As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been spending a little more time on Twitter lately. And, to be honest, it hasn’t been a picnic. If you wanted to build an environment that is perfectly optimised to strip people of their humanity, I’m not sure you could do much better. The anonymity, the character restrictions that limit clarity and nuance, the algorithm that rewards vitriol and shoehorns you into echo chambers.
1st, Steve, Chris, it was refreshing to read your well-spoken exchange this morning. It made me wonder if even though you superficially belong to tribes where many are at war with each other you agree on the idea that those wars are poison for the brain and that there is no rise to hostility in the subject of your differences of opinion.
There lays the problem. The vast majority of what we see is not an effort at positively influencing the thoughts of the opposition, but rather to collect praise from the likeminded. People who with no apparent sense of irony display what they claim to oppose in their own behavior.
They are dangerous. I often express my thoughts on the demonization/dehumanization process used to condition otherwise peaceful to go to war and kill. One of my positive traits, if I do say so myself, is to try to understand why people hold the views that they hold. I might not convince me to change my view, but it does make me less likely to dehumanize them. That's important, at least in my thinking.
I've mentioned my MAGA buddy in the past. He dismisses everything he disagrees with as coming from Soros funded communists (Democrats/liberals) and RINOs. I don't actually have much hope in being able to convince him that Trump is a RINO who has created a cult around himself distributing toxic cool-aid for the mind. How do I express that thought to him without it being perceived as insult? Most non-MAGAs purposefully insult and demonize him. They harden his views without hope of changing them.
I don't mention him to demonize him. We have a near 30-year friendship founded in things other than politics. He is an intelligent man with double master's degrees caught up in a cult. I do understand where some of his views come from and actually don't disagree with him on all of them. I see those traits in people with opposing views. It is all too easy to switch our thoughts from ideas to people because it is so easy to demonize and dehumanize people. To see their membership in a group as the uniform of an enemy in a war.
A worthwhile quote for a pop-up on our computers when we go to social media; "𝓐𝓵𝓵 𝓱𝓸𝓹𝓮 𝓪𝓫𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓸𝓷 𝔂𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮."
[edit] I intended to mention that the pop-up would be to inspire us to seek to behave in ways to bring hope.
"There lays the problem. The vast majority of what we see is not an effort at positively influencing the thoughts of the opposition, but rather to collect praise from the likeminded. People who with no apparent sense of irony display what they claim to oppose in their own behavior."
Bullseye. And worse, the best way to earn praise from the likeminded is to shield them from the truth. Even if that means outright lying.
I remember when KellyAnne Conway first uttered the phrase "alternative facts" and everybody, most definitely including myself, laughed at how ridiculous it was. Today, it feels as if the idea that facts are optional if they conflict with your paint of view is just standard fare.
“maybe we can fix the culture war with some culture diplomacy.”
And maybe the horse will learn to sing.
You have a good heart Steve but this sow’s ear will make no silk purse. You do yourself harm on twitter.
No I am not calling people cockroaches. A lot of people on Twitter are truly sick. Engaging is futile. Remember that Daryl Davis worked in person, not on Twitter.
Haha, somehow I had a feeling this would be your take. But ask yourself this; as the culture wars have been ramping up over the last few years, as the rhetoric has become more extreme and the arguments have become more vicious, what's been your sense of the potential for progress?
Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?
Do you look at the "racial reckoning" and all the toxicity that created for and between white people *and* black people, and think "what we needed there was less diplomacy and more of a warlike mentality"?
I should repeat, Twitter, and really the internet in general, is almost perfectly designed to make communication difficult. I wish there were better channels to increase understanding. But ultimately, the problem isn't the means of communication, it's us. It's how we choose to communicate. It's whether we have the maturity to ignore/laugh off the idiots (usually children) who block and insult like children throwing a tantrum.
The comments on Medium can get just as toxic as the comments on Twitter, they're just longer. And while I agree that in person conversations are infinitely better for civil discourse, people are more honest online (for better and worse). And you can also, obviously, reach exponentially more people.
"Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?"
No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working.
