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 -
And I'm claiming that there are double standards regarding how we discuss and treat drug offenders. By your own admission, opiate users are just less violent criminals, though I can attest that I've never once heard a red triber refer to them as anything other than victims. The party of law and order likes to talk about Chicago because they can blame the democrats; I guess they still like to talk about the opioid crisis because they can blame the globalist-China-sellout-democrats for those problems as well, but they sure don't like to talk about any of the crime you're referring to. Are you truly going to refuse to see any parallels between democrats telling impoverished communities of color that their problems are the fault of racist white nationalists without admitting that the Red tribe has their own victim mythos that they prefer to tell rather than taking responsibility and improving their lots?
There's a kernel of truth in the globalist narrative buried in heaps of salt, just as there is a kernel of truth to the fact that most social programs and redistributionist policies that would alleviate poverty are stymied by republicans in congress (and by extension, republican voters). Moreover, 'free trade' and laissez-faire economics have been the domain of Republicans from the 80s through what, the mid 2000s? Many of the people most upset about globalization happily voted for it for decades. At least on the free trade side, who can even guess at a counterfactual world where America turned inwards after WWII, and condemned condemned as damaging to the middle class and pursued protectionism? For all we know we lost the Cold War, sparked WWIII, or got wrecked economically by an ascendant mercantile Japan. What I am pretty confident in, though, is that TheMotte exists in this world, and it's populated by people absolutely convinced that our government is headed by some of the laziest, most corrupt and least competent politicians in history. Except for the few locals they voted for.
Quite the jump from a nihilistic 'human societies gonna society, the good life comes from God' worldview. But regardless, I'm sure you've gotten the same pushback that 1960s (or whenever the idyllic golden era you long for was) America is an arbitrary date to freeze in amber, and no doubt people have longed to do so in a recognizable way since the French Revolution if not the Greeks if not whatever proto-civilization we lack records of.
I hear replacing Christmas was poorly received, and not even the orgies were enough to keep heads on shoulders. More seriously, there's a reckoning coming for the NIMBY policies that wrecked the housing markets. A true reckoning would probably be someone sitting down and saying 'huh, those libertarians and conservatives might have been onto something 15 years ago...' rather than rebranding free market capitalism (red coded) as YIMBYism.
But then, do you think the modern right have major examples of policies they espoused that they believe have been net-negative, besides allowing the existence of the democratic party? That people and movements are both bad at admitting fault is not a particularly striking criticism.
Moreover, the idea that desiring to transform our society and culture is unique to progressives seems patently false. Was Reagan transforming our polity by espousing free trade rather than the rampant protectionism that carried the day in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereas pro-union democrats were conserving it? Is Moldbug the true conservative because he wants a neo-monarchic-corpo-state? Enough of that, I'm sure you're familiar with the argument.
You know how my answer to that goes.
You neglect to consider widespread unemployment, breakdown of routine and social ties due to the pandemic, so on and so forth. I would push it harder, but it's not clear to me why this pattern didn't hold true in other countries. Too many variables and too many superficial news articles, not really a satisfying answer.
I'm not sure I believe this, or how you would prove it. Say 20% of the black population of LA rioted in the 90s, and the same fraction of black people turned out after George Floyd joined by, say, 5% of the white population that made the protest 50-50. Would you characterize that as a pretext for mostly-white rioters to burn black neighborhoods to the ground, when the same fraction of the black community was turning out? Moreover, any counterfactuals would support your argument in other ways; all black rioters, black people perpetuate violent crime, if they burned white neighborhoods instead of black neighborhoods, blue tribe wants to burn down innocent red tribe homes, etc.
83% of black Americans express some support for BLM. I expect the views you'd get from people living in those neighborhoods would be a bit more nuanced than white rioters just looking to cause trouble burned down my house, we're all living on Joe Biden's plantations as neo-slaves.
There's probably a tradeoff between 'X will grow up fatherless because his dad is serving life in prison for petty theft' and police turning a blind eye towards rampant gang violence. I don't know where the sweet spot is, but blindly optimizing for line goes down for violent crime probably does hit a point of doing more harm than good, which has been the argument of the criminal justice reformers.
Fox news has entered the chat.
Looks like I was poorly informed on this front. I'd always seen stats on the welfare systems being more robust and generous in blue states, which is true, but it's more than [eaten up by the cost of living(https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/measuring-poverty-in-the-united-states-comparing-measurement-methods/) (states colored in red actually have higher poverty levels after accounting for federal programs and some CoL adjustments). It's interesting that welfare is so much more effective at reducing poverty in red states than in blue states (see, for example, the impact of SNAP on poverty is mostly felt in red states, although I can imagine the outcry if they tried to peg aid to the CoL in some way. Debatably, these social programs are largely supported by democrats at the federal level, and 80% of the welfare budget is spent by the feds. Welfare spending at the state level per capita is a bit more varied, although probably less consequential relative to the feds. I'd need to read more, but maybe I should limit the amount of time I waste on things without clear answers...
Mississippi also just kind of sucks.
I think they'd actually be pretty happy with similar representation in congress and some lucrative occupations, along with middle-class opportunities. Maybe some respect too. Sounds a bit like what people around here demand for the rust belt whites, a
More options
Context Copy link