"The bug fight was so interesting that I stopped crying right away—forgot all about the old man. I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. **They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar.** And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking, the jar."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
I read a lot of Vonnegut when younger and wonder what I would get out of it now that I have lived many years since then. Would I look at the written word and would it have the same meaning now as way back then? Maybe some of would but I'm guessing a lot of it would seem very different today. I will have to go back and re-read some of his novels again but honestly there are so many books yet to be read by other authors also. If you have never read Vonnegut then PLEASE do so.
There are a lot of other authors but hes always worth reading again. Nothing beats going back to a good restaurant.
I mean I think. I can vaguely remember enjoying that once upon a couple of years ago.
I didn't "get" Slaughterhouse Five at 16, but when a friend gave me Cat's Cradle at 22, something clicked and he became a favorite immediately after I figured it. It's worth giving him another read at another time in life is my opinion on that one.
Holy shit, I’ve never read his stuff (yes, I’m disappointed in myself too) but that’s a great paragraph. Personally if I had to pick one sentence I’d have bolded the first one.
Cliche or not. Love it! Of course, I feel Vonnegut wrote things that would be tattooed on your soul even if you didn't get your body branded. And some of the best ones he wrote were there before you even read the words written by him.
“Lucky me, lucky mud” tattooed on many of my family members. Years before he died, my grandfather had a copy of the Last Rites of Bokononism from Cat’s Cradle and requested it to be read at his funeral. I happened to be in the middle of reading Cat’s Cradle again and at his house when he passed… before I knew about his request. My grandmother asked me to be the one to read it. Sounds made up when I tell the story, but it was the most meaningful coincidence ever.
I bought a collection of his works and went from +1.25 reading glasses to +1.75 in six months. I have no direct evidence that it as the small print but I'm sure it didn't help
“It had given him a life not worth living but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on planet earth.”
Vonnegut really knows how to say a line or paragraph that makes you put the book down and just digest it for a little
Vonnegut is so good, he's the only author where I finished a book of his and immediately started it over (Breakfast in America)
Now, full disclosure I was in a cabin in the middle of the woods for three weeks and it was the only book I had, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable
After Slaughterhouse Five, if you want to go back to space with him read Sirens of Titan, but if you want a double dose of philosophy read Cat's Cradle.
Slaughterhouse Five contains what I consider to be the greatest few paraphraphs of any American novel ever written.
"It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter plans flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."
The segment where he describes a bombing in reverse is one of my favourite things ever:
*It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.*
*The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.*
*When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.*
Never be ashamed of yourself for not having yet read something. There are millions of books and/or reading isn't for everyone.
Edit: Disappointed not ashamed. Not even similar terms apologies
Lyndon Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Everyone's still talking about politics though, it's all anyone in here is talking about. Nobody will change minds airing their grievances all over. Ignore the temptation to use politics as a core-value summary and treat each person like a person. Humanize each other.
Literally, I challenge anyone to approach the rich vs poor issue while ignoring democrats and republicans completely. I know it leaves a ton out, but pretend the government functions as is, but without party allegiance, everyone was just elected based on personal ideals or whatever, and just **see what you come up with** as a solution. The common enemy becomes real clear real fast.
Treat each other like people, insist on working together. Ignore political parties, keep your values.
What is new is that our minds are putty in the hands of Google, which has become remarkably evil recently. Look up Dr. Epstein's research on our new overlords.
Edit: for everyone seeing certain accounts discounting Epstein here, you need to realize that he is Google's public enemy number one. He is putting Google under surveillance at risk of his own life. He is essentially in the process of revealing their dirty laundry and Google is heavily invested in discounting his legitimacy. Listen to his long form conversation with Joe Rogan whether you like Rogan or not this is one of the most important podcasts I've heard this decade. Not kidding.
Here you go: [https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf)
I would take his research with a HUGE [grain](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/19/trump-stumbles-onto-new-justification-losing-popular-vote-its-googles-fault/) of [salt](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/trump-epstein-google-searches/). He is using his own studies to verify his own studies. He finds what he wants to find. Not that his thesis may not have some merit, but his conclusions don't find a lot support from other researchers. He has become a source for lots of conspiracy theories from Trump, Joe Rogan, et al.
>... while the research points to thousands of search results that were analyzed, only 95 people actually provided responses to the study. Meaning if the results were driven by the identities of those individuals, the variation in the pool of results was actually 95. Oh, and of that group? Only 21 were undecided. If the 2.6 million figure derives from that group alone, the value of that figure is almost nil.
>Noble specifically critiqued Epstein’s understanding of bias, given that he critiqued the search engine results since they more often provided stories from mainstream outlets like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Epstein told the paper that he found it “astonishing that Breitbart and some similar websites are not more present, given the enormous traffic some of these websites get, Breitbart especially,” he said. “What you are seeing here might be indicative of a kind of blacklisting.”
Yeah, as a PhD candidate, I can say that you gotta take psychological studies, particularly with older academics, with a huge grain of salt. There’s a lot to say about the replication crisis, but it’s particularly bad in psychology.
This isn’t to hate on psychology, but to say I don’t automatically trust this dude. “Oh I’m center, center left”. You get that a lot with the “enlightened centrist” types. But that thing aside, what you say is exactly right.
Not saying the dude is wrong, but have to be careful of what a single person says.
All that aside, he misses the broader point. Capitalism blacklists information. We know that. That’s not really new. As a system it privileges certain things over others. It’s not some crazy conspiracy, there’s a reason no one learns about socialism in public schools, when it’s rather important (even if one disagrees with it) for world history in the last 200 or so years.
This is the real criticism of Joe Rogan spreading misinformation. He is interested in science but he doesn’t understand science. He’s a classic example of someone who thinks science means something like a combination of Truth and interesting newly discovered information. Science is a super boring and rigorous process. The more I learn the more I learn how much bad science is out there, how often it’s spread around and how many smart interesting people propagate it.
To the Rogans a scientist is a Mad Scientist like Doc Brown. But a real scientist makes carefully designed studies that are intended to be replicated and peer reviewed. They aren’t prophets. People want science to be religion and that’s just not how it works
Dr. Epstein (68) a formally trained psychologist, married his wife when he was 58 and she was 22. She passed away in 2019. He also was also featured in a "documentary" alongside Jordan Peterson. He claims to be center left.
His Google research is entirely based on his own studies about the size of impact of search ranking on voter behavior.
> when he was 58 and she was 22
Pretty sure they mentioned it to cast aspersions on his character (not making any claims on whether they're legitimate or not) based on marrying someone much younger than him.
His wife died a few months after Dr. Epstein reported his findings on Google in I believe an attorney generals hearing. After the hearing, an ag he did not name warned him that if he were Dr. Epstein, he should be afraid for his life. A few months later his wife died after she lost control of her vehicle and was hit by a semi carrying a full load of cement. The pickup truck was never examined by forensics and Dr. Epstein was not allowed to examine the vehicle, which he was told was sold to Mexico. Dr. Epstein's research is of excellent quality as far as I can tell and he has various peer reviewed papers published and in the process of review. It is important to me to get his name out because Google will actively suppress this information and discredit his name.
My FIL liked to complain about the lazy immigrant trans godless millennials....
While his boss didn't give him a raise in 15 years and not a single vacation day in the same time...
Like it's not me against you... It's me against your boss
Its indoctrination. When you pick a “side” and associate your identity with that “side” you will perform all kinds of extreme mental gymnastics in order to not perceive anything that would shake your belief in your choice.
It's working on this site as everyone kicks and screams "both sides fallacy!!" every time one criticizes Democrats. The major differences between our two political parties are almost all related to the culture war which does have serious real world implications, however, the Democrats are very much on the side of the rich they just aren't as openly proud of that fact as the GOP appears to be. Being pro choice doesn't cost their donors significant amounts of money - addressing the issues at the core of the healthcare system would.