Edit: I need to be honest here. I think the idea that decisive majorities on the right can be reached and persuaded is just plain starry-eyed. Yeah it would be great if people listened to each other but it's the Trump trash who are managing to conscript the decent people, not the other way around. I have run into too many people I used to know who I don't know anymore, including some of the very last I would have expected to become so vile.
"No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working."
Do you really see this as a result of having listened to each other too much?! Trump, at least as far as I see, is a symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to.
A nice big wall to keep immigrants out, magical clean coal that would bring prosperity back to mining towns, making America number one again in a world where China and India will clearly soon dominate, plus the "tell it like it is" populism and misogyny that's popular amongst a certain type.
I'm always amazed when people point to his hypocrisy or womanising as reasons why they can't believe people voted for him. First, some of his voters share those qualities, but also, how many other politicians have shared those qualities throughout history? JFK and Bill Clinton just to name two presidential examples. Were these failings disqualifying for them? Nope. Because most people don't vote in support of "their guy" anymore. They vote to keep the other guy out.
People have become so extreme precisely because the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. We aren't even listening to what "the other side" is saying anymore. Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society. And worse, each side gets manipulated by anyone unscrupulous enough to maintain this lie.
"Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society."
Yeah, each side claims to believe this.
Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points.
Are both left and right trying to destroy democracy?
"the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. "
It is not that it has fallen out of fashion. Rather, it has become absurd. I sure as hell don't want anything conservatives are selling because it's all vile, and for them, there is no distinction between compromise and betrayal, See "RINO."
"Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points."
I think they both have points. I don't think it's in the interests of the sane people in the middle to quibble about whether they're equal but rather to oppose *all* the insanity whoever it's coming from.
The left: The sexualisation of children, trans surgeries for minors, male rapists in female prisons, lying about racial history, majority control of the mainstream media leading to skewed or outright incorrect public information (see certain aspects of COVID response, ignorance about police brutality and its impact on black people)...
The right: The sexualisation of children, rollback of abortion rights, gay marriage, interracial marriage, lying about racial history, total rejection of anything in the "mainstream media" leading to absolute insanity (see people who truly believe the election was stolen, that COVID was a hoax)...
I could go on and on.
The point is, both the left and the right point to these insanities and criticise them. And both the left and the right are correct in doing so. The only problem is they wilfully ignore the problems on their side of the aisle.
I like to think I'm sane but I don't have any attraction to the middle, that's for roadkill.
Call it a copout but as you're read before, I don't think the "trans" shit has anything to do with the actual political left. And to be fair I could say the same for MAGA and the right. Both are founded on lies, though I think that a lot of people who call themselves Republicans are on board with MAGA; I see some, but not much, repudiation of the swastika-flag right. OTOH I read a lot of opposition to surgery on kids.
But. I also see one hell of a lot of denial among what I will provisionally call Democrats, people who think that nobody under 18 has had surgery, that the barriers to transitioning from 30 years ago are still in place, angry denial that parents' rights are being overruled if their kid gets on TikTok and decides she's "trans." I've even forwarded some of the links from your backlash article and I get responses that they are printed in biased sources. Anyway.
What you're saying up there is exactly what I've been saying: MAGA and "woke" are mirror images.
I was talking about the "contempt for conservatives" thing. I think they get as least as much contempt from the scoundrels they vote for as from (probably largely fictitious) "leftist elites." I admit I've used phrases like "trailer trash" though not lately but I've used "SJW lunatic" a lot more lately.
Edit: I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong. Since honesty isn't even a tertiary priority among conservatives now they don't mind knowingly speaking a lie if it makes them feel like they have a group.
The corresponding utterance on the other side is the "trans woman" shit. I don't know how many actually believe that but don't forget how few people know anything about science, any more than those who do know some and insist that biological sex is a continuum.
We live in a truth and validity free world where belief filtered perception is a person's belief in what is truth.
When President Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally change America, it gave me pause. Fundamental change requires destruction of the old. How could someone who loves America as it exists in their perception not view him, and people with the same wish, as wanting to destroy America? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
When the far right wants to nullify the changes that have made the nation more humane, how can people who see these much-needed changes as improvement not view them as wanting to destroy the improved America of their vision? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
A conflict of visions in what is truth and virtue. I could quote the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, "We both have truths, are mine the same as yours?"
