[Scotty]

Wow, this thread filled up with rhetoric again fast.  I'm not going to step in, yet, but please take a moment before you post to make sure it's not too inflammatory going on.

[Luis Dias]

I'd never argue that the left hasn't been winning many fights in the culture front in the past 60 years, to say that therefore there isn't a "war" is ludicrous, ridiculous. Of course there's a war, and it's being won by the left. However, this idea that the right hasn't been winning anything whatsoever in cultural terms is... just wrong. Bringing Cthulhu to the analysis as if the shift has been overwhelming is just cherry on cake (albeit a tasteful one).

Only by positing some sort of tautological idea wherein all the modifications = leftism and all that is no more = rightism can one arrive at such patently absurd conclusions, but so is the illusion of the sort of mentality that has been bred in many places: "The only way is forward, the only positive movement is progressivism, the word advanced is just a qualititative analysis on how much to the left a certain society is". It's tautology of the highest degree. All these are truths, anyone who disagrees is a bigot and should be dismissed (how easy it is to fight like this, by declaring victory by fiat).

I could give you plenty of examples, wherein leftism has been defeated, namely the rise of individualism, the rise of "self-made-men" mentality, the "greed is good" culture that is bred in many work places, the complete dismantlement of the unions, the defeat of socialism against privatization and commoditization of every aspect of our lives - and don't even think of bringing the complaint that these are just "economic" issues, for they are first and foremost cultural ones - but I could also bring about the huge defeat of the sexual liberation movement, wherein in every aspect of modern culture, sex is still regarded as forbidden and taboo, while violence, war and murder are regarded as cool and exciting (movies, games, books, whatever). The defeat of leftist ideals both in the middle east and the feedback this has on America itself (the skyrocketing rise of the military complex, the privatization of armies, etc., etc.)...

I can go on like this forever, but I think you get the point: All of these issues are always being changed, are always part of the political and cultural struggles we face in the present and that will define the future. In light of all that is historic, to present the case that the Left is some kind of invincible Cthuluh still blows my mind. Yes, if you look at the really focal issue of gay liberation, yes, it was a complete leftist victory (one that I applaud), but that's just a very small sample of reality.

[Grizzly]

Okay, honestly. What. What is it with war rhetoric in cultural debates.

[The E]

My problem with calling this whole thing a War (and using War-themed rhetoric, "battle against the SJWs!", "Fight the evil white males!" etc etc) is that Wars are generally assumed to have winners and defined ends.
Culture shifts are not a zero-sum game and they're certainly never ending, therefore calling them wars and acting as if they are indeed wars is not a healthy way of dealing with them.

[Bobboau]

It's because it mobalises your people, that's why it gets used.

[Luis Dias]

@The_E

I disagree, they *are* indeed a zero-sum game, in cultural terms. Multiculturalism is incompatible with monoculturalism, one has to die in order for the other to prevail and flourish. What you can say is perhaps that we, as human beings, are all better if we shift from one paradigm to another, but if the paradigm has changed, that means that one of them died out, i.e., has lost.

Where I *do* agree is how the debates usually foster around personalities instead of "ideas" and that this has been perhaps poisonous. I totally get the "drop the war rethoric, this is getting us nowhere" (but where are you going with such a hurry?), but making euphemistic words for it is just something I'm not fond of doing.

One is reminded of the quote that said that great minds discuss ideas, etc., etc. But recently I'm not so sure of this. We are not, as libertarians or objectivists would say, "individual beings". We are social beings, and the people "outside" of us are somewhat like an extension of our own beings. It *does* matter what people say (hell, if it didn't, all these "SJWs" that are always concerned about shirts and jokes wouldn't even raise an eyebrow anywhere in the world), it does matter how people behave and how we deal with each other.

[The E]

I disagree, they *are* indeed a zero-sum game, in cultural terms. Multiculturalism is incompatible with monoculturalism, one has to die in order for the other to prevail and flourish. What you can say is perhaps that we, as human beings, are all better if we shift from one paradigm to another, but if the paradigm has changed, that means that one of them died out, i.e., has lost.

Yeah, but none of them ever does actually die, right? No matter how complete a victory may seem, there's always enough people of the losing side left over to restart the flames a couple years (or, in internet times, a couple months) later. That isn't war, it's sea tides; and just like you can't fight the tide and claim victory when the water level sinks, you can't fight these cultural battles and declare victory when noone on the internet disagrees with you.