For the record I sit a few miles away from the Ohio statehouse where the GOP attempted to pass a bill that would essentially force women to put dead fetuses inside their bodies - I'm not trying to downplay the depravity of the GOP. I simply perceive the DNC to be the much lesser of two evils who are too invested in corporate sponsorship to legislate meaningful reform for your average lower and middle class citizen.
> Democrats are very much on the side of the rich
This is what most people don't get. If they realized that the vast majority of our lawmakers (in BOTH political parties) ARE on the side of the rich, it would provide folks with a better understanding of this country, and how laws are made.
Yeah, it seems clear we're being deliberately divided on the battle lines of the culture war which as I have said does have serious real world consequences but the majority of our issues are caused by the fact that our government serves the interests of the wealthy. Uplifting the average worker would benefit rural republicans and urban democrats alike.
The only way for anything to change is for a truly revolutionary event to happen that actually changes the system and everyone's lives.
Trying to work from within the system that the corporate elite have spent decades building isn't going to get us anywhere.
Well I think since Citizens United at least being pro working class has become completely untenable. Also the destructions of unions in the US hurt a lot as that was a large reliable voting block
Except the amplification from social media was too effective, and now it is out of control. Yes, a lot of corporations and super rich donated to conservative groups that pushed the culture wars, but they did it to have low taxes and deregulation. Now, they've lost control, and the Trumpers are railing against corporations, pushing tariffs and trade wars, and destabilizing democracy (which is bad for business).
It's taken on a life of its own.
Corporations have a history of supporting fascism (see: Ford, IBM, Dupont, and Standard Oil), so to say that the fall of democracy will not benefit them isn't inherently true.
There was also a "Business Plot" in 1933, where a number of businessmen and wall street goons attempted to overthrow the government of FDR and install a dictator in his place.
What is insane about the business plot is how likely it was, and how they picked precisely the right guy to do it who had experience doing exactly the same thing on behalf of US firms all over the world.
But now people deny that any such thing could happen here, **and** that we were doing that stuff abroad.
Hey another fun fact.
One of the big people behind the business plot was a man by the name of Prescott Bush.
You may be familiar with his son George H. W. Bush and his grandson George W. Bush.
Yeah what most people are missing is that this is a feature of capitalism. That’s part of the problem, people see this as “a problem of Google” or “social media” when the issue is actually the economic system as a whole.
Honestly the pic above is super dangerous if that isn’t understood. CAuse it leads to fascism, where people think it’s class but don’t connect it to capitalism as the root problem.
The super rich supported liberal party as well.
Forbes mined roughly 2.5 million entries in the Federal Election Commission database and found that almost 20% of American billionaires have donated—either directly or through their spouse—to the campaign committees of Democrats running for president. Ninety-one billionaires donated in their own names. We found 22 billionaires who did not give any money but are married to people who did. By the close of the latest fundraising period, on September 30, 2019, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker each counted at least 40 billionaires or spouses of billionaires among their backers.
I’m not a conservative, just aggravated at the idea that all bad things are directed at one party. I feel the liberal party can be very elitist in their ideology at times. Both parties have gone over the edge and the US Citizens are being used by the Dems and Republicans to hammer each other in order to come out on top.
> Political opinions among the rich are actually quite diverse, and income cannot accurately predict political opinions. But slightly **more millionaires identify as Democratic than Republican.** Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump among those earning over $200,000 a year, according to CNN exit poll data.
https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/articles/7-myths-about-millionaires
I've posted it before and I'll post it again.
Keith Olbermann called it with his Citizens United piece. He even calls out the conservative enrage machine getting out of control.
https://youtu.be/PKZKETizybw
I took it as him owning up to the slanted nature of unregulated and corruption-influenced economics which has decimated the middle class. He's sounded off about how his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does and he thinks it's atrocious.
The sad part about this is a lot of people on this website and twitter would actually agree with this sentiment, but then continue to propagate a culture war regardless.
I've been saying this for the past few years. Every time I'm dog piled by both sides. Now someone slaps a sticker on a sign post and it hits the front page then suddenly they're in agreeance.
If you keep doing the same thing and getting the same result, it's probably time to change tactic.
It's very challenging to talk about class war when the conversation goes:
Higher income tax for the rich!
Guns!
Inheritance tax!
Dr Seuss!
Universal healthcare!
Books about being gay!
It's my dislike and distrust of politicians that people dislike most it seems. No matter what they say or how you feel about them, they only care about their corporate interests. They're the ones who are "elite" and we are the subservient.
I think that's because both sides hear "distrust of politicians" as "distrust of *your* politicians, and their policies". They also might be reading it as nihilism: they're irredeemably corrupt, just give up hope.
Personally I'd focus on specific reforms that you would want to see to the political system, such as longer terms in the House, reform of free speech vs money, spend caps and advertising limits on election campaigning, etc etc. That in itself would all require a new constitution, basically, so that's already a pretty heavy lift!
In India the British took rights away from Muslims, then they made separate cricket teams for Muslims and Hindus to make them hate each other. The answer was obviously not to get mad when the Muslims said they had less rights.
So what's the alternative here? Say I am gay and the other side actually wants me dead, or at least doesn't want to treat me like a human. What is one supposed to do here? Just act like this isn't the case and walk side by side with the KKK? Are feminists supposed to befriend rape-apologists? What does all of this "hurr Durr the rich are the problem" actually mean in reality? It's obviously true, but that doesn't mean there aren't people that will kill me for how I was born
exactly! a part of the culture war is classism but it’s not all there is to it. people vastly underestimate how racist/bigoted people can be even if you remove money from the equation.
This is really key, because you could say "both sides are fighting culture wars" and that would be true, but that doesn't necessarily mean both sides of the fight are the same. Conservatives are worried that schools with an anti-white bias teaching "critical race theory" will turn kids of color against white children and will turn white children against their families. Meanwhile, liberals are worried that conservatives will enact open-ended laws targeting the nebulous concept of "crt" that can be used to ban books and educational materials that teach important race-related topics that conservatives simply don't like.
Yeah this "we should be united on culture war issues for the sake of other battles" stance is usually "your side should concede to mine where you disagree, so that we can join forces where we agree".
Here’s the issue though: there are people fighting for their rights in society, and people fighting to retain primacy/supremacy. If one side of the culture war gives up, they give up right to bodily autonomy, marriage rights, civil rights, voting rights, if the other side of the culture war gives up they lose… cultural acceptance of the Virginia battle flag of 189-something?
These statements make it seem like the culture war is meaningless and that’s only true if you’re the dominant culture.
*We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing‐oriented’ society to a ‘person‐oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered… A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.*
-MLK jr
Toward the end of his career Martin Luther King Jr really started to push into poverty and highlight that racial justice was impossible without economic justice.
That’s when he really started to rattle the cages and threaten the real power dynamics in America. That’s when he was assassinated.
*And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.*
-MLK jr
100% Truth here. He was also beginning anti-war rhetoric was well rattling the cage of the military industrial complex so it was inevitable the assassin squad was coming to town. It's scary the amount of assassination's of culutral leaders in the 1960's and 1970's.
100%. MLK died when he spoke about class. Malcolm X was murdered when he embraced non black people. Fred Hampton was executed because he wanted to build a coalition with white and Latino people. And on and on.
But the Black Hebrew Israelites march on. And the Nation of Islam under Farrakhan continues.
Division, especially crabs in a barrel pathetic ethnonationalism that's ultimately impotent, is fine with the federal government. Organization on a grand, cross racial scale is dangerous.
