Thread by @jholbo1

There's something right about this and something wrong about it. What is right about it is that D's should fight fire with Biden. They have to win over the median voter (as R's do not). 1/ thedailybeast.com/dems-helped-gi… via @thedailybeast

The thing that is wrong about this is it equates belief with culture war. Or, more specifically, it equates distance between belief points with culture war. But, come to think of it, that can't be right. You and I can believe different things without going to culture war. 2/

Culture war is a matter of deliberately inflaming certain facts of difference for political profit. That is almost exclusively an R game, since it often (not always) affords them tactical opportunities to lose the culture war while winning politically, based on grievance. 3/

Again it's a mistake to imply that the very act of believing something - that trans people should enjoy certain rights, that same-sex marriage should be permitted - is tantamount to declaring culture war. Ideally, such should be the stuff of normal liberal democratic politics. 4/

I don't think Lewis would deny this, if he thought about it, but what he's saying about 'resisting the siren call of radicalism' amounts to normalizing a weird sort of doxastic blackmail. You've got groups A and B. 5/

Group B, for reasons, starts collectively drifting towards belief that C is ok, which no one used to think. This drift is not due to animus towards A. But A's really are bothered by the thought that C could come to be regarded as OK. 6/

And now the A's say: 'you are waging culture war on us by so many of you believing C is ok.' Is that fair? Really no. It's complicated. But at least it ought to be obvious that me changing my mind - my group changing its mind - isn't tantamount to declaring culture war. 7/

Not without further premises like: 'you only changed your mind to think C is ok because you wanted to stick it to the A's! This change in belief was not a judgment that C is ok but more like a pretextual, deliberate, performative act of war against the A's.' 8/

But, with all due respect, that's fairly nuts. It used to be that people said no one really wants same-sex marriage, or really thinks it's fair. They just want to stick it to the Christians and thereby destroy Western Civ. But, again, that's nuts. People thought it was fair. 9/

But the lesson still stands in reverse. You can change your mind - your group can change its collective mind, can have its opinions, its values - while still resisting getting sucked into some politically disadvantageous culture war over them. Values and war are different. 10/

Think of it like this. A's and B's. B's start to believe C. A's declare culture war with B's over B belief that C. A's lose culture war, becoming despised by B's for being such aggressive jerks about C. A's, however, regard themselves as hereby vindicated in defeat. 11/

The fact that the C culture war hurts them so - they end up being called bigots - proves that the C issue was some pretext to hurt them. To make them despised culture war losers. The question really comes down to: would it have been fine if you hadn't been jerks about it? 12/

That is, suppose the A's had said: well, you go ahead and believe C. We're going to continue not believing C. No culture war. Just difference, which will need to be managed in a normal, liberal-democratic way. The A view is: we would have been declared bigots for that. 13/

But it seems to me the answer is: no. Conservatives don't get branded as bigots for have 'orthodox' beliefs. They get branded as bigots for going to culture war with others who don't share those beliefs, seeking to enforce orthodoxy on them. 14/

Conservatives feel they have to wage culture war, aggressively, seeking to command the heights, exert hegemony, or they will be branded as bigots. But I think the opposite is true. If they would just chill the problem would largely solve itself. 15/

But conservatives have a perverse tendency to regard things that should prove they are wrong - like, waging culture war is what makes people think they are bigots - as proofs that they are right. They have to, lest they be excluded from the public square as bigots! 16/

Again, it's complicated. It's not that the fact that all the B's now believe C doesn't affect the A's in a way the A's don't like. But for the A's to dictate belief terms to the B's unilaterally - you lot shalt not believe C, because it would annoy us A's - is aggressive. 17/

It's tempting for D's to wage culture war that they are likely to win, in a certain sense. But it can still be a tactical error, if D's being culture war winners only reinforces R victimology D's then have to contend with in politics. You should sidestep useless culture wars.18/