site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 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.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's not clear if this was the actual intent

It is the actual intent.

Liberal white women are afraid of guns, and want to ban all of them, to include hunting and sport firearms. You can't reason them out of this, because they didn't reason themselves into it.

They know the population, to include many Democrats, won't go for a total ban, so they keep slicing the salami. Ban a trigger guard here, an archery class there, and hopefully over the decades they'll end up with a total ban.

The Red Tribe has noticed the salami slicing, and has come to the conclusion that the only way we can survive is total unity - total opposition to any restriction on anything anywhere. We assume that any such legislation is proposed in bad faith, and oppose it.

You can't reason them out of this, because they didn't reason themselves into it.

While offering broad agreement, I will offer some slight pushback on this. Liberal women have not reasoned themselves into the fear of firearms, but I will say that I've had luck persuading a couple of them to be much less afraid by having a conversation about why I have guns and taking them shooting. You can't fix everything all at once, but people can be won over on guns by being a gun nut that isn't actually a nut.

While offering broad agreement, I will offer some slight pushback on this. Liberal women have not reasoned themselves into the fear of firearms, but I will say that I've had luck persuading a couple of them to be much less afraid by having a conversation about why I have guns and taking them shooting. You can't fix everything all at once, but people can be won over on guns by being a gun nut that isn't actually a nut.

Yawn yawn yawn. Wow, sure is amazing that all of your opponents (or the women anyway) are irrational idiots who will find their way to your correct opinion with some gentle guidance. Anyway, how is 'why you have guns' at all relevant to a policy discussion. Policy is made for aggregates, no-one should care on more than a personal level why you in particular have guns.

Yawn yawn yawn

Dial down the snark.

True enough. I've had the same experience. A 3rd date trip to the range with white woman who is simply following her social consensus has produced many positive effects, not only in the realm of gun control. The trick is to find an upscale indoor range that is pistol-caliber only (for the noise), and bring a quiet 22LR rifle. That's not exactly reasoning them out of it, that's providing them with an alternate emotional experience to counter previous emotional experiences.

Shooting a 22LR with zero recoil, find the range half full of kindly grandpas, and interacting with aggressively helpful clean-cut millennial tacticool staff goes a long way. A positive social environment goes a long way to changing the minds of people who form opinions socially.

Literally every single person I have ever taken shooting has gone at least 30% up the Overton Window towards gun rights after shooting them. Even the "guns should literally be forcibly confiscated from the entire populace" person moved up to "these are probably fine if reasonable checks are in place on issuing them".

This is interesting and I don’t doubt that you’re correct, but oddly enough this was the opposite of my experience with firing a gun. I’m ambivalent about gun control myself, and am certainly far from a gun-grabber, but I will say that my experience going shooting really drove home just how serious guns are and how important it is to line up incentives so that only competent and well-adjusted people end up owning them. I spent the entire time very cognizant of the fact that I had a deadly weapon in my hand and that if I did something incorrectly I could kill somebody with it.

I mean the counterpoint is that ‘lining up incentives so that only competent and well adjusted people end up owning them’ is the one outcome to the US gun debate that will literally never happen, even as it’s theoretically possible and just how things work in eg France and Czechia. The gun controllers are mostly more concerned with annoying the red tribe than keeping guns away from bad actors, civil rights lawyers will pounce on anything with a disparate impact, the red tribe hits defect on the issue because see #1, and few of the people in the gun policy space even care about the actually common bad outcomes.

The gun controllers are mostly more concerned with annoying the red tribe than keeping guns away from bad actors, civil rights lawyers will pounce on anything with a disparate impact, the red tribe hits defect on the issue because see #1, and few of the people in the gun policy space even care about the actually common bad outcomes.

I guess it's nice to fantasise that all your opponents can be easily dismissed because they just hate you, but that is almost never the case. ERPOs are precisely designed to help reduce the number of poorly-adjusted people with access to guns, but Republicans lose their shit about those too.

It's unfortunate that the republican politicians cucked on this bill, rather than stonewalling it on principle. It did nothing good, and of course was stuffed with poison pills that will keep on appearing for years.