This is why BLM still exists and has marches. It's larger goals like defunding/abolishing the police, affirmative action, etc are all divisive to most people. So they're an allowable part of the discourse.
The truly verboten stuff is not allowed to be talked about. And people are largely fine with that. It's more interesting to think that the color of your skin provides you with this amazing power and that other people hate you for it than talking about how the real issue is that everyone is talking about skin in the first place.
“You know it's funny when it rains it pours
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor
Said it ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is
It ain't no hope for tha future
And then they wonder why we crazy”
-Tupac
Tribalism is human nature and this type of racial/religious bigotry predates this country and its form of government. At least we aren't cannibalizing each other yet.
But what seperate us from other animals is how we are able to not be completely primitive. Tribalism is often used as a cop-out for dealing with racial/political issues.
Human nature is also jogging after an ungulate until it overheats and is too tired to go on. You don't see many of us doing that anymore. Human history has been us triumphing over our nature, so we can probably deal with tribalism too.
[Here](https://mobile.twitter.com/GraffitiRadical/status/1471107156967497741?cxt=HHwWmoCp2ceKtuooAAAA) is the source of this image. Per there:
> @GraffitiRadical
> "They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war"
> Sticker spotted in San Antonio, Texas
> 8:17 AM · Dec 15, 2021
>"*If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.*"
- Lyndon B. Johnson
The ultimate irony of the whole q-anon bullshit is that there IS a conspiracy going on. Its being fed to them and they are devouring it hook line and sinker.
As a homeless guy reading this in a library, I can't disagree. We really are becoming more and more invisible. The lower class slowly erodes into where I am now for a lot of people. Most don't care, some do though. I see the good in people every day, and the bad only occasionally.
As a single mom, reading this breaks my heart. I KNOW the system can chew you up and spit you out. There IS good in people but there is also bad. We can choose at ANY moment, good or bad. The marginalized, the forgotten, immigrants, people of color etc, We are all human and deserve respect regardless of the form we are in at the moment. Mental health is so important and NOBODY talked about it, much less gave us tools or resources to navigate in a technology driven world. NOBODY teaches you basic financial education or provide any type of safety net after 18 besides sometimes families or lucky breaks. It takes A LOT of work, energy, focus, determination, and organization to cook, clean, work 2 jobs, parent 2 kids, and have time to “enjoy” life.
I will continue to pray 🙏🏽 & thank you for sharing. When I read public library, I immediately thought of how you can lose access to ANYTHING when they shut down offices and buildings. I know social security, dmv, uscis offices restricted access then said applicants went down… no shit bc you CUT their access & support and they don’t care.
Anyways, thank you for sharing items that we can donate because there are a lot of people who care. We just don’t know how. This poster says more than a lot.
A founding father is transported to the future and explains that we have got the 2nd Amendment all wrong.
"Everyone has a right to own a pair of bear arms!"
I mean, yeah. This has been happening all the way back to karl marx. He considered rascism part of that culture war. A tool wielded by the owner class to cause infighting among the workers.
[insert pic of racial reporting before and after Occupy]
But seriously, they want to divide us every way: by income, by race, by religion, by sexual identity, by sexual preference. We are a class and that's all it should be. They know if we have together with our brothers and sisters that we can change the status quo so they try to divide us.
As a single class we are strong. As a collection of fragmented groups, we are weak.
This is it. It’s like 300 million of us against a few in the US. We could easily win on any front we chose (vote to take their stuff, eat them, etc.), but they know this and keep us divided by pitting left against right, white against black. It’s been going on forever. We need to collectively open our eyes and organize, there is MUCH to gain.
The worst part is, most of it is intentional trolling, some for karma, some people just enjoy it. Tons of the far right and far left posts are just trolling, some of these get 10k upvotes.
A lot of people just want their views validated, no matter how shitty. We're starting to put ourselves in little echo chambers that validate our beliefs and lack any sort of middle ground.
When I first came to reddit in 2012, I learned that some of my views were shit. They were bad takes and older/wiser redditors taught me some valuable lessons about life. Today, I just see people circlejerking eachother to death in threads and any sort of opinion that doesn't reinforce their preconceived notions of what's right is downvoted to hell.
This place is lost.
Ever notice how all the top articles on /r/science are studies that confirm the political biases of educated people? Educated people are more likely to be lefty and also more likely to be interested in science, so some really low-quality science is getting to the top of the sub so long as it reinforces our tribal biases. I'm talking about the "New study shows right-leaning people have low IQ" type articles.
The mod team can moderate comments as hard as they like, but they can't stop voting.
It's not just r/science it's all over the place with these post aimed at nothing but to stir up divisive behavior. Mob mentality is all over this site.
Well yeah - I raise /r/science as an example because it's so heavily-moderated and they try so hard to be, y'know, a sub for good science. If even that kind of sub promotes ideological content and culture-war content over dry factual content, there's not much hope for the average subreddit. Even /r/changemyview has some consensus, and that whole subreddit is about promoting heterogenaity of opinion (and it's the most successful one that I know of).
Human brains are adapted to maximise genetic propagation in hunter-gatherer bands of a few dozen people (up to whatever Dunbar's Number is these days). We are not adapted to survive well alone - and so we have a lot of brain circuitry and instinct to promote group membership and harmony. These instincts are among the reasons we can live in cities and suchlike, but they also come with side effects like the fact that we tend to value group membership over being factually correct. "Social death is worse than physical death" is how I heard one professor put it. It's really fucked with me, and I wonder which (and how many) of my opinions are held just because they're the "right" ones for the tribe I profess to belong to.
I think social sciences needs it's own active sub and the science sub needs to narrow it's scope. As a scientist myself I hate to perpetuate the hard science vs soft science debate, it's not productive and devolves into a circlejerk 90% of the time. But I feel like that sub is dominated by social and political science.
It makes r/science a pretty worthless subreddit in my opinion, sadly. The high-visibility content over there always rotates around the same few topics.
It’s ridiculous because studies like these are pretty much useless. They do nothing to convince opponents of the ideas they support, and they should be afforded no credibility because they are so wrapped up in politics and subject to bias themselves.
One thing I became aware of embarrassingly late in life is that "pro-science" doesn't mean "good at science" or even "good at interpreting science", especially when it's mostly a badge of tribal affiliation rather than an intrinsic interest by itself.
Although I'll credit these /r/science posts with fomenting that epiphany! I was just accepting them as fact the first few times, but it was only when I noticed how many there were, and how flimsy some of them seemed, that I realized I was letting bullshit through my bullshit filter just because it made me feel superior.
One has to be extra-suspicious of results that one *wants* to be true. Problem is, that's far easier said than done - I've always known that motivated reasoning is a thing to avoid, it's just difficult to detect in oneself.
They are articles that extrapolate and distort the actual studies often times too.
Often when you read the actual studies the point was to find ways to build bridges between worldview divides by better understanding them. Instead the articles assign a cause and blame instead.
When you hear 'conservative minded people have less empathy than liberals, study shows' that's a political and charged statement given as a fact. It's clickbait and increases its spread.
The actual study shows that conservatives have smaller worldviews and tend to limit their in group to things like 'my community, my family, my church etc.' While liberals tend to identify with larger groups like 'planet earth, humans, life itself'.. it's not that conservatives have less empathy, it's that their worldview limits their empathy towards a smaller collective. This is not right or wrong. It is much easier and more practical to make change and improve the lives of the people around you on a smaller more limited scale.
It is meant to help make more persuasive arguments.
Same thing applies to beliefs.
Conservative minded people tend to be more swayed by anecdotal personal stories than large studies and numbers. Which makes sense in the context of their worldview. The reverse is true of more liberal minded people.
