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 -
I think the answer to that question is basically 'Anyone else on the stage at the Republican debates'.
It's not as if voters need to like a candidate in order to vote for them, polarization is too high for that to matter. Either side could run a sack of potatoes with an 'R' or a 'D' sewn onto it and get 45% of the vote (and this isn't even irrational, which party's priorities the candidate will be a conduit for has a much greater impact than variance in individual competence/character).
The problem with Trump is the same as the problem with Clinton - the other side hates and fears him so much that running him drives up turnout on the other side. Anyone who doesn't do that will likely have a better electoral outcome.
Democrats did that with Fetterman. Maybe he really did have stroke issues but now that he’s woken up I don’t mind him as a politician as he’s pissing off progs on multiple issues including Israel. He’s basically declared himself as not having the woke mind virus.
Hates Ticktock and thinks it’s ruining the young (sounds kind of maga). https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/fetterman-argues-tiktok-is-warping-young-peoples-views-on-israel-hamas-started-this/vi-AA1lNkWO
I don’t have a problem selling US Steel to Japs but also Maga protectionism. 98% of merger arbs go thru (witness X) if it dips on these concerns there is likely a trade.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/19/john-fetterman-vote-block-us-steel-sale
Anti-immigration
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/is-john-fetterman-changing-or-were-progressives-mistaken-about-him-yes/ar-AA1lLlBd
Some of these might be things Sanders would support but not woke.
More options
Context Copy link
Spoken like a man who wants a democrat in the White House in 2025. Nobody else can get elected because everyone else sucks. Haley is a neocon pipe dream. DeSantis blew his load too early. These people can't overcome the demographic advantages of Democrats after decades of unrestricted importation of democrat voters.
Donald is the only proven loser amongst them in a presidential election, though. It’s not that criticism of them isn’t valid, it’s that much of it applies to Trump (who will preserve most ‘neocon’ foreign policy to the extent that it exists) and again, Trump isn’t a guaranteed winner either.
Trump is harder on China, on immigration, on NATO, than any neocon I've ever heard of, or any other politician in my lifetime. You can't make me believe that there's anyone else like him, it that he'd like anyone else, and you certainly can't make me believe that any of the more palatable Republicans can match his willingness to defy the uniparty.
At least, not until I see it for myself from someone else.
A quick glance at Commentary doesn’t suggest that Trump is tougher on China than the neocons. Of the major neoconservatives most other than Max Boot (who completely renounced neoconservatism years ago, hates Bibi, considers the Iraq/Afghanistan wars major mistakes now etc) are harshly anti-China. Commentary is literally publishing articles claiming the Chinese government is training the Iranian revolutionary guard, for a neocon that’s tantamount to calling for a declaration of war lmao. Kristol is tough on China on Twitter. Podhoretz was highly critical of Blinken’s ‘outreach’ efforts to China over the summer, aligning with Trump.
None of those people have even tried to get elected once. Not even as dog catcher. Trump ran for president in 2000, at least, and intended to get elected.
They are not politicians, they are pundits, and I don't care to compare politicians to pundits.
More options
Context Copy link
Talk is cheap. They can say all these things, but will oppose any concrete actions against China.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
... why can Trump overcome that supposed demographic advantage, again?
Because he motivated nonvoters in ways unseen in decades.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I believe this is now fully baked in for all Republican candidates. Haley gets GoodGuy points at the moment because she's a loser that has zero chance of beating Trump. If she were nominated, she would immediately be a Nazi, dangerous to our sacred trans children and innocent asylum seekers. Normal, completely ordinary policies from a decade ago are now treated as signs of literal fascism. We're going to need a long period of de-escalation before a Republican winning the Presidency isn't treated like a reason for riots.
I mean yeah the rhetoric is always going to be that whoever is on the other side of the ballot is pure evil, that's just campaigning.
But what matters is how much the voters viscerally feel that rhetoric to be true, and how motivated they are by it. I absolutely do not believe that Democratic voters would be equally motivated to hate and turn out against any other candidate the way they are for Trump, there's a long shared trauma around the Trump name at this point that other candidates lack.
I sort of feel like maybe there's a blind spot here among the anti-democrat crowd, where they believe (or need to believe) that Trump is pretty normal and unremarkable and everything the other side tries to throw at him are lies and exaggerations. And that's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but I think it can blind people to teh fact that the other side does not feel this way, and actually believes and feels the things they are saying about how much of a unique and horrible threat he is.