[General Battuta]

It's because it mobalises your people, that's why it gets used.

Yes

[Grizzly]

It's because it mobalises your people, that's why it gets used.

But then you get this notion that mobilisation is even neccesary . It's this whole notion that debates are to be destructive that rubs me.

[Bobboau]

No, it's because people operate from a position of them being right. If you are right and another group disagrees with you then they are wrong. If that group is making changes then they are destroying the world, working against making the world better. if you don't do something those horrible wrong people are going to ruin everything. We need to do something to stop them. This is a war.

This is one of the reasons I particularly dislike the term "Progressive". The people who you are opposed to are trying to make the world a better place too, They just have a different definition of 'better', from their perspective the "Progressives" are the ones throwing the world into darkness. Labeling yourself as The Good Guys only serves to exacerbate humanity's already strong predilection for tribalism.

[General Battuta]

For better or worse, these tactics get results. Politics and public discourse aren't about mutually respectful exchange of ideas. They're about manipulating mechanisms of status, fear, and emotional violence.

[Bobboau]

yeah, the methods that work are the methods used by the groups that win.

[Luis Dias]

I disagree, they *are* indeed a zero-sum game, in cultural terms. Multiculturalism is incompatible with monoculturalism, one has to die in order for the other to prevail and flourish. What you can say is perhaps that we, as human beings, are all better if we shift from one paradigm to another, but if the paradigm has changed, that means that one of them died out, i.e., has lost.

Yeah, but none of them ever does actually die, right? No matter how complete a victory may seem, there's always enough people of the losing side left over to restart the flames a couple years (or, in internet times, a couple months) later. That isn't war, it's sea tides; and just like you can't fight the tide and claim victory when the water level sinks, you can't fight these cultural battles and declare victory when noone on the internet disagrees with you.

In wars rarely any side completely dies out (it's called genocide if they do), and keeping with that metaphor, it's also true that given time, the losing side might want to "get back" at the victors. So even here the word is not failing us. I get it that you don't like the wording, but the fight is real, it's just a lot less bloody. It's a war of ideas. Some ideas were indeed veemently defeated. Some are still up surviving in the memetic air despite all the beatings they got. Some adapted to survive, others have not. It is in this darwinian sense that I word it as a "war".

But then you get this notion that mobilisation is even neccesary . It's this whole notion that debates are to be destructive that rubs me.

The idea that it is done to just mobilize is nonsense. Labeling something or someone is merely a tactic, a psychopathic memetic weapon to be used? Perhaps it is, but then you should apply this logic to everything and realise that *all sides* (and all people) do this all the time. Hell, language itself is labels followed by labels. The idea of Ridicule is deeply connected with labeling. Are we saying that Ridicule has no place now? Fire Jon Stewart now! (Wait, he has done that already).

This idea that "if everyone just behaved nicely and stopped using rethorical weapons, it would be so nicer" drives me up the wall. Yes, of course this is true, but it doesn't cut to the throat of the communication problems, which is more an issue of how language is so limited at providing a clear exposition of one's own subjectivity regarding any issue, and how we are just trying to get things accross in such crude manners (it's all we are allowed to do given the tools we have), it's no wonder people will be offended anyway *despite* any different means of conversation. People do try again and again, they plough through. If someone is too worried about niceties and politically correct manners, they will eventually just shut up and let the conversation to those who don't. I see those people too, and I respect their decision to do so. I choose the mud, I choose the trenches. They are limited in scope, but at least it's a lot more commited to the real.

[Bobboau]

if everyone else would act nice, I could win by not acting nice.

[General Battuta]

I mean it seems perfectly plausible that everything would get better if everyone were determinedly compassionate and kind (although 'nice' often extends to silencing anger and outrage at angry, outrageous things).

The problem is that this is like asking everyone to cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma. It's very vulnerable to defectors!

I think grappling in the trenches is mostly a waste of energy, but that's just my personal call after a few years down there.

if everyone else would act nice, I could win by not acting nice.

wow, beaten and more succinct

[Grizzly]

My issue with it is not the niceness. **** niceness! It's rather that, in order to divulge in such a rhetoric, there needs to be a lot of self-delusion and dishonesty. Heck, it shows in your post. The whole "I choose the trenches!" thing which is dishonest. Because you're not fighting a war at all. You're airing your opinion on the internet.

