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The culture war is killing us [video]

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Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#91

Post by watwut »

Igelau wrote: post #83
bluefirebrand wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not popular to point out, but a lot of the divisiveness is designed to keep wealth inequality from ever really being talked about. It's to keep the lower classes fighting each other over less important stuff, sometimes downright silly stuff.

My wife and I were just arguing about Adam Toledo, and had boiled it down to which frame within a single second of video matters the most. Obviously we were getting nowhere. How on earth could you get the truth out of that? Then somehow we got onto "wait, why are so many people in desperate circumstances?" That's the real issue, but the polluted discussion around it wants to be able to divide into Frame 1 and Frame 2…

> Now we have three different truths to lash out at each other with while no one is paying attention to root causes.

But I don't think this is true. There is plenty of writing about root causes, plenty of writing about reforms. I know, because I was interested in adjacent topics a while ago and it did not took that much effort to find it.

I am here talking about journalists, lawyers and generally activists pushing for larger reforms and what they perceive as root causes.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#92

Post by jrsj »

pmoriarty wrote: post #33
Consultant32452 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade ago the activists were occupying Wall Street. Now they’re all aligned with the mega corps and the fighting is about semantics of how we say that lives matter. I believe this was deliberate. That doesn’t mean I necessarily believe some evil people twirled their mustaches to plot evil in secret, but is rather the result of many organizations working unison towards common goals without the necessity of central…

"A decade ago the activists were occupying Wall Street. Now they’re all aligned with the mega corps and the fighting is about semantics of how we say that lives matter" Completely different issues. They are aligned against discrimination, but divided on economic inequality.

But why are the aligned on this issue now when they never were before? Because after the Great Recession people were beginning to align against them outside of their predetermined demographic categories. These narratives and the way we talk about them don’t arise organically, they’re constructed and pushed out intentionally to serve a political purpose.

Less than 20 years ago the same people unanimously told us that the war in Iraq was good and necessary. I don’t think these institutions and in many cases the exact same people have suddenly become interested in doing the right thing.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#93

Post by teekert »

I see it in the smartest people I know. I live in the Netherlands but I have a "CNN addicted" colleague. And I like to tease her and say things like: "You know people want to carry guns so the government does not have a monopoly on violence, so when you feel like you got a leader (as you do now [this was Trump era]) that really does not have the consent of the governed anymore, you may not be powerless." Sure, society changed, we can have a dialogue.." And it would just end with her almost frothing at the mouth about how she could never have dinner with a Republican. And than I would think that she is so intelligent, and a scientist, imagine how bad it is back in her home country. Or, maybe it has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe it was also her way to feel even smarter, obviously there are so many stupid people that just don't see how it is. It's fascinating. And I see the echoes in Dutch colleagues as well, although they are not so worried about their country going to hell, so they are less emotional.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#94

Post by equality_1138 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #33
Consultant32452 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade ago the activists were occupying Wall Street. Now they’re all aligned with the mega corps and the fighting is about semantics of how we say that lives matter. I believe this was deliberate. That doesn’t mean I necessarily believe some evil people twirled their mustaches to plot evil in secret, but is rather the result of many organizations working unison towards common goals without the necessity of central…

"A decade ago the activists were occupying Wall Street. Now they’re all aligned with the mega corps and the fighting is about semantics of how we say that lives matter" Completely different issues. They are aligned against discrimination, but divided on economic inequality.

Completely different issues, maybe. Notice that the major media outlets started pumping stories about racism right about the time of the occupy protests. This is how politically motivated segregation works in general - make the commoners fight each other instead of against their oppressors.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#95

Post by jtsiskin »

titzer wrote: post #73
im3w1l wrote: post #20

The culture war isn't killing us - the other side is. War may suck but it beats being massacred.

If you wrote this ironically, then it is masterful. If not, it's tragic irony, as just got massacred by the other "side".

Yes, this made me laugh. “No, no way there is any issue with decisiveness, identify politics, or generalization of groups. The only issue is in fact with group B.”

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#96

Post by cassepipe »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #32
anigbrowl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner and manger of the The Hill, Jimmy finkelstein, is a friend of Trump's, whose wife held an unpaid position as adviser to Melania trump in 2017-18 ( a fact not mentioned to Hill readers). Given that the outlet publishes a large number of libertarian and conservative op-eds, your claim seems at odds with reality, and is not supported by anything other than vague generalities about demography.

Trump was a New York democrat most of his life. His platform had a lot in common with Bernie Sanders. To name some areas of overlap: strict border control, ending the wars, and renegotiating trade deals. Trump increased restrictions on guns. Trump was even open to socialized healthcare but the republicans wouldn’t have supported that.

"Trump was even open to socialized healthcare but the republicans wouldn’t have supported that."

It makes it sound like he would just tone down on socialized healthcare whereas in fact, he just waged a war on Obamacare.

Anyways I never expected him to be consistent.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#97

Post by matkoniecz »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #19
GingerMidas wrote: post #8

A FPTP two party system almost necessitates culture war, since by definition if you're for one party you're against the other. At the end of the day you're forced to pick a side. The anchors are suggesting you ignore that eventuality.

I think moving away from First Past the Post voting systems is a good thing, but it is not the panacea people are hoping it will be. Just because people can vote for viable third parties does not mean that polarization will go down. It’s possible that more parties may increase divisions.

For specific example: Poland has FPTP system with viable third parties (somehow) and we still have strong polarization, divisiveness and culture war.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#98

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

speedplane wrote: post #88
bad_username wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality is not a problem in itself. Poverty or theft is.

> Wealth inequality is not a problem in itself. Poverty or theft is. Inequality leads to power centers. Power centers lead to systemic corruption. Systemic corruption is a problem. So yes, extreme inequality is itself a problem.

> Inequality leads to power centers

Yep, though I'd flip it: Concentrations of power create opportunities for wealth inequality. Or they're not even different things. Whenever something is centralized (Google), or a chokepoint is created (Suez, Panama), or network effects stabilize a monopoly position, then the people who control those contested single points of failure become wealthy; their wealth is their control of those resources (e.g., Bezos' shares in Amazon). Prices are Lagrange multipliers; they're forces impinging on a constraint (e.g., limited land in SV). Whereas systems that are more local and distributed create less concentration of power and wealth. Unfortunately they also tend to be less efficient. Where they win is in redundancy and robustness. I suppose this means that if you want more of the latter, then you need more chaotic conditions. Which might be even worse.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#99

Post by [deleted] »

lend000 wrote: post #64
salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

People actively self-select for this type of tribalism. Be it sports or politics, it gives average people the feeling of identity and purpose. There was a brief period in the mid 20th century when centralized communication was far superior to decentralized communication, and the populous hadn't had much time to apply selective pressure toward more divisive media, but even then, you had McCarthyism, Jim Crow, pro-war/…

[deleted]

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#100

Post by inglor_cz »

clcaev wrote: post #10

I believe the cultural wars focus the population's attention on issues that divide us, rather than issues that would unite: concentration of power, gutting of main street, etc. The detachment of our news and media from local civics denies our population practice working together, with real problems, with real consensus. Instead the polarization is on more abstract, national, and intractable concerns -- political spor…

As the late Douglas Adams said:

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish

Inflammatory news and memes very clearly propagate in communities sharing the same language. They can overcome the language barrier (e.g. English to Hungarian), but they usually lose quite a lot of their original potency in the process.

The more people speak English on a proficient enough level, the bigger the pond through which the ripples go. I do not really believe that anyone can carve this pond back into small puddles. Not in the time of the Internet.

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