If you believed that your opponents believed that Trump was perfectly normal and unobjectionable, then the only conclusion you could reach is that the other side is happy to lie outlandishly and histrionically about whoever is heading the GOP in order to get power, and the entire act in insincere from the highest halls of power to the lowest level voter. And it feels like some people are coming to that conclusion, implicitly or explicitly.
But as usual for cases like this, what's actually going on is that the other side doesn't believe what you believe, and is actually acting pretty normally in ways that you would recognize and probably do yourself, if you did believe what they believed.
Disagreements about matters of fact are a far more common and parsimonious explanation than one half of the country suddenly diverging from human nature to become elaborate liars larping every moment of their political engagement for a decade.
I remember that Mitt Romney was going to bring back slavery, tortured his dog, and never paid his taxes.
I remember when MAGA chuds tried to lynch a Black actor in Chicago and people who expressed doubts about it were outlandishly and histrionically accused of being pro-lynching. Then the accuser laughed it off because he never believed in the first place, it was just effective "rhetoric" for someone who treats every conversation as a struggle session, and every conversation partner as a victim to be insincerely manipulated.
More options
Context Copy link
People are perfectly able to convince themselves of ideas by motivated reasoning when the idea is convenient for them to believe. "Lying" is probably the closest word we have to this. Or maybe "motivated reckless reasoning" or some such.
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, so they aren't mostly liars. The ones in the media actually are, but the typical sort-of-engaged voter is not.
But, this means they are something more insidious than a liar. They are people who easily let themselves be convinced that [current republican candidate] is an existential threat to democracy, a dogwhistling cryptofascist, etc, etc. They may not be lying, but they so thoroughly selectively lack skepticism that they let bad news headlines convince them that Mike Pence electro-shocks gay children.
Yes, you and them disagree about matters of fact, and at least one of you is wrong.
I myself am not an optimist, I suspect that they are wrong, you are wrong, and I am wrong about most of our beliefs on all of these topics. We simply don't have the level of truth-preserving information channels it would take to expect to consistently do better than that as a society.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure, but Republican voters are also probably not going to be equally motivated to turn out for any other candidate the way they are for Trump.
The thing is that bonus Trump voters in guaranteed red states aren’t worth anything, while less Biden voters in purple states are.
Boosting voter turnout in Wyoming or Arkansas is worthless for the GOP.
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps.
My impression is that Republicans are motivated by a sense of crisis around a pervasive culture war that seeps into every nook and cranny of life and lies behind every public and private institution. The election was stolen by a hundred different election officials and a thousand collaborators covering for them, teachers are transing your kids and teaching them to be Marxists, immigrants are pouring over the boarder and taking your government services, etc. A diffuse, broad crisis that requires decisive and far-reaching leadership to combat.
Whereas I think Democrats have very much focused their own sense of crisis around Trump specifically, claiming that he personally is a threat to democracy and decency and needs to be defeated at all costs.
My impression is that removing Trump from the equation dissipates the sense of crisis and urgency felt by the Democrats, but not that felt by the Republicans.
Republicans may not love the new nominee, but they'll be driven to vote for him out of the fear of the ongoing existential crisis anyway, in the same way that Democrats are historically unenthusiastic about Biden but are turning out anyway to vote against Trump.
I could of course be wrong, but that's my sense of the field.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Of course, all Republicans are "fascists", but do you truly not see a difference in the tenor and hyperbole over Trump?
I do think a different candidate would be much harder for the Democrats to attack in this way. Trump makes it easy because he is an obviously narcissistic prick.
Not really, no, just the effects of increased polarization driven by other factors, mainly social media. I absolutely think the polarization would be no less with any other Republican.
More options
Context Copy link
I think replacing Trump with DeSantis would immediately result in the rhetoric being that it's even scarier, that it's Trump-but-competent, that Project 2025 is still a danger to Our Democracy, and so on. Maybe they couldn't whip up the populace quite the same, I don't know, but the attempt would exist and I would still expect riots if any Republican wins in 2024.
Yeah, the attacks on DeSantis in 2020–2021 made me realize that whoever the Republicans nominated, they'd be attacked mercilessly by the media.
It's somewhat sad that people seem to have forgotten the pandemic so quickly. I view DeSantis as a hero for what he did in Florida.
It truly is amazing the collective amnesia
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Exactly correct - the rhetoric will be like that no matter who is on the ballot, that's what campaigning is like these days, but it won't actually energize Dems to get out the vote if it's not aimed at Trump, meaning it's an advantage to Reps.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link