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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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It's not just issues, it is tone and emphasis. Launching a school board campaign that puts (largely hypothetical) trans kids front and center is running a narrow campaign on aggression and identity politics.

There's nothing hypothetical about it, I personally know parents of a trans kid, and educational materials are quite openly pushing trans propaganda. It's not aggression to demand that schools stick to ABC's and 123's instead of pushing race war and mastectomies. Even if you think the issue is irrelevant, a conservative party that turns a blind eye to it is more than useless. I literally might as well vote left-wing at that point, at least I'm going to get what's on the tin.

A lot of it is focusing on good governance and emphasizing concrete actions over vague culture war issues.

I think the culture war issues are a lot more specific than "good governance". You do elaborate on what you mean by that, but "reduce regulations" is a lot more abstract to me than "ban 'gender affirming' surgeries and hormone therapies for minors", "ban schools from hiding the kid's desire to transition from parents", "don't send male convicts to female prisons", "reestablish the citizen's right to self-defense from criminals", "reverse lenient-on-crime policies" or "force schools to actually teach".

If the competency slate for school board also puts in place a minor rule on where kids go to the bathroom, great, but don't make it the centerpiece of why they're running for office and everything else an afterthought.

Well again, if you're going to reduce the whole trans issue to bathrooms, why shouldn't I just spare myself the humiliation, and vote progressive?