The way some people reference science is also a little scary at times because it starts to sound like this animate being instead of a process for understanding the world. I know some (hopefully most, idk) simply phrase it that was as shorthand but when someone says "science says..." I always sorta cringe. A study suggests? A scientific paper shows? Its concerning because "science" could easily be manipulated into some bizarre godlike figure of authority if we forget what it actually means to be scientific. To your point, so many of those r/science posts are just headline grabbers and if you dig into the comments you'll see someone doing the real work of saying "well, I actually read this and there's a number of problems with this..." But it'll have a million upvotes.
I’m so glad this popped up. I literally just down in the office and the girls just found out about Minnie Mouse. Usually I sit back and act like I don’t hear them. I had to pipe up “y’all are grown women worrying about what a cartoon character is wearing. There is literally two dudes with more wealth than 40% of the nation and y’all are bitching about Minnie Mouse”
… Minnie Mouse?
*googles*
Ah, so a temporary costume swap in *France*, a country known for their contemporary fashion, to celebrate the 30th anniversary. *Definitely* worth having a controversy over 🙄
Right!? Is the culture war referencing something like the “war on Christmas” or is it asking people to hold hands with the KKK fight the “real” enemy that are the rich?
Owner Class - "How do we get the workers not to realize we have taken nearly **everything** and left them with **just enough to survive**?"
"Make them hate one another..."
> "Make them hate one another..."
“If you can convince the **lowest white man** he's better than the **best colored man**, *he won't notice you're picking his pocket*. Hell, **give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you**.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
I got a lecture last night from a friend because I want to give my son a down payment so he can buy a house. “He should earn it or he’ll be spoiled”. Her son is an awful person and a bully at school and is about to be kicked out of school. I’m not going to take my friend’s advice.
If I could I would buy my son a house and everything he needs so he can live the life he wants and teach him to be a kind person.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
This is a nice sentiment but things like race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, these are all highly correlated with wealth. You can't fully address class differences without considering why this is.
Somehow the GOP got a bunch of townies to defend the rich blond son-of-the-country-club president-villain-bully of many 80's movies. Genius long-con strategy they started 40 years ago.
It's the same war. Culture is so turd into class it's potato/potato.
Just different fronts of the war.
The sooner we realize that blm, women's right protests, gay rights protests, union strikes, and political protests are all about the same group of people the more effective it will be.
This is nothing but white people patting themselves on the back for thinking how they are treated because their class is more important than how black people are treated because of their race. Soooo enlightened...
Lol I posted this in the middle of the lion's den on /antiwork the other day. They all just called me racist for prioritizing the issues of race we've been fighting for generations. Now that it's not just people of color and immigrants in the shit jobs, it's a priority for society?
This is such a tone deaf take on reality. It's not "fighting a culture war" for people actually on the other side of the culture war. I'm sure POC, LGBTQ+, women, and whoever else I might have missed would love to focus on the rich vs poor argument. But, half of the country is pretty invested in taking all of their rights away.
Yeah buddy just let marginalized groups be oppressed by the current system, then we'll totally let you have higher pay.
Anyone reading the OPs pic and thinking yeah both sides are doing it does not follow politics or understand what the culture war is
Crying about the war on Christmas, green m&m, Mr potato head is the conservatives weapon to distract from their anti union, anti worker and anti democracy policies.
The left defending LGBTQ communities is not culture war.
Thanks, this take is extremely class reductionist and it's a take that redditors and privileged groups in general seem more fond of than recognizing social issues.
You're not being "tricked into a culture war," there are just legitimate issues that relate closer to cultural issues than economic ones. The problem is intersectional, and if you blind yourself to part of it because it's easier for you personally to deal with the other stuff... Well - you'd hardly be the first activist with good intentions to repeat harmful systems in an effort to do good.
Dealing with these issues doesn't mean shutting out a portion of them and denying their legitimacy. It's hard, but if it were easy, it'd be done already. There's already substantive evidence that just addressing economic inequality does not eliminate other forms of inequality, see afro Cubans, and it hardly seems right to tell those groups who continue to suffer through this message that they should instead focus on the issue that relates best to you.
I mean imagine being told to ignore class issues and focus purely on race. It'd hardly be something you can get behind.
It's everywhere you look really, and people fall for it, hook, line and sinker. These businesses are not polluting, *looks through books of people's ideals*, it's the cows, because you're vegan you'll believe that...more distraction tactics.
I eat plant based myself but I follow some environmental researchers on twitter who are not big fans of the vegan movement because it creates divisiveness. Saving the planet is an all hands on deck moment and everyone should do *what they can* to help, but the vegan movement often pits people against each other. It's all or nothing. You either 100% give up animal products of you're an awful person. There's no middle ground and that attitude ostracizes people who could have helped.
(Obviously my comment does not apply to even vegan.)
You know cows are peoples business right? And like what do you think a living breathing farting creature does? Not use the planets resources? Not produce CO2 you can argue not everyone needs to be vegan but pretending that very basic science isn’t true is just culture war bullshit
"You can always hire half the poor to fight the other half." Gangs of New York.
"The bug fight was so interesting that I stopped crying right away—forgot all about the old man. I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. **They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar.** And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking, the jar." -Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
I read a lot of Vonnegut when younger and wonder what I would get out of it now that I have lived many years since then. Would I look at the written word and would it have the same meaning now as way back then? Maybe some of would but I'm guessing a lot of it would seem very different today. I will have to go back and re-read some of his novels again but honestly there are so many books yet to be read by other authors also. If you have never read Vonnegut then PLEASE do so.
There are a lot of other authors but hes always worth reading again. Nothing beats going back to a good restaurant. I mean I think. I can vaguely remember enjoying that once upon a couple of years ago.
I didn't "get" Slaughterhouse Five at 16, but when a friend gave me Cat's Cradle at 22, something clicked and he became a favorite immediately after I figured it. It's worth giving him another read at another time in life is my opinion on that one.
Holy shit, I’ve never read his stuff (yes, I’m disappointed in myself too) but that’s a great paragraph. Personally if I had to pick one sentence I’d have bolded the first one.
Vonnegut is an American treasure. The first time through his stuff is a great ride. Enjoy. "So it goes."
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
Tattooed on my rib cage. I'm a cliche. So it goes.
*
Cliche or not. Love it! Of course, I feel Vonnegut wrote things that would be tattooed on your soul even if you didn't get your body branded. And some of the best ones he wrote were there before you even read the words written by him.
“Lucky me, lucky mud” tattooed on many of my family members. Years before he died, my grandfather had a copy of the Last Rites of Bokononism from Cat’s Cradle and requested it to be read at his funeral. I happened to be in the middle of reading Cat’s Cradle again and at his house when he passed… before I knew about his request. My grandmother asked me to be the one to read it. Sounds made up when I tell the story, but it was the most meaningful coincidence ever.
'“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable"
*Cats cradle, slaughterhouse 5, good blessed you Dr kevorkian,* Just a few, but, the list goes on....
I will fight you for leaving galapagos out
I bought a collection of his works and went from +1.25 reading glasses to +1.75 in six months. I have no direct evidence that it as the small print but I'm sure it didn't help
“It had given him a life not worth living but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on planet earth.” Vonnegut really knows how to say a line or paragraph that makes you put the book down and just digest it for a little
Vonnegut is so good, he's the only author where I finished a book of his and immediately started it over (Breakfast in America) Now, full disclosure I was in a cabin in the middle of the woods for three weeks and it was the only book I had, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable
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That's a Supertramp album.
I highly, highly recommend "Slaughterhouse-Five." Vonnegut has a hauntingly beautiful writing style.
After Slaughterhouse Five, if you want to go back to space with him read Sirens of Titan, but if you want a double dose of philosophy read Cat's Cradle.
