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‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

11–20 of 674 posts

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#11
post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

> mostly-shared ethnic background

America at this point has little shared ethnic background. It’s largest states are minority-majority for example and that will be the case everywhere soon as minority babies are already the majority.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#12
post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

Interestingly the US actually does not actually have an official natrual language.

[deleted]

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#13
post #8
post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

Fox news only exists as a balance to the left-lean of most other corporate media. And since it's existed, the others have felt free to embrace their partisanship more deeply. As a result, today, CNN is just as partisan as Fox.

I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread media attention by the so-called left-leaning media. The Whitewater story never amounted to anything, the grounds for invading Iraq were all lies, and the Clinton e-mail story lead to nothing while Trump's ties led to a long-running investigation that led to jail time for several members of Trump's campaign.

If Biden wins, then by spring, the leading story in the "left-leaning" media will be that we need to cut social spending to combat the deficit. The deficit miraculously stops being a story whenever a Republican is in the White House, and becomes a major priority whenever a Democrat is in the White House. Just because people in the media think that racism is bad doesn't make the media left-leaning.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the US actually does not actually have an official natrual language.

Neither does most of the UK (the exception is Welsh in Wales).

Scotland appears to have "official languages" used by the Scottish Government:

https://www.gov.scot/policies/languages/

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#15

> It found that there was actually widespread agreement in the UK over topics such as gender equality and climate change – often seen as culture war issues. I really don't think The Guardian understands what they're talking about here. The so called "culture war" is about Marxist ideology. The people denying climate change are fringe wackos of this tiny minority who fight culture wars.

The proportion in the UK who are any kind of Marxist is vanishingly small. The extremist pushing "culture wars" do like to argue it's about "Marxist ideology", but what they paint as Marxist rarely has anything whatsoever to do with Marxism.

EDIT: It's fascinating to see the votes on this change without anyone even trying to make an argument to justify the claim it has to do with Marxism. I'd love to see one of those downvoters explain exactly how it has anything to do with Marxism. I'm not holding my breath.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#16
post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

The oversensitivity over race and cultural heritage in the U.S. is at a point where talking about having a "shared ethnic background" might well be a stretch. It's hard to see the difference compared to a place like Belgium, although the latter has been dealing with it for longer, and found unique ways to cope with their situation.

The race-based division in the U.S. also heavily reinforces differences in culture that would be seen as purely class-based elsewhere, and thus mitigated in many ways - we see this when broadly pro-social cultural values end up associated with so-called "Whiteness" in the U.S., it's hard not to see that as a problem.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox news only exists as a balance to the left-lean of most other corporate media. And since it's existed, the others have felt free to embrace their partisanship more deeply. As a result, today, CNN is just as partisan as Fox.

I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread m…

> simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia

The investigation also failed to find sufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump administration with collusion. At this point Russiagate is thoroughly debunked.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#18
post #6
post #5

Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant) but those are not the lines on which the culture w…

"there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News yet" The Daily Mail?

The Sun, Express, etc are probably worse (I'm not condoning the Daily Mail with this statement)

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox news only exists as a balance to the left-lean of most other corporate media. And since it's existed, the others have felt free to embrace their partisanship more deeply. As a result, today, CNN is just as partisan as Fox.

I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread m…

Indeed, both parties want to exploit the people who do actual work. The champagne socialists of FAANG, the New York Times etc. want to preserve inflated academic salaries and cozy bullshit jobs, the right wants to preserve existing ownership and rent seeking.

Two sides of the same coin.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#20
post #4

I like the More in Common Project. But it overlooks the disproportionate representation of the extremists in our institutions. This happened at my alma matter earlier this year: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator... . They also voted to abandon entrance exams at my magnet high school: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4979 It’s not comforting to know that only a tiny minority of people a…

I wasn't able to find the details about this course the faculty participated in but I wouldn't read too much into it. For some of these you must describe yourself as a racist and apologise for your evil. Suggesting that perhaps you're not that bad means it's even worse than we feared.

I don't think someone who really was a "gatekeeper of white supremacy" would describe themselves that way.

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