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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Trump banned diversity training in the goverment in his first administration. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/25/trump-executive-order-diversity-training-race-gender/3537241001/

In contrast Biden administration was super woke. Trump and people like Rufo will work together anyhow. I wouldn't have too high expectations, but there is going to be considerable difference even from a mostly ineffective Trump who pushes right a bit, versus a Biden administration pushing quite far left.

There are those who want a neutered right, and frame the alternative with negative exaggerations and fearmongering. The reality is like Democrat administrations purged a lot of people in the goverment to put their own loyalists in charge, it isn't only fair for the right to do this to govern in a different manner than that, but also the only way to change things.

Wanting a neutered right, is not the agenda of genuine moderates but people who are on the same side as Biden.

How we got here was through Republicans like Romney called moderate but who supported BLM. And through liberals, framed as more moderate than they are, but who actually are quite far left culturally and implemented those changes. Only a political coalition that genuinely opposes the intersectional agenda can genuinely push it back.

The right is the only coalition push back these things. Can the center do this? Well, some of the people called far right, or considered part of the right if one tries to objectively judge how much they pander to different identity groups, ironically people like Trump are closer to the center than many other people (falsely) labeled moderate like Mitt Romney.

Those usually carrying the moderate or liberal labels, are insufficiently against the whole woke agenda, and too much for it. So they won't push back and can't put it away. What some of them seem to be doing is to sometimes try to pretend they are already doing this. So there isn't going to be a genuine attempt by liberals and people like Romeny to put the woke away, but there might be attempts to define wokeness narrowly, and still support the same agenda. The limited hangout maneuver.

In my opinion, the most likely path for making idpol unfashionable is a foreign-policy presidency. Doesn’t really matter who. We’re not getting a “fresh prince” decade by cranking up the domestic outrage.

Yes, but that will solidify idpol and it will still be fashionable but not dominating the national conversation, until the focus passes and a new Floyd hysteria emerges. That something isn't as discussed as much as previously, does not stop it from being a problem. Moreover, it can coexist just as it continues to coexist with covid focus or the Israel conflict with Palestinians. Moreover, foreign policy presidencies tend to be presidencies engaging in idiotic destabilizing expensive wars that make the MIC richer, but are actually damaging towards their country and the world. Which isn't to say extreme isolationism is the solution.

Identity politics are always here to stay, the question is if we got a sane and fair arrangement, or one that gives valid reason for people to oppose and incentivizes political conflict. Which doesn't change unless the ideology of modern new left liberals and even those in the establishment conservative parties who aren't actually conservative who agree with them stops being influential. Because it is an agenda that does try to screw over, and increasingly at that, the progressive intersectional coalition outgroups, such as white Christian men. The way to have peace, and to relax culture war intensity is to enforce something better and more even handed. Which as is the case always with even handed policies, sharing elements with other groups, shares in a vein diagram ground with the genuine far right. Additionally, it is itself definitely seen by those with the new left liberal agenda as far right, and labeled at such. Although, that isn't actually accurate, and has to do with the strategy of the far left to label everyone other than them with pejoratives.

What is important to understand is that we are never going to get a fair arrangement that reduces culture war intensity, under the hysteric paranoia of the far right, that leads people to oppose reasonable positions because they associate them with the far right. In fact there are issues where even the most hardcore people on the far right have legitimate grievances about their favorite groups being mistreated. And it is in fact possible and preferable to the current situation to share grounds with anyone on issues they have a point, and refuse to share ground with them where they are wrong.

From liberal-ish space, what would aid to relax tensions, is an attitude of compromise and understanding that there has been a real problem of cultural/identitarian progressive overreach. That overreach and progressive extremism also relates to the neutering of the right.