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.

plan A of "get them to leave" is inherently bloody minded and unworkable in the USA because a given value of nobody wants to live elsewhere.

This isn't actually true. A vast number of these people are illegal immigrants who don't require anything more than enforcement of existing law to remove. Thanks to both sides of government wanting these people to be a cheap labour source there wasn't actually any real enforcement of this, which meant that a lot of illegal immigrants became activists or otherwise engaged with the system. The pre-existing panopticon can just be turned on, you stick "is an illegal immigrant" into XKEYSCORE and have the results sent to the enforcement agency on a per-state basis - that's a huge swathe of them gone in one go. Beyond that you can have a bunch of people go and audit the actual citizens and determine if there was any grounds for an appeal or revocation. Finally, you can implement a bunch of procedures and rules which make life so much worse than their home country that they will actually self deport. Cutting down on immigrant welfare/subsidy abuse, harshly taxing remittances, language requirements, etc.

Being an actual citizen of the USA in good standing is definitely worth a lot (though I wouldn't take the deal - I'd rather live where I currently do than the USA ceteris paribus) but being a fugitive unable to access any and all banking/financial services, unable to get employed etc would absolutely incentivise a return to their nation of origin. And if you're a HBD believer, you don't even need to do anything more - just implement some eugenic policies and the migrants you don't want will be gone in a few generations anyway due to disparate impact alone.

This isn't actually true. A vast number of these people are illegal immigrants who don't require anything more than enforcement of existing law to remove.

Who are "these people" exactly? Are you not including the 40 million African Americans, or...?

I was basing it off the original quote, so "these people" actually means "post-1965 non-White migrants from Latin America".

I’m intrigued that you conflate “HBD believer” with “believer in coercive eugenics.” Seems like there are a lot of people in this thread defining that term in very telling ways.

Huh? Where did I say "coercive eugenics"? I didn't have any coercive eugenics in mind at all, unless you believe that failing to continually subsidise the reproduction of the intellectual underclass counts as "coercive". I even said "a few generations", implying that these efforts would take time. If I was suggesting coercive eugenics the underclass would not be sticking around for a few generations.