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A Worsening Culture War

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Re: A Worsening Culture War

#251

Post by disown »

Aunche wrote: post #59
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

"That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about, the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing. Happens to work. You know…

Virtually everything about that Carlin quote is completely wrong. There is no business in the world outside of news media (which includes the author) that makes or preserves money from the middle class fighting with the lower class. They'd rather the power classes get over their differences so they can make money off them. The top 1% in US pay more taxes in taxes than the bottom 90%. Before you ask, I do think that t…

> Before you ask, I do think that they should be paying more rather than less.

Maybe the 99% should have more wealth and income so that they could pay more taxes instead?

The mantra about wealth and income being about merit/hard work/etc, is partially true. A lot of wealth and income has to do with laws/privileges/etc.

The 1% paying more in taxes really means that they'd taken more of the wealth/income. So I don't think that's the solution.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#253

Post by burntoutfire »

krebs_liebhaber wrote: post #86
Roritharr wrote: post #9

The craziest part of this american culture war, to me, is that it seems to spill over to the rest of the world. My sister and I, living in Germany, have a very loving relationship, but we absolutely disagree on almost everything political and basically are stuck in our seperate bubbles. This gave us an interesting observation: 5 years ago it took us about two to three months, to have a fight over something that start…

America is colonizing the rest of the developed world. There are probably at least a billion people worldwide (mostly in Europe, but also among Third-World elites) who act American and are invested in America's issues despite never having set foot in the country. The internet has exacerbated this greatly. Just look at the BLM protests in Poland and Japan... or the Amerikaner "digital nomads" who are able to live in f…

> Just look at the BLM protests in Poland and Japan...

What BLM protests in Poland? I live there and it's first time I'm hearing of them.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#254

Post by burntoutfire »

notriskfree wrote: post #147
remarkEon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The Cold War is over.

Exactly; when there was a clash of civilizations between a free west and a repressive soviet union; it made sense that Russia was the enemy. Now it is just a conflict between different European powers with varying levels of dysfunctional democracy and corrupt elites. So what is the basis for hating the Russians now; racism?

Russia's whole political culture is the one of conquest. Their ambition was pretty much always to conquer as much of Europe and Asia as possible, and the mindset haven't changed in XXI century - neither among elites nor among common folk. They're still pretty much a typical XIX century empire, they didn't yet go the shift to focusing on economic domination that UK, Germany, US, Japan went through since.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#255

Post by moralsupply »

Maybe it's time to realize that the "culture war" is just the realization that we're all living inside bubbles of information, and that there's no way to reconcile that with a centralized "democratic" government ruling people on the basis of narratives and coercion.

We're most likely heading towards a society of private laws, but the path to that is likely to be very painful.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#256

Post by standyro »

mywittyname wrote: post #157
porpoise wrote: post #14

The cause of culture war, as with all wars, is at bottom boredom, and the cure is to find intrinsically motivating pursuits that engage you so much that you look upon the culture warrior the same way you look upon those who spend all day playing videos games.

I see the cause as social inequality. If people felt like they were treated fairly, they wouldn't want to risk marching on the streets. We don't see protests when the internet goes down; we see them with people are killed by the police.

I'm not sure about that.

In Los Angeles (where I live) the people out in the streets in July during the pandemic protesting and burning cop cars were almost all unemployed young people, a veritable cross-section of all ethnicities in the city.

It's not just about risk. Most protestors had little or nothing to lose or risk anything to be out there.

Clearly, the fact that young people don't have dignified jobs and nothing to do but sit on social media all day and watch viral videos about obscene police violence is the fuel to the fire in this situation. I'm not saying police reform doesn't deserve a reckoning in the US, but there's definitely a correlation in internet use and protests.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#257

Post by dragonwriter »

standyro wrote: post #256
mywittyname wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the cause as social inequality. If people felt like they were treated fairly, they wouldn't want to risk marching on the streets. We don't see protests when the internet goes down; we see them with people are killed by the police.

I'm not sure about that. In Los Angeles (where I live) the people out in the streets in July during the pandemic protesting and burning cop cars were almost all unemployed young people, a veritable cross-section of all ethnicities in the city. It's not just about risk. Most protestors had little or nothing to lose or risk anything to be out there. Clearly, the fact that young people don't have dignified jobs and noth…

> In Los Angeles (where I live) the people out in the streets in July during the pandemic protesting and burning cop cars were almost all unemployed young people

[citation needed]

And even if that was established, “unemployed” is often an axis of social inequity, too.

Funny that you think the problem is the internet.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#258

Post by watwut »

eplanit wrote: post #53
moomin wrote: post #2

This thing is phrased in a really weird way. First: "The left believe the right are dumb and don't have values" followed by "Evidence the left are correct" then "They're as bad as each other".

The Right looks at the Left and finds them misguided and stupid. The Left looks at the Right and finds them evil.

Conservative people think "left" iz evil and disgusting too.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#259

Post by malloryerik »

michaelt wrote: post #154
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If American politics are straining your relationship with your sister and you are not even American, sorry to put it like this but only you two have yourselves to blame. Next time your sister brings the topic up say "yeah right" and move on. This. America is not actively shoving its politics into our conversations, we're doing that ourselves (I'm from Germany as well, btw.). Yes, talking about whatever social shena…

> America is not actively shoving its politics into our conversations, we're doing that ourselves (I'm from Germany as well, btw.). I read a book a few years ago that made an interesting point about cultural exports like TV shows (the book was written pre-youtube and pre-netflix). If you're a small country (with your own language, culture and traditions) and America has 30x the population of your country, films and T…

Maybe Netflix is in part compensating for this by giving American-style budgets to productions elsewhere? It seems they have a goal of making a good show or movie from anywhere a source of global revenue.

Re: A Worsening Culture War

#260

Post by dkdk8283 »

RichardCA wrote: post #232
throwaway936482 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the BLM rhetoric I the UK is largely pushed by a bunch of (usually white) middle class students with a hard on for Kimberlie Crenshaw and an utter ignorance of the work done over the last seventy years by black and ethnic minority British anti racists to tackle the racism in British society that arises from our history as a colonising nation. Ironically by privileging black American narratives over thos…

The average American doesn't even know who Kimberle Crenshaw is. For most of us BLM just means waiting for the next police shooting to show up in the news and on social media (because someone captured a video recording) and hoping our own nearby community isn't involved. Law enforcement in America is a web of federal, state, and local (city or county) laws and no one knows how any individual police officer is trained…

In my opinion American BLM is racist in of itself. There needs to be changes but popularizing the polarities of the topic only serves the ad driven model of media which supports it.
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