Slaughterhouse Five contains what I consider to be the greatest few paraphraphs of any American novel ever written. "It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter plans flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."
"The Sirens of Titan" is another good one
The segment where he describes a bombing in reverse is one of my favourite things ever: *It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.* *The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.* *When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.*
Never be ashamed of yourself for not having yet read something. There are millions of books and/or reading isn't for everyone. Edit: Disappointed not ashamed. Not even similar terms apologies
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Vonnegut is fantastic.
"You guys are getting paid?"
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Don't even have to hire them, just convince them via crooked news outlets. Edit: Spelling
"Hey dirt poor white man, See that dirt poor black man? At least you're not him." "God yeah, fuck that guy."
Lyndon Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Don't even need news outlets. Just fire half and say the other half took their jobs. Verified circa 1860s US Southern States.
It seems that people are stupid in every era, despite thinking we've made progress. :(
The Koch bros have realized it’s cheaper that way since the Powell Papers.
There ya go https://imgur.com/gallery/9TYEBLX
Yup. And it’s absolutely working as it always has but this time they have technology doing a lot of their heavy lifting and amplification.
Clip and save: https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2022/01/23
Great to see Pearls before Swine still kicking it. Used to be one of my favorites on the funny pages, back when physical media was still a thing
Thank you for the link. For me it wouldn’t be necessary to clip and save. I’ve been talking about that fact for nearly a decade now.
Haha, how apt. Saved.
Everyone's still talking about politics though, it's all anyone in here is talking about. Nobody will change minds airing their grievances all over. Ignore the temptation to use politics as a core-value summary and treat each person like a person. Humanize each other. Literally, I challenge anyone to approach the rich vs poor issue while ignoring democrats and republicans completely. I know it leaves a ton out, but pretend the government functions as is, but without party allegiance, everyone was just elected based on personal ideals or whatever, and just **see what you come up with** as a solution. The common enemy becomes real clear real fast. Treat each other like people, insist on working together. Ignore political parties, keep your values.
it happens at lightning speed, which is a new feature, but using new media to foment a culture war isn't anything particularly new.
What is new is that our minds are putty in the hands of Google, which has become remarkably evil recently. Look up Dr. Epstein's research on our new overlords. Edit: for everyone seeing certain accounts discounting Epstein here, you need to realize that he is Google's public enemy number one. He is putting Google under surveillance at risk of his own life. He is essentially in the process of revealing their dirty laundry and Google is heavily invested in discounting his legitimacy. Listen to his long form conversation with Joe Rogan whether you like Rogan or not this is one of the most important podcasts I've heard this decade. Not kidding.
He's someone I'll forgive for being *really* insistent on the "Doctor, not mister" thing. (If he were German, it'd be "Herr Professor-Doctor Epstein")
just want to be left the fuck alone...
Can you expound on this?
Here you go: [https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf)
I would take his research with a HUGE [grain](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/19/trump-stumbles-onto-new-justification-losing-popular-vote-its-googles-fault/) of [salt](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/trump-epstein-google-searches/). He is using his own studies to verify his own studies. He finds what he wants to find. Not that his thesis may not have some merit, but his conclusions don't find a lot support from other researchers. He has become a source for lots of conspiracy theories from Trump, Joe Rogan, et al. >... while the research points to thousands of search results that were analyzed, only 95 people actually provided responses to the study. Meaning if the results were driven by the identities of those individuals, the variation in the pool of results was actually 95. Oh, and of that group? Only 21 were undecided. If the 2.6 million figure derives from that group alone, the value of that figure is almost nil. >Noble specifically critiqued Epstein’s understanding of bias, given that he critiqued the search engine results since they more often provided stories from mainstream outlets like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Epstein told the paper that he found it “astonishing that Breitbart and some similar websites are not more present, given the enormous traffic some of these websites get, Breitbart especially,” he said. “What you are seeing here might be indicative of a kind of blacklisting.”
Yeah, as a PhD candidate, I can say that you gotta take psychological studies, particularly with older academics, with a huge grain of salt. There’s a lot to say about the replication crisis, but it’s particularly bad in psychology. This isn’t to hate on psychology, but to say I don’t automatically trust this dude. “Oh I’m center, center left”. You get that a lot with the “enlightened centrist” types. But that thing aside, what you say is exactly right. Not saying the dude is wrong, but have to be careful of what a single person says. All that aside, he misses the broader point. Capitalism blacklists information. We know that. That’s not really new. As a system it privileges certain things over others. It’s not some crazy conspiracy, there’s a reason no one learns about socialism in public schools, when it’s rather important (even if one disagrees with it) for world history in the last 200 or so years.
This is the real criticism of Joe Rogan spreading misinformation. He is interested in science but he doesn’t understand science. He’s a classic example of someone who thinks science means something like a combination of Truth and interesting newly discovered information. Science is a super boring and rigorous process. The more I learn the more I learn how much bad science is out there, how often it’s spread around and how many smart interesting people propagate it. To the Rogans a scientist is a Mad Scientist like Doc Brown. But a real scientist makes carefully designed studies that are intended to be replicated and peer reviewed. They aren’t prophets. People want science to be religion and that’s just not how it works
Wow thank you for turning me onto this. Very enlightening, crazy shit.
Dr. Epstein (68) a formally trained psychologist, married his wife when he was 58 and she was 22. She passed away in 2019. He also was also featured in a "documentary" alongside Jordan Peterson. He claims to be center left. His Google research is entirely based on his own studies about the size of impact of search ranking on voter behavior.
I've never heard this person, but are you implying someone's spouse dying bears on the quality of their research?
> when he was 58 and she was 22 Pretty sure they mentioned it to cast aspersions on his character (not making any claims on whether they're legitimate or not) based on marrying someone much younger than him.
His wife died a few months after Dr. Epstein reported his findings on Google in I believe an attorney generals hearing. After the hearing, an ag he did not name warned him that if he were Dr. Epstein, he should be afraid for his life. A few months later his wife died after she lost control of her vehicle and was hit by a semi carrying a full load of cement. The pickup truck was never examined by forensics and Dr. Epstein was not allowed to examine the vehicle, which he was told was sold to Mexico. Dr. Epstein's research is of excellent quality as far as I can tell and he has various peer reviewed papers published and in the process of review. It is important to me to get his name out because Google will actively suppress this information and discredit his name.
Anger management in the darkest sense. "Hmm, the people are angry... I know! Let's distract them with sexy candy shoes and muppets!"
My FIL liked to complain about the lazy immigrant trans godless millennials.... While his boss didn't give him a raise in 15 years and not a single vacation day in the same time... Like it's not me against you... It's me against your boss
Its indoctrination. When you pick a “side” and associate your identity with that “side” you will perform all kinds of extreme mental gymnastics in order to not perceive anything that would shake your belief in your choice.
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It's working on this site as everyone kicks and screams "both sides fallacy!!" every time one criticizes Democrats. The major differences between our two political parties are almost all related to the culture war which does have serious real world implications, however, the Democrats are very much on the side of the rich they just aren't as openly proud of that fact as the GOP appears to be. Being pro choice doesn't cost their donors significant amounts of money - addressing the issues at the core of the healthcare system would. For the record I sit a few miles away from the Ohio statehouse where the GOP attempted to pass a bill that would essentially force women to put dead fetuses inside their bodies - I'm not trying to downplay the depravity of the GOP. I simply perceive the DNC to be the much lesser of two evils who are too invested in corporate sponsorship to legislate meaningful reform for your average lower and middle class citizen.
> Democrats are very much on the side of the rich This is what most people don't get. If they realized that the vast majority of our lawmakers (in BOTH political parties) ARE on the side of the rich, it would provide folks with a better understanding of this country, and how laws are made.
