site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Your example is specific to a certain type of Mexican immigration in the United States. Whether you're looking at something logistically or morally are completely different issues. There are 10.5 million Mexicans currently in the United States, which is 5x larger than the largest standing army in the world. How would you do that logistically without causing an all out civil conflict? Once again I'm arguing that whatever way you think that will play out in theory will not play out that way in practice. Even if you want to pretend that it's not a moral position, it absolutely is, and you will have to morally justify that to a large portion of the United States population that will not be in favour of such drastic policies and will risk losing a large portion of your support to the immigrants you are attempting to displace.

I'm not even American btw, my thoughts on this are based on Canada where I live who don't have such easily displacable immigrants. How would we get rid of millions of immigrants from places like China and India? Send them down to the United States border? Have a centralized agency responsible for the displacement of all non-whites over a 10 million km radius?

Operation Wetback led to the departure of over a million Mexicans from the United States, using less than a thousand federal agents. Most of them weren't even arrested; hundreds of thousands simply fled the US to avoid arrest and formal deportation proceedings. And that was in an era with a much weaker state apparatus and no significant tracking capabilities, at least none comparable to what we have now, let alone the means and ability to punish domestic sponsors of illegal migrants. Modern Western states are vastly powerful in ways most people cannot even imagine; what cripples them is democratic restrictions on exercising their powers. I don't think the illegals hanging around outside Lowe's are going to take up arms against the government if they hear that the US is deporting all Mexicans or Central Americans - like their forebears, the odds are that they'll simply pack up and leave, or they'll hang around hoping they're lucky enough to avoid getting swept up. "Civil conflict" is an absolutely minor and irrelevant possibility. It's not a question of logistical ability - it's a question of political will.

you will have to morally justify that to a large portion of the United States population that will not be in favour of such drastic policies and will risk losing a large portion of your support to the immigrants you are attempting to displace.

Yes, ultimately this is the only real obstacle to effective border security and demographic policies, which is why I have little sympathy for liberals who wring their hands over the election of right-wing anti-immigration politicians in Europe - if your position is that democracy is necessarily a racial suicide pact, you should not be surprised if people emerge who are not as beholden to democracy as you.