This is well-expressed but it distresses me that you leave it at symmetry.
America needs transformation to survive, beginning with getting away from hydrocarbon fuels. The past means inequality, small wondere that some go so far as to say that slavery wasn't so bad. You got three hots and a cot, so what if the master got to sodomize your daughter.
I'm going to put this here since it addresses Steve's Commentary topic and could be placed in more than one of the sub threads here.
The culture wars are tribal and politically partisan, something I am known to not care for. The tribes have a checklist of things you must agree with/stand for to maintain good membership status. Those things (issues) often have no relationship and depending on the issue I may tilt in either direction. While you may see more of this or that within selected tribes, they are not monolithic. That is probably truer than we think because people are afraid to speak their minds. Making an example of myself, I have a significant amount of extended family who are devout Christians. While I won't lie about it, I tend to just leave the subject alone because my thoughts on it would be offensive. Why the hell would I do that with family. I am in no way unique which is why I think that is a valid example.
Why did I mention proxy wars? They pertain to the two issues that I think make other issues equivalent to a pimple on an elephant's ass.
WAR: China is preparing for war in every possible way. We will be at war with them, and they will defeat us because we have foolishly blunted the armory and depleted the treasury. A bipartisan disaster.
FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Omnibus spending bills. In the dark of night without possibility of being read and understood our politicians sign on to massive debt for things that could never pass in the light of day. They give all of America the finger as they seal our fate with mockery of our so-called democracy. There will be a day of reconning, and it will be the collapse of the nation. It would be easy to blame the Ds but they do it with the willing cooperation of the Rs.
That's the politicians and the inevitable doom that they bring, but the culture war is taking place with the general population. During the course of my lifetime, I've been a dirty job trailer trash guy at the edge of town in the south. A clean job in a nice house guy. Lived around and befriended the uneducated and highly educated. The hard left & right and those in between. I know them and I can sit peacefully at a table with any of them and it is probably at the root of my disdain for partisan culture wars. I don't despise people for holding ideas that I don't agree with. People can be influenced with nuance and more complete information, unless they are hard core left or right.
Debate about which tribe's assholes are worse is the culture war Steve is seeking to dismantle. It gets us nowhere useful unless we want to go to war and kill each other. That would get us somewhere. Somewhere no rational person wishes to be.
Who's worse? Which issue? I don't wish to participate in that.
Aside: I ran across an utterly horrifying movie from last year called "Soft Quiet." Six women, all but two of them strangers, gather in a church meeting room with pastries and pie . All very supportive and feminine and lots of hugs and self-deprecating laughter with tons of woman talk.
Then they start talking and it's all bigotry over multiculturalism; the organizer uncovers the cherry pie she'd baked and it has a swastika cut into the crust. The first to introduce herself gripes over a Latina woman getting a promotion she wanted.
It ends up being, by virtue of complete believability, one of the most frightening movies I have ever seen.
I understand your reverence for the achievement of Mr. Davis and your hope that this can be widened. Our disagreement on the feasibility of this is something I don't need to reiterate. I have great respect for your goals and your skills in trying to achieve them but I despair.
You are a gifted writer and a subtle thinker and more than once I've been envious of the craft with which you make your points. The next word is "but."
But. Suppose you were to write a supremely persuasive essay that anyone on the other side of the culture wars would be unable to dismiss, would be compelled to consider your arguments, and would not be given any excuses to tune you out. What would happen?
The moment he discerned that you weren't of his tribe, he would stop reading, give a little shake of his head, and forget everything he had just read. You would not reach anyone. The only way to reach someone on the other side is one at a time, a long and patient effort, with the establishment of respect and trust, and even then the chance of progress is very slim. Yes, it can be done and if you devote the rest of your life to it you might reach a half dozen people.
I think that given your talents at this kind of persuasion that you should work in more fertile ground, certainly not Twitter where hate speech is not only tolerated but expected. Where Musk has his remaining staff actively promote the ugly side of the culture wars. Medium was once such a place but is no longer I don't know how you've remained on there talking about gender ideology but it only takes one squeal of "transphobia" to get banned. There are probably better forums but they don't have the readership.