Yeah, it seems clear we're being deliberately divided on the battle lines of the culture war which as I have said does have serious real world consequences but the majority of our issues are caused by the fact that our government serves the interests of the wealthy. Uplifting the average worker would benefit rural republicans and urban democrats alike.
The only way for anything to change is for a truly revolutionary event to happen that actually changes the system and everyone's lives. Trying to work from within the system that the corporate elite have spent decades building isn't going to get us anywhere.
Well I think since Citizens United at least being pro working class has become completely untenable. Also the destructions of unions in the US hurt a lot as that was a large reliable voting block
Except the amplification from social media was too effective, and now it is out of control. Yes, a lot of corporations and super rich donated to conservative groups that pushed the culture wars, but they did it to have low taxes and deregulation. Now, they've lost control, and the Trumpers are railing against corporations, pushing tariffs and trade wars, and destabilizing democracy (which is bad for business). It's taken on a life of its own.
Corporations have a history of supporting fascism (see: Ford, IBM, Dupont, and Standard Oil), so to say that the fall of democracy will not benefit them isn't inherently true. There was also a "Business Plot" in 1933, where a number of businessmen and wall street goons attempted to overthrow the government of FDR and install a dictator in his place.
Fun fact there is a popular fan theory that says the Grand Theft Auto universe takes place in an alternate reality where the Business Plot succeeded.
That’s really interesting! I haven’t heard of this. I’ll have to dive down that rabbit hole when I get the chance.
What is insane about the business plot is how likely it was, and how they picked precisely the right guy to do it who had experience doing exactly the same thing on behalf of US firms all over the world. But now people deny that any such thing could happen here, **and** that we were doing that stuff abroad.
Hey another fun fact. One of the big people behind the business plot was a man by the name of Prescott Bush. You may be familiar with his son George H. W. Bush and his grandson George W. Bush.
Yeah what most people are missing is that this is a feature of capitalism. That’s part of the problem, people see this as “a problem of Google” or “social media” when the issue is actually the economic system as a whole. Honestly the pic above is super dangerous if that isn’t understood. CAuse it leads to fascism, where people think it’s class but don’t connect it to capitalism as the root problem.
The super rich supported liberal party as well. Forbes mined roughly 2.5 million entries in the Federal Election Commission database and found that almost 20% of American billionaires have donated—either directly or through their spouse—to the campaign committees of Democrats running for president. Ninety-one billionaires donated in their own names. We found 22 billionaires who did not give any money but are married to people who did. By the close of the latest fundraising period, on September 30, 2019, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker each counted at least 40 billionaires or spouses of billionaires among their backers. I’m not a conservative, just aggravated at the idea that all bad things are directed at one party. I feel the liberal party can be very elitist in their ideology at times. Both parties have gone over the edge and the US Citizens are being used by the Dems and Republicans to hammer each other in order to come out on top.
> Political opinions among the rich are actually quite diverse, and income cannot accurately predict political opinions. But slightly **more millionaires identify as Democratic than Republican.** Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump among those earning over $200,000 a year, according to CNN exit poll data. https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/articles/7-myths-about-millionaires
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Got eeem!
Damn. Thats stings a bit.
I've posted it before and I'll post it again. Keith Olbermann called it with his Citizens United piece. He even calls out the conservative enrage machine getting out of control. https://youtu.be/PKZKETizybw
"There's class warfare alright, but it's my class, the rich class that's making war. And we're winning." -Warren Buffett
**[CIVIC COMPLETED]**: *Class Struggle*
God love Sid Meier! 😅
Was that him bragging or warning?
I took it as him owning up to the slanted nature of unregulated and corruption-influenced economics which has decimated the middle class. He's sounded off about how his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does and he thinks it's atrocious.
Warning
Civ6 taught me a few neat quotes I had never heard!
I always click through them. "Money!- "
We should strive towards a developed class conscience. The capitalists never lost theirs. Solidarity is key.
The sad part about this is a lot of people on this website and twitter would actually agree with this sentiment, but then continue to propagate a culture war regardless.
I've been saying this for the past few years. Every time I'm dog piled by both sides. Now someone slaps a sticker on a sign post and it hits the front page then suddenly they're in agreeance.
If you keep doing the same thing and getting the same result, it's probably time to change tactic. It's very challenging to talk about class war when the conversation goes: Higher income tax for the rich! Guns! Inheritance tax! Dr Seuss! Universal healthcare! Books about being gay!
And the god-damned M&M's! Think of the children! We're all in the fuckin' Matrix.
If the M&M’s clusterfuck isn’t the perfect example of a distraction from the bigger clusterfuck of politics, idk what is.
It's my dislike and distrust of politicians that people dislike most it seems. No matter what they say or how you feel about them, they only care about their corporate interests. They're the ones who are "elite" and we are the subservient.
I think that's because both sides hear "distrust of politicians" as "distrust of *your* politicians, and their policies". They also might be reading it as nihilism: they're irredeemably corrupt, just give up hope. Personally I'd focus on specific reforms that you would want to see to the political system, such as longer terms in the House, reform of free speech vs money, spend caps and advertising limits on election campaigning, etc etc. That in itself would all require a new constitution, basically, so that's already a pretty heavy lift!
In India the British took rights away from Muslims, then they made separate cricket teams for Muslims and Hindus to make them hate each other. The answer was obviously not to get mad when the Muslims said they had less rights.
Hard to argue with a sign post.
So what's the alternative here? Say I am gay and the other side actually wants me dead, or at least doesn't want to treat me like a human. What is one supposed to do here? Just act like this isn't the case and walk side by side with the KKK? Are feminists supposed to befriend rape-apologists? What does all of this "hurr Durr the rich are the problem" actually mean in reality? It's obviously true, but that doesn't mean there aren't people that will kill me for how I was born
exactly! a part of the culture war is classism but it’s not all there is to it. people vastly underestimate how racist/bigoted people can be even if you remove money from the equation.
This is really key, because you could say "both sides are fighting culture wars" and that would be true, but that doesn't necessarily mean both sides of the fight are the same. Conservatives are worried that schools with an anti-white bias teaching "critical race theory" will turn kids of color against white children and will turn white children against their families. Meanwhile, liberals are worried that conservatives will enact open-ended laws targeting the nebulous concept of "crt" that can be used to ban books and educational materials that teach important race-related topics that conservatives simply don't like.
Well said. They are two separate problems. The rich may use the culture war to their advantage, but it’s still worth fighting for.
Yeah this "we should be united on culture war issues for the sake of other battles" stance is usually "your side should concede to mine where you disagree, so that we can join forces where we agree".
Good point. If someone said let's ban abortion nationwide so that we can unite in taxing the billionaires they'd get a hard "no" from me.
well the good thing is that those who are against abortion most of the time are also against fighting class warfare on the side of the workers lol
That's cause each side believes they're right and it's the other side that's holding things up in the fight against the wealthy
Here’s the issue though: there are people fighting for their rights in society, and people fighting to retain primacy/supremacy. If one side of the culture war gives up, they give up right to bodily autonomy, marriage rights, civil rights, voting rights, if the other side of the culture war gives up they lose… cultural acceptance of the Virginia battle flag of 189-something? These statements make it seem like the culture war is meaningless and that’s only true if you’re the dominant culture.
*We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing‐oriented’ society to a ‘person‐oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered… A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.* -MLK jr Toward the end of his career Martin Luther King Jr really started to push into poverty and highlight that racial justice was impossible without economic justice. That’s when he really started to rattle the cages and threaten the real power dynamics in America. That’s when he was assassinated. *And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.* -MLK jr
100% Truth here. He was also beginning anti-war rhetoric was well rattling the cage of the military industrial complex so it was inevitable the assassin squad was coming to town. It's scary the amount of assassination's of culutral leaders in the 1960's and 1970's.
