Russell Howard: There Is NO Culture War

[Frustration]

It's a rather weird truth that the categories of "Conservative" and "Liberal" involve collections of traits that logically don't need to go together but human psychology seems to associate.

Among other things, Conservatives tend to put a big emphasis on personal responsibility - to the point of ignoring external influences - and Liberals tend to put a big emphasis on external influences to the point of ignoring choice and responsibility.

The problem here is that human beings are generally inclined to reject personal responsibility when it comes to themselves making poor choices.

[Riedquat]

Just anyone who takes a overly simple, black and white one extreme or the other view of the world, usually characterised by "anyone who doesn't 100% agree with me is intolerant scum at the other extreme." That's the usual level of discourse these days.

My enemies are folks like DeSantis and Carlson, pushing anti-LGBT+, anti-education, and anti-bodily-autonomy rhetoric/legislation in the USA. If you aren't aligned with THAT garbage, then I have no issues with you.

I don't need to completely agree with someone to have a conversation with them. But there's no point in bothering with people who completely DISagree with me. Especially when the disagreement is whether or not some of my friends have the right to even EXIST in this country.

The problem though is that all too many people appear to lump any disagreement with their position as being the same as that other extreme. This makes them no more open-minded than those they criticise - in terms of tolerance of difference of opinion and empathy towards other opinions there's little to tell between them. In terms of actual opinions there's a lot to tell apart, and one group will frequently be considerably less unpleasant due to being considerably closer to decency (it rarely lies on a part mid-way between two extremes). When you get that sort of behaviour you tend to get a backlash, not from the opposite extreme loonies (although they're always the first to kick up a fuss), but the more reasonable moving a bit towards them in the hope of dragging things a bit closer to the balance. They rarely want to go all the way to the most vocal and unpleasant.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that everything had completely lurched over to your nightmarish extreme (and there have certainly been some disturbing lurches in that direction). What you tend to find there is that people you hitherto very much disagreed with will start moving back from that towards where you want things to go, as they find the diehards have gone too far and they start looking instead towards those they previously scorned to get things back closer to balance.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Desantis is oppositional to the star players of the other side. Which is effectively oppositional to the other side on a systemic level. It’s easy for governors to do that because they aren’t accountable to the party as much as legislative members of the party. They can throw as much fire power on anything as long as they focus on the financial ties of their own region, which falls apart on an operational level in congress. There’s no way mtg’s going to expand her base, and she also has no fiscal credibility to run for president.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It also seems desantis, in going after the trans movement, can focus on the mishaps of identity galvanization (excessive aspects of an otherwise reasonable political movement), but he has no principal position against the general left.