Even then, don't set your hopes too high.
I abhor the language of violence and war but I don't see any potential for reconciliation. The divisions are widening and both sides are overrepresented by their worst.
And, given that we do have a war, one of outlooks more than of weapons but with no shortage of weapons either, it is imperative that we win, that as one person put it, conservatives are crushed like bugs.
Because if they prevail they will kill you for being black, they will kill me for being gay, and they will kill the natural kingdom and in less than a century our world will be the eighth dead planet in the solar system.
And I am willing to compromise a lot to prevent that.
"The moment he discerned that you weren't of his tribe, he would stop reading, give a little shake of his head, and forget everything he had just read. You would not reach anyone."
No, this isn't true....well, let me be clear and say that of course, some people do exactly as you say. But some don't. Quite regularly I'm told that I've given somebody food for thought. Or that they've seen an issue on a way they hadn't seen it before. I suspect that many more have similar thoughts but don't write a comment telling me so.
And, of course, I'm just one person. There are lots of other people out there doing the same thing in various ways. And lots of others who need to see people speaking up before they find the courage to do the same. Moving the Overton window is a slow, painstaking process. Especially if you're trying to move it to a sensible middle ground instead of just tossing it between extremes. And it takes lots of people, chipping away at the insanity.
All that said, yes, I understand your point. Twitter certainly isn't going to become my primary medium for conversation or persuasion. As I said, I have lots of reasons for increasing my Twitter usage. And given Musk's antics, who knows if Twitter will even be around in a year or two!
"And lots of others who need to see people speaking up before they find the courage to do the same. Moving the Overton window is a slow, painstaking process. Especially if you're trying to move it to a sensible middle ground instead of just tossing it between extremes."
On some further thought I am going to disagree with you here. The big social changes start incremental and then there is a sudden shift in state. This is the nature of chaos theory. Which you can read about on your own time. But the essence is that there are abrupt transitions.
The most recent example that comes to mind is same sex marriage. The numbers shifted around a little, got a little better here and a little worse there, and then suddenly overnight to oppose SSM suddenly seemed absurd. Opposition remained but the majority was ready to see the opposition as nothing but bigotry. Opposition remains and the Catholic nutjobs on the SCOTUS will try to reverse it while Roberts remains tranquilized into detachment. The point is that there was an unexpected and largely unpredictable shift from "weirdos support SSM" to "weirdos oppose SSM."
But this was after a long and fairly steady movement in the right direction. In our contemporary culture wars, do we have that?
No. Things are moving in the wrong direction. Ideas like Christian nationalism that would have gotten an FBI infiltration a generation ago are becoming mainstream. They have the quiet support of many in law enforcement and the military. The flip that seems to be approaching is actual fascism, not the overused hyperbole but the real thing.
There is talk in some state governments of banning not just same-sex but *interracial* marriage. We're going in the wrong direction.
"Quite regularly I'm told that I've given somebody food for thought. Or that they've seen an issue on a way they hadn't seen it before. "
I've gotten the same thing. But I can count the number of minds I've actually changed in 25 years on the fingers of one hand. And all of them were intellectually honest and reflective people. Attributes that define very few indeed.
I hate to sound like I am counseling futility but the only thing that seems to reliably unite opposing sides is a threat from outside both. Remember in the weeks after 9/11 we seemed to drop our tribalism for a while? Well, it was a lot less intense then than now. And that didn't last long.
And any threat powerful enough to overcome the MAGA/Woke division is not likely to be survivable.
"As I said, I have lots of reasons for increasing my Twitter usage."
Maybe you like a challenge, but honestly this is just over the top for me. You know it's a cloaca and you know that the site is deliberately intended for unfinished thoughts.
I could mention a video I saw that this reminds me of but it would groß everyone out.
1st, Steve, Chris, it was refreshing to read your well-spoken exchange this morning. It made me wonder if even though you superficially belong to tribes where many are at war with each other you agree on the idea that those wars are poison for the brain and that there is no rise to hostility in the subject of your differences of opinion.
"𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸"
There lays the problem. The vast majority of what we see is not an effort at positively influencing the thoughts of the opposition, but rather to collect praise from the likeminded. People who with no apparent sense of irony display what they claim to oppose in their own behavior.
They are dangerous. I often express my thoughts on the demonization/dehumanization process used to condition otherwise peaceful to go to war and kill. One of my positive traits, if I do say so myself, is to try to understand why people hold the views that they hold. I might not convince me to change my view, but it does make me less likely to dehumanize them. That's important, at least in my thinking.
I've mentioned my MAGA buddy in the past. He dismisses everything he disagrees with as coming from Soros funded communists (Democrats/liberals) and RINOs. I don't actually have much hope in being able to convince him that Trump is a RINO who has created a cult around himself distributing toxic cool-aid for the mind. How do I express that thought to him without it being perceived as insult? Most non-MAGAs purposefully insult and demonize him. They harden his views without hope of changing them.
I don't mention him to demonize him. We have a near 30-year friendship founded in things other than politics. He is an intelligent man with double master's degrees caught up in a cult. I do understand where some of his views come from and actually don't disagree with him on all of them. I see those traits in people with opposing views. It is all too easy to switch our thoughts from ideas to people because it is so easy to demonize and dehumanize people. To see their membership in a group as the uniform of an enemy in a war.
A worthwhile quote for a pop-up on our computers when we go to social media; "𝓐𝓵𝓵 𝓱𝓸𝓹𝓮 𝓪𝓫𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓸𝓷 𝔂𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮."
[edit] I intended to mention that the pop-up would be to inspire us to seek to behave in ways to bring hope.
"There lays the problem. The vast majority of what we see is not an effort at positively influencing the thoughts of the opposition, but rather to collect praise from the likeminded. People who with no apparent sense of irony display what they claim to oppose in their own behavior."
Bullseye. And worse, the best way to earn praise from the likeminded is to shield them from the truth. Even if that means outright lying.
I remember when KellyAnne Conway first uttered the phrase "alternative facts" and everybody, most definitely including myself, laughed at how ridiculous it was. Today, it feels as if the idea that facts are optional if they conflict with your paint of view is just standard fare.
"what we see is not an effort at positively influencing the thoughts of the opposition, but rather to collect praise from the likeminded."
Likes and follows.
You rang the bell.
“maybe we can fix the culture war with some culture diplomacy.”
And maybe the horse will learn to sing.
You have a good heart Steve but this sow’s ear will make no silk purse. You do yourself harm on twitter.
No I am not calling people cockroaches. A lot of people on Twitter are truly sick. Engaging is futile. Remember that Daryl Davis worked in person, not on Twitter.
"And maybe the horse will learn to sing."
Haha, somehow I had a feeling this would be your take. But ask yourself this; as the culture wars have been ramping up over the last few years, as the rhetoric has become more extreme and the arguments have become more vicious, what's been your sense of the potential for progress?
Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?
Do you look at the "racial reckoning" and all the toxicity that created for and between white people *and* black people, and think "what we needed there was less diplomacy and more of a warlike mentality"?
I should repeat, Twitter, and really the internet in general, is almost perfectly designed to make communication difficult. I wish there were better channels to increase understanding. But ultimately, the problem isn't the means of communication, it's us. It's how we choose to communicate. It's whether we have the maturity to ignore/laugh off the idiots (usually children) who block and insult like children throwing a tantrum.
The comments on Medium can get just as toxic as the comments on Twitter, they're just longer. And while I agree that in person conversations are infinitely better for civil discourse, people are more honest online (for better and worse). And you can also, obviously, reach exponentially more people.
"Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?"
No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working.
Edit: I need to be honest here. I think the idea that decisive majorities on the right can be reached and persuaded is just plain starry-eyed. Yeah it would be great if people listened to each other but it's the Trump trash who are managing to conscript the decent people, not the other way around. I have run into too many people I used to know who I don't know anymore, including some of the very last I would have expected to become so vile.
"No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working."
Do you really see this as a result of having listened to each other too much?! Trump, at least as far as I see, is a symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to.