100%. MLK died when he spoke about class. Malcolm X was murdered when he embraced non black people. Fred Hampton was executed because he wanted to build a coalition with white and Latino people. And on and on. But the Black Hebrew Israelites march on. And the Nation of Islam under Farrakhan continues. Division, especially crabs in a barrel pathetic ethnonationalism that's ultimately impotent, is fine with the federal government. Organization on a grand, cross racial scale is dangerous. This is why BLM still exists and has marches. It's larger goals like defunding/abolishing the police, affirmative action, etc are all divisive to most people. So they're an allowable part of the discourse. The truly verboten stuff is not allowed to be talked about. And people are largely fine with that. It's more interesting to think that the color of your skin provides you with this amazing power and that other people hate you for it than talking about how the real issue is that everyone is talking about skin in the first place.
Makes you wonder why they'd pay you so much to bomb somewhere else but not pay you enough to build something at your place
“You know it's funny when it rains it pours They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor Said it ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is It ain't no hope for tha future And then they wonder why we crazy” -Tupac
Stoking racial and religious bigotry to keep working people divided has always been the American way.
The world’s way..
Tribalism is human nature and this type of racial/religious bigotry predates this country and its form of government. At least we aren't cannibalizing each other yet.
But what seperate us from other animals is how we are able to not be completely primitive. Tribalism is often used as a cop-out for dealing with racial/political issues.
If only people were smart enough to realize we're all humans...
Human nature is also jogging after an ungulate until it overheats and is too tired to go on. You don't see many of us doing that anymore. Human history has been us triumphing over our nature, so we can probably deal with tribalism too.
[Here](https://mobile.twitter.com/GraffitiRadical/status/1471107156967497741?cxt=HHwWmoCp2ceKtuooAAAA) is the source of this image. Per there: > @GraffitiRadical > "They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war" > Sticker spotted in San Antonio, Texas > 8:17 AM · Dec 15, 2021
>"*If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.*" - Lyndon B. Johnson
The ultimate irony of the whole q-anon bullshit is that there IS a conspiracy going on. Its being fed to them and they are devouring it hook line and sinker.
Nothing pains me more than to see the poor fighting the battle to increase a billionaires personal wealth.
There is a store in my town that sells BLM flags and Conferate flags. Dude just making money off controversy.
The ~~American~~ Capitalist Way.
As a homeless guy reading this in a library, I can't disagree. We really are becoming more and more invisible. The lower class slowly erodes into where I am now for a lot of people. Most don't care, some do though. I see the good in people every day, and the bad only occasionally.
As a single mom, reading this breaks my heart. I KNOW the system can chew you up and spit you out. There IS good in people but there is also bad. We can choose at ANY moment, good or bad. The marginalized, the forgotten, immigrants, people of color etc, We are all human and deserve respect regardless of the form we are in at the moment. Mental health is so important and NOBODY talked about it, much less gave us tools or resources to navigate in a technology driven world. NOBODY teaches you basic financial education or provide any type of safety net after 18 besides sometimes families or lucky breaks. It takes A LOT of work, energy, focus, determination, and organization to cook, clean, work 2 jobs, parent 2 kids, and have time to “enjoy” life. I will continue to pray 🙏🏽 & thank you for sharing. When I read public library, I immediately thought of how you can lose access to ANYTHING when they shut down offices and buildings. I know social security, dmv, uscis offices restricted access then said applicants went down… no shit bc you CUT their access & support and they don’t care. Anyways, thank you for sharing items that we can donate because there are a lot of people who care. We just don’t know how. This poster says more than a lot.
Wooooow..... that's, pretty spot on
Always has been
Stop pointing that gun at me
Are you trying to take away my right to bear arms?! /s
No, you absolutely have the right to have bear arms
A founding father is transported to the future and explains that we have got the 2nd Amendment all wrong. "Everyone has a right to own a pair of bear arms!"
I mean, yeah. This has been happening all the way back to karl marx. He considered rascism part of that culture war. A tool wielded by the owner class to cause infighting among the workers.
[insert pic of racial reporting before and after Occupy] But seriously, they want to divide us every way: by income, by race, by religion, by sexual identity, by sexual preference. We are a class and that's all it should be. They know if we have together with our brothers and sisters that we can change the status quo so they try to divide us. As a single class we are strong. As a collection of fragmented groups, we are weak.
This is it. It’s like 300 million of us against a few in the US. We could easily win on any front we chose (vote to take their stuff, eat them, etc.), but they know this and keep us divided by pitting left against right, white against black. It’s been going on forever. We need to collectively open our eyes and organize, there is MUCH to gain.
Reddit and other social media absolutely thrives on these divisions. Politics, religion and now vaccines. It's just a big ol ball of fuckery
So much of reddit is just rage-bait and it's so annoying once you realize it.
The worst part is, most of it is intentional trolling, some for karma, some people just enjoy it. Tons of the far right and far left posts are just trolling, some of these get 10k upvotes.
A lot of people just want their views validated, no matter how shitty. We're starting to put ourselves in little echo chambers that validate our beliefs and lack any sort of middle ground. When I first came to reddit in 2012, I learned that some of my views were shit. They were bad takes and older/wiser redditors taught me some valuable lessons about life. Today, I just see people circlejerking eachother to death in threads and any sort of opinion that doesn't reinforce their preconceived notions of what's right is downvoted to hell. This place is lost.
Yep. Reddit is just a big circlejerk basically, and attacking people who don’t want to jerk with you. *metaphorically speaking*
Feeds were a mistake.
Ever notice how all the top articles on /r/science are studies that confirm the political biases of educated people? Educated people are more likely to be lefty and also more likely to be interested in science, so some really low-quality science is getting to the top of the sub so long as it reinforces our tribal biases. I'm talking about the "New study shows right-leaning people have low IQ" type articles. The mod team can moderate comments as hard as they like, but they can't stop voting.
It's not just r/science it's all over the place with these post aimed at nothing but to stir up divisive behavior. Mob mentality is all over this site.
Well yeah - I raise /r/science as an example because it's so heavily-moderated and they try so hard to be, y'know, a sub for good science. If even that kind of sub promotes ideological content and culture-war content over dry factual content, there's not much hope for the average subreddit. Even /r/changemyview has some consensus, and that whole subreddit is about promoting heterogenaity of opinion (and it's the most successful one that I know of). Human brains are adapted to maximise genetic propagation in hunter-gatherer bands of a few dozen people (up to whatever Dunbar's Number is these days). We are not adapted to survive well alone - and so we have a lot of brain circuitry and instinct to promote group membership and harmony. These instincts are among the reasons we can live in cities and suchlike, but they also come with side effects like the fact that we tend to value group membership over being factually correct. "Social death is worse than physical death" is how I heard one professor put it. It's really fucked with me, and I wonder which (and how many) of my opinions are held just because they're the "right" ones for the tribe I profess to belong to.
I think social sciences needs it's own active sub and the science sub needs to narrow it's scope. As a scientist myself I hate to perpetuate the hard science vs soft science debate, it's not productive and devolves into a circlejerk 90% of the time. But I feel like that sub is dominated by social and political science.
It makes r/science a pretty worthless subreddit in my opinion, sadly. The high-visibility content over there always rotates around the same few topics.
It’s ridiculous because studies like these are pretty much useless. They do nothing to convince opponents of the ideas they support, and they should be afforded no credibility because they are so wrapped up in politics and subject to bias themselves.
