site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think there are still some issues with the administration for the state-level GOP. You can find their House GOP spokesman providing bizarre defenses back when Pena was 'merely' a nutty fifteen-time-felon:

“As someone who was raised in the South Valley, I am disappointed to see so-called civil rights activists attempt to use the example of this young Hispanic man, who turned his life around, for their political movida,” said Matt Garcia-Sierra, communications director for the House GOP leadership.

Many argue that one of the major weaknesses of the GOP as an organization is that it affords way too much control and autonomy to it's state and municipal level representatives. Of course just as many Republicans would argue that this is a feature not a bug, distributed authority and internal loci of control being core components of republicanism as a political theory.

The downside of course is situations like this.

deleted

In fairness, a big factor complicating McConnell’s opposition to the terrible candidates in GOP senate primaries was that Trump endorsed these terrible candidates- I have no doubt that at least warnock won mostly because the reason his opponent didn’t know how many kids he had was a toss up between ‘just never bothered to keep track’ and ‘no longer capable of counting due to brain damage’.

In contrast, in Texas(Perry and Cruz) and Florida(Desantis) where non-Trump endorsements were more important, the GOP ran strong candidates in competitive races and generally had a much better record.