A nice big wall to keep immigrants out, magical clean coal that would bring prosperity back to mining towns, making America number one again in a world where China and India will clearly soon dominate, plus the "tell it like it is" populism and misogyny that's popular amongst a certain type.
I'm always amazed when people point to his hypocrisy or womanising as reasons why they can't believe people voted for him. First, some of his voters share those qualities, but also, how many other politicians have shared those qualities throughout history? JFK and Bill Clinton just to name two presidential examples. Were these failings disqualifying for them? Nope. Because most people don't vote in support of "their guy" anymore. They vote to keep the other guy out.
People have become so extreme precisely because the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. We aren't even listening to what "the other side" is saying anymore. Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society. And worse, each side gets manipulated by anyone unscrupulous enough to maintain this lie.
"Trump ... A symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to."
Exactly, and exacerbated by the contempt expressed for them by the elitist left.
https://youtu.be/nWfQCDaAa6s
I think you have it backwards.
How so?
"Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society."
Yeah, each side claims to believe this.
Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points.
Are both left and right trying to destroy democracy?
"the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. "
It is not that it has fallen out of fashion. Rather, it has become absurd. I sure as hell don't want anything conservatives are selling because it's all vile, and for them, there is no distinction between compromise and betrayal, See "RINO."
"Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points."
I think they both have points. I don't think it's in the interests of the sane people in the middle to quibble about whether they're equal but rather to oppose *all* the insanity whoever it's coming from.
The left: The sexualisation of children, trans surgeries for minors, male rapists in female prisons, lying about racial history, majority control of the mainstream media leading to skewed or outright incorrect public information (see certain aspects of COVID response, ignorance about police brutality and its impact on black people)...
The right: The sexualisation of children, rollback of abortion rights, gay marriage, interracial marriage, lying about racial history, total rejection of anything in the "mainstream media" leading to absolute insanity (see people who truly believe the election was stolen, that COVID was a hoax)...
I could go on and on.
The point is, both the left and the right point to these insanities and criticise them. And both the left and the right are correct in doing so. The only problem is they wilfully ignore the problems on their side of the aisle.
"sane people in the middle"
I like to think I'm sane but I don't have any attraction to the middle, that's for roadkill.
Call it a copout but as you're read before, I don't think the "trans" shit has anything to do with the actual political left. And to be fair I could say the same for MAGA and the right. Both are founded on lies, though I think that a lot of people who call themselves Republicans are on board with MAGA; I see some, but not much, repudiation of the swastika-flag right. OTOH I read a lot of opposition to surgery on kids.
But. I also see one hell of a lot of denial among what I will provisionally call Democrats, people who think that nobody under 18 has had surgery, that the barriers to transitioning from 30 years ago are still in place, angry denial that parents' rights are being overruled if their kid gets on TikTok and decides she's "trans." I've even forwarded some of the links from your backlash article and I get responses that they are printed in biased sources. Anyway.
What you're saying up there is exactly what I've been saying: MAGA and "woke" are mirror images.
I was talking about the "contempt for conservatives" thing. I think they get as least as much contempt from the scoundrels they vote for as from (probably largely fictitious) "leftist elites." I admit I've used phrases like "trailer trash" though not lately but I've used "SJW lunatic" a lot more lately.
Edit: I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong. Since honesty isn't even a tertiary priority among conservatives now they don't mind knowingly speaking a lie if it makes them feel like they have a group.
The corresponding utterance on the other side is the "trans woman" shit. I don't know how many actually believe that but don't forget how few people know anything about science, any more than those who do know some and insist that biological sex is a continuum.
It's like global ergotism.
We live in a truth and validity free world where belief filtered perception is a person's belief in what is truth.
When President Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally change America, it gave me pause. Fundamental change requires destruction of the old. How could someone who loves America as it exists in their perception not view him, and people with the same wish, as wanting to destroy America? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
When the far right wants to nullify the changes that have made the nation more humane, how can people who see these much-needed changes as improvement not view them as wanting to destroy the improved America of their vision? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
A conflict of visions in what is truth and virtue. I could quote the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, "We both have truths, are mine the same as yours?"
This is well-expressed but it distresses me that you leave it at symmetry.