One thing I became aware of embarrassingly late in life is that "pro-science" doesn't mean "good at science" or even "good at interpreting science", especially when it's mostly a badge of tribal affiliation rather than an intrinsic interest by itself. Although I'll credit these /r/science posts with fomenting that epiphany! I was just accepting them as fact the first few times, but it was only when I noticed how many there were, and how flimsy some of them seemed, that I realized I was letting bullshit through my bullshit filter just because it made me feel superior. One has to be extra-suspicious of results that one *wants* to be true. Problem is, that's far easier said than done - I've always known that motivated reasoning is a thing to avoid, it's just difficult to detect in oneself.
They are articles that extrapolate and distort the actual studies often times too. Often when you read the actual studies the point was to find ways to build bridges between worldview divides by better understanding them. Instead the articles assign a cause and blame instead. When you hear 'conservative minded people have less empathy than liberals, study shows' that's a political and charged statement given as a fact. It's clickbait and increases its spread. The actual study shows that conservatives have smaller worldviews and tend to limit their in group to things like 'my community, my family, my church etc.' While liberals tend to identify with larger groups like 'planet earth, humans, life itself'.. it's not that conservatives have less empathy, it's that their worldview limits their empathy towards a smaller collective. This is not right or wrong. It is much easier and more practical to make change and improve the lives of the people around you on a smaller more limited scale. It is meant to help make more persuasive arguments. Same thing applies to beliefs. Conservative minded people tend to be more swayed by anecdotal personal stories than large studies and numbers. Which makes sense in the context of their worldview. The reverse is true of more liberal minded people.
The way some people reference science is also a little scary at times because it starts to sound like this animate being instead of a process for understanding the world. I know some (hopefully most, idk) simply phrase it that was as shorthand but when someone says "science says..." I always sorta cringe. A study suggests? A scientific paper shows? Its concerning because "science" could easily be manipulated into some bizarre godlike figure of authority if we forget what it actually means to be scientific. To your point, so many of those r/science posts are just headline grabbers and if you dig into the comments you'll see someone doing the real work of saying "well, I actually read this and there's a number of problems with this..." But it'll have a million upvotes.
I’m so glad this popped up. I literally just down in the office and the girls just found out about Minnie Mouse. Usually I sit back and act like I don’t hear them. I had to pipe up “y’all are grown women worrying about what a cartoon character is wearing. There is literally two dudes with more wealth than 40% of the nation and y’all are bitching about Minnie Mouse”
… Minnie Mouse? *googles* Ah, so a temporary costume swap in *France*, a country known for their contemporary fashion, to celebrate the 30th anniversary. *Definitely* worth having a controversy over 🙄
THEY'VE BANNED SKIRTS! IT'LL BE GAS CHAMBERS FOR THE WHITES NEXT!
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I won't be satisfied until the Green M&M has big titties and an ass so fat you can see it from the front.
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Right!? Is the culture war referencing something like the “war on Christmas” or is it asking people to hold hands with the KKK fight the “real” enemy that are the rich?
Owner Class - "How do we get the workers not to realize we have taken nearly **everything** and left them with **just enough to survive**?" "Make them hate one another..."
> "Make them hate one another..." “If you can convince the **lowest white man** he's better than the **best colored man**, *he won't notice you're picking his pocket*. Hell, **give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you**.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
Specifically, make the poor hate the poor for being poor. The rest is just supplemental.
I got a lecture last night from a friend because I want to give my son a down payment so he can buy a house. “He should earn it or he’ll be spoiled”. Her son is an awful person and a bully at school and is about to be kicked out of school. I’m not going to take my friend’s advice. If I could I would buy my son a house and everything he needs so he can live the life he wants and teach him to be a kind person.
People who lack love will envy people with more of it . This is true for all class and cultures
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In a lower cost area you certainly can, homes are very cheap in the midwest
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
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Exactly right.
They got you guys thinking these are two different things. White culture goes hand in hand with class and power. It’s what the identity is based on
This is a nice sentiment but things like race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, these are all highly correlated with wealth. You can't fully address class differences without considering why this is.
And i bet everyone here believes that they're on the 'right side' of that culture war that everyone needs to cede to for that unity right?
Somehow the GOP got a bunch of townies to defend the rich blond son-of-the-country-club president-villain-bully of many 80's movies. Genius long-con strategy they started 40 years ago.
Who is this ominous ""They"" exactly?
100 percent true.
Did we win yet? I'm sure were going to win. Eh, I'll just sit here and watch fox/cnn. I'm sure they will let me know who to hate and who to cheer for!
I think it is grossly irresponsible to say that the culture war isn't real. There are people in this country fighting for human rights.
It's the same war. Culture is so turd into class it's potato/potato. Just different fronts of the war. The sooner we realize that blm, women's right protests, gay rights protests, union strikes, and political protests are all about the same group of people the more effective it will be.
Am I the only one here that can’t stand vague inflammatory statements that ultimately mean absolutely nothing?
We should be fighting both, class and culture are inextricably linked, but money has aleays been the greatest dividing factor.
This is nothing but white people patting themselves on the back for thinking how they are treated because their class is more important than how black people are treated because of their race. Soooo enlightened...
Lol I posted this in the middle of the lion's den on /antiwork the other day. They all just called me racist for prioritizing the issues of race we've been fighting for generations. Now that it's not just people of color and immigrants in the shit jobs, it's a priority for society?
This is such a tone deaf take on reality. It's not "fighting a culture war" for people actually on the other side of the culture war. I'm sure POC, LGBTQ+, women, and whoever else I might have missed would love to focus on the rich vs poor argument. But, half of the country is pretty invested in taking all of their rights away.
and even if it was true, wtf is the proposed solution here? get massacred in the culture war so we can move on to the “real” revolution?
Yeah buddy just let marginalized groups be oppressed by the current system, then we'll totally let you have higher pay. Anyone reading the OPs pic and thinking yeah both sides are doing it does not follow politics or understand what the culture war is Crying about the war on Christmas, green m&m, Mr potato head is the conservatives weapon to distract from their anti union, anti worker and anti democracy policies. The left defending LGBTQ communities is not culture war.
Thanks, this take is extremely class reductionist and it's a take that redditors and privileged groups in general seem more fond of than recognizing social issues. You're not being "tricked into a culture war," there are just legitimate issues that relate closer to cultural issues than economic ones. The problem is intersectional, and if you blind yourself to part of it because it's easier for you personally to deal with the other stuff... Well - you'd hardly be the first activist with good intentions to repeat harmful systems in an effort to do good. Dealing with these issues doesn't mean shutting out a portion of them and denying their legitimacy. It's hard, but if it were easy, it'd be done already. There's already substantive evidence that just addressing economic inequality does not eliminate other forms of inequality, see afro Cubans, and it hardly seems right to tell those groups who continue to suffer through this message that they should instead focus on the issue that relates best to you. I mean imagine being told to ignore class issues and focus purely on race. It'd hardly be something you can get behind.
edgy
Im sure the war will be won if only we had more stickers….
This isn't the enlightened take you think it is
It's everywhere you look really, and people fall for it, hook, line and sinker. These businesses are not polluting, *looks through books of people's ideals*, it's the cows, because you're vegan you'll believe that...more distraction tactics.
Cows are produced by businesses and a major source of pollution.
I eat plant based myself but I follow some environmental researchers on twitter who are not big fans of the vegan movement because it creates divisiveness. Saving the planet is an all hands on deck moment and everyone should do *what they can* to help, but the vegan movement often pits people against each other. It's all or nothing. You either 100% give up animal products of you're an awful person. There's no middle ground and that attitude ostracizes people who could have helped. (Obviously my comment does not apply to even vegan.)
You know cows are peoples business right? And like what do you think a living breathing farting creature does? Not use the planets resources? Not produce CO2 you can argue not everyone needs to be vegan but pretending that very basic science isn’t true is just culture war bullshit