Likewise, the mobilization implies that there is some bogeyman to rally against, the "civil war" implies that the "SJWs" or "Anti-GG" or "Feminazis" form some sort of unified front. But as it happens, they are just groups defined by other people so that they have something to rally against, there's no actual unison there - But there has to be for the rhetoric to succeed, yet the only thing it achieves is that people now tilt at straw windmills. Like GB says, it's a complete waste of energy.

[Luis Dias]

Of course Bobboau, that's the true analysis, I do hold that this "niceness" is something of an illusion, perhaps something that merely exists in the intersticial places of non-power. Whenever a reign of niceness is enacted, psychopaths within such reign just invent new methods of gathering power while still pretensiously "playing nice". Their reign will be far worse (orders of mag) than those who are patently "assholes", for at least everyone can recognize the latter for what they are.

I think grappling in the trenches is mostly a waste of energy, but that's just my personal call after a few years down there.

That is probably true.

e:

Likewise, the mobilization implies that there is some bogeyman to rally against, the "civil war" implies that the "SJWs" or "Anti-GG" or "Feminazis" form some sort of unified front. But as it happens, they are just groups defined by other people so that they have something to rally against, there's no actual unison there - But there has to be for the rhetoric to succeed, yet the only thing it achieves is that people now tilt at straw windmills. Like GB says, it's a complete waste of energy.

Ok, here's my two problems with this paragraph. First, the notion that there's no "actual unison there". Well, I'm sorry but there is. It's an "unified front" of ideas. Of memetic paradigms. Of certain attitudes and preferences. Of a, ahem, culture.

My other problem is a lack of self-awareness. Are you really going to say you never do this kind of thing? Are you really going to testify here that you don't ever label people according to a perception of similar ideas that you recognize in them? Not even in your head or something? I mean, I totally get the danger of over-labeling. People are not determined by labels one impugns at them (and many people do commit that mistake of reducing people to labels), but will you go to the far end and declare you never did this? You know, I have little patience for this kind of pretense righteous sainthood naiveté.

[Mr. Vega]

The culture war as a concept has existed a million times throughtout history, but its modern incarnation was a creation of the Reagan-era Republican Party. After Carter was elected they realized that if you made a direct religious appeal to white evangelical voters you could pick up quite a bit of the vote right away. I think it was with Bush Sr.'s 1992 election campaign - the one where Pat Buchanan coined the term "Culture War" - that it progressed to being an explicit conflict against all liberal values. Its real purpose, of course, was that it made for an excellent distraction from economic issues - every minute you talk about the wicked liberal academia and abortion activists is one you aren't talking about tax cuts to the wealthy and deregulation. It also suited well a party that believed that the really important decisions in a society - ie, the economic ones - should be made by private elites acting according to the rules of the market, rather than the ignorant public. Let them concern themselves with social issues.

Well, that did work. Even if they lost, they won. We got gay marriage but we watched our unions be cut up.

Now you guys have decided to revive a term foistered upon you by conservatives that you should never have taken very seriously, all because some once invisible people are starting to say things that are hurting your feelings. You claimed that you were all for saying women, gays, African Americans, transgender folk, and other minorities a voice in the name of equality, but now that's actually starting to happen some of them are saying things that are making you very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that you're reaching for the same arms the right so recently threw down. "Oh, it's not the real liberals, it's those wicked academics, trying to manipulate society to fit their own twisted ideas!" "It's those goddamn feminazis!" It was bull**** when Pat Buchanan said it, and it's bull**** when you say it. It's gotten to the point where conspiracy theories worthy of a John Birch pamphlet are being repeated seriously, all because some marginalized voices trying to point out some things that you didn't want to see are finally being listened to to a very limited extent. Let their voice be heard - just not yet.

Too much has been learned from the religious right. You enjoyed having an enemy - and now that the RR isn't what they used to be, you decided the parts of the left saying things that hurt your feelings because they dared to point out the enormous problems with even the supposedly liberal elements of culture that are not, in fact, welcoming to them at all could be your new ones. So you've made a new culture war even more rediculous than the old one. Cause you want your ****ing enemy, dammit.

[General Battuta]

Who are you talking to, specifically

[Mr. Vega]

Who are you talking to, specifically

Anyone in this thread who is taking seriously the idea of a culture war involving SJWs - excuse me - "the insane Tea Party of the left". Anyone who uses the term Feminazi and isn't being ironic, because I can't believe that's still a thing.