America needs transformation to survive, beginning with getting away from hydrocarbon fuels. The past means inequality, small wondere that some go so far as to say that slavery wasn't so bad. You got three hots and a cot, so what if the master got to sodomize your daughter.
we must not shy away from convictions.
We're better than they are.
I'm going to put this here since it addresses Steve's Commentary topic and could be placed in more than one of the sub threads here.
The culture wars are tribal and politically partisan, something I am known to not care for. The tribes have a checklist of things you must agree with/stand for to maintain good membership status. Those things (issues) often have no relationship and depending on the issue I may tilt in either direction. While you may see more of this or that within selected tribes, they are not monolithic. That is probably truer than we think because people are afraid to speak their minds. Making an example of myself, I have a significant amount of extended family who are devout Christians. While I won't lie about it, I tend to just leave the subject alone because my thoughts on it would be offensive. Why the hell would I do that with family. I am in no way unique which is why I think that is a valid example.
Why did I mention proxy wars? They pertain to the two issues that I think make other issues equivalent to a pimple on an elephant's ass.
WAR: China is preparing for war in every possible way. We will be at war with them, and they will defeat us because we have foolishly blunted the armory and depleted the treasury. A bipartisan disaster.
FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Omnibus spending bills. In the dark of night without possibility of being read and understood our politicians sign on to massive debt for things that could never pass in the light of day. They give all of America the finger as they seal our fate with mockery of our so-called democracy. There will be a day of reconning, and it will be the collapse of the nation. It would be easy to blame the Ds but they do it with the willing cooperation of the Rs.
That's the politicians and the inevitable doom that they bring, but the culture war is taking place with the general population. During the course of my lifetime, I've been a dirty job trailer trash guy at the edge of town in the south. A clean job in a nice house guy. Lived around and befriended the uneducated and highly educated. The hard left & right and those in between. I know them and I can sit peacefully at a table with any of them and it is probably at the root of my disdain for partisan culture wars. I don't despise people for holding ideas that I don't agree with. People can be influenced with nuance and more complete information, unless they are hard core left or right.
Debate about which tribe's assholes are worse is the culture war Steve is seeking to dismantle. It gets us nowhere useful unless we want to go to war and kill each other. That would get us somewhere. Somewhere no rational person wishes to be.
Who's worse? Which issue? I don't wish to participate in that.
Aside: I ran across an utterly horrifying movie from last year called "Soft Quiet." Six women, all but two of them strangers, gather in a church meeting room with pastries and pie . All very supportive and feminine and lots of hugs and self-deprecating laughter with tons of woman talk.
Then they start talking and it's all bigotry over multiculturalism; the organizer uncovers the cherry pie she'd baked and it has a swastika cut into the crust. The first to introduce herself gripes over a Latina woman getting a promotion she wanted.
It ends up being, by virtue of complete believability, one of the most frightening movies I have ever seen.
Relevant to this thread,
I understand your reverence for the achievement of Mr. Davis and your hope that this can be widened. Our disagreement on the feasibility of this is something I don't need to reiterate. I have great respect for your goals and your skills in trying to achieve them but I despair.
You are a gifted writer and a subtle thinker and more than once I've been envious of the craft with which you make your points. The next word is "but."
But. Suppose you were to write a supremely persuasive essay that anyone on the other side of the culture wars would be unable to dismiss, would be compelled to consider your arguments, and would not be given any excuses to tune you out. What would happen?
The moment he discerned that you weren't of his tribe, he would stop reading, give a little shake of his head, and forget everything he had just read. You would not reach anyone. The only way to reach someone on the other side is one at a time, a long and patient effort, with the establishment of respect and trust, and even then the chance of progress is very slim. Yes, it can be done and if you devote the rest of your life to it you might reach a half dozen people.
I think that given your talents at this kind of persuasion that you should work in more fertile ground, certainly not Twitter where hate speech is not only tolerated but expected. Where Musk has his remaining staff actively promote the ugly side of the culture wars. Medium was once such a place but is no longer I don't know how you've remained on there talking about gender ideology but it only takes one squeal of "transphobia" to get banned. There are probably better forums but they don't have the readership.
