library" is something like "abolish the public library." (This is also one of the reasons I think the American right and left are closer to each other in terms of general views on liberty than they think -- the right-wing solution to corrupt US government agencies is to abolish them, the left-wing solution to corrupt police departments is to
abolishdefund them.)(I may have misunderstood you, and you were saying that your "cold dead libertarian heart" became that way because of this lesson, rather than saying that it startled you and you had to figure out how to square it with your libertarianism. If so, disregard.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link