Even then, don't set your hopes too high.
I abhor the language of violence and war but I don't see any potential for reconciliation. The divisions are widening and both sides are overrepresented by their worst.
And, given that we do have a war, one of outlooks more than of weapons but with no shortage of weapons either, it is imperative that we win, that as one person put it, conservatives are crushed like bugs.
Because if they prevail they will kill you for being black, they will kill me for being gay, and they will kill the natural kingdom and in less than a century our world will be the eighth dead planet in the solar system.
And I am willing to compromise a lot to prevent that.
And there you have it.
"The moment he discerned that you weren't of his tribe, he would stop reading, give a little shake of his head, and forget everything he had just read. You would not reach anyone."
No, this isn't true....well, let me be clear and say that of course, some people do exactly as you say. But some don't. Quite regularly I'm told that I've given somebody food for thought. Or that they've seen an issue on a way they hadn't seen it before. I suspect that many more have similar thoughts but don't write a comment telling me so.
And, of course, I'm just one person. There are lots of other people out there doing the same thing in various ways. And lots of others who need to see people speaking up before they find the courage to do the same. Moving the Overton window is a slow, painstaking process. Especially if you're trying to move it to a sensible middle ground instead of just tossing it between extremes. And it takes lots of people, chipping away at the insanity.
All that said, yes, I understand your point. Twitter certainly isn't going to become my primary medium for conversation or persuasion. As I said, I have lots of reasons for increasing my Twitter usage. And given Musk's antics, who knows if Twitter will even be around in a year or two!
"And lots of others who need to see people speaking up before they find the courage to do the same. Moving the Overton window is a slow, painstaking process. Especially if you're trying to move it to a sensible middle ground instead of just tossing it between extremes."
On some further thought I am going to disagree with you here. The big social changes start incremental and then there is a sudden shift in state. This is the nature of chaos theory. Which you can read about on your own time. But the essence is that there are abrupt transitions.
The most recent example that comes to mind is same sex marriage. The numbers shifted around a little, got a little better here and a little worse there, and then suddenly overnight to oppose SSM suddenly seemed absurd. Opposition remained but the majority was ready to see the opposition as nothing but bigotry. Opposition remains and the Catholic nutjobs on the SCOTUS will try to reverse it while Roberts remains tranquilized into detachment. The point is that there was an unexpected and largely unpredictable shift from "weirdos support SSM" to "weirdos oppose SSM."
But this was after a long and fairly steady movement in the right direction. In our contemporary culture wars, do we have that?
No. Things are moving in the wrong direction. Ideas like Christian nationalism that would have gotten an FBI infiltration a generation ago are becoming mainstream. They have the quiet support of many in law enforcement and the military. The flip that seems to be approaching is actual fascism, not the overused hyperbole but the real thing.
There is talk in some state governments of banning not just same-sex but *interracial* marriage. We're going in the wrong direction.
"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦-𝘴𝘦𝘹 𝘣𝘶𝘵 *𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭* 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘨𝘦."
Do I have vain hope that such talk will bring about a sudden positive shift in resistance to such ideas?
It will be like everything else.
Most people will recoil in horror. Some people will act as if any other position is weakness and capitulation to "PC."
"Quite regularly I'm told that I've given somebody food for thought. Or that they've seen an issue on a way they hadn't seen it before. "
I've gotten the same thing. But I can count the number of minds I've actually changed in 25 years on the fingers of one hand. And all of them were intellectually honest and reflective people. Attributes that define very few indeed.
I hate to sound like I am counseling futility but the only thing that seems to reliably unite opposing sides is a threat from outside both. Remember in the weeks after 9/11 we seemed to drop our tribalism for a while? Well, it was a lot less intense then than now. And that didn't last long.
And any threat powerful enough to overcome the MAGA/Woke division is not likely to be survivable.
"As I said, I have lots of reasons for increasing my Twitter usage."
Maybe you like a challenge, but honestly this is just over the top for me. You know it's a cloaca and you know that the site is deliberately intended for unfinished thoughts.
I could mention a video I saw that this reminds me of but it would groß everyone out.