Political Power Versus Cultural Power

Tend to agree - Partisan Polarization

 

I really wonder if they are going to take the house. I think it’s gonna be close maybe plus or minus 10 seats from the majority. The senate is looking red to me.

 

'Cultural power' isn't a thing, or at least it isn't power at all

 

Warnock in NC and Bennett in Colorado, both excellent senators, are in close races. Hard to believe Georgia would prefer Herschel over Warnock, but the GOP has become a stranger to character and integrity.

 

Seems like it is. Libbie culture has captured and weaponized social media. Pretty powerful stuff. It probably helped swing the last presidential election.

 

Sure there is. Culture can be the ultimate soft power. A better issue is that economists can't model power, as brushed upon here

Economic Models Must Account for ‘Who Has the Power’

 

To expand, big believer in Nye's soft power - it is the US's greatest source of power, although our last administration sought to to diminish it

It can be contrasted with 'hard power', which is the use of coercion and payment. Soft power can be wielded not just by states but also by all actors in international politics, such as NGOs or international institutions.[6] It is also considered the "second face of power" that indirectly allows you to obtain the outcomes you want. A country's soft power, according to Nye, rests on three resources: "its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority)."[7]

"A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries – admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness – want to follow it. In this sense, it is also important to set the agenda and attract others in world politics, and not only to force them to change by threatening military force or economic sanctions. This soft power – getting others to want the outcomes that you want – co-opts people rather than coerces them."[8]

Soft power resources are the assets that produce attraction, which often leads to acquiescence.[8] Nye asserts that, "Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive."[9] Angelo Codevilla observed that an often overlooked essential aspect of soft power is that different parts of populations are attracted or repelled by different things, ideas, images, or prospects.[10] Soft power is hampered when policies, culture, or values repel others instead of attracting them.


Soft power - Wikipedia

 

The fact that you have to modify the word power with "soft" in front of it sort of makes my point

 

Semantics, my boy. Power can take on different forms, but it is still power, unless your using a limiting definition.

We are witnessing in real time the power and limitations of norms. But they do have power, even if it is not limitless.

 

I think in the absence of mass politics, people fool themselves into thinking consumer preference is some kind of power when it isn't

 

No, but consumer preferences mean dollars, and dollars mean power. And so on. Why do you think our Governor shrinks in rage at "woke" companies and seeks to use political power to punish rational commerce?

 

Yes, consumption fuels the capitalist system, the same one that perpetuates and reproduces the misogyny, racism and class oppression people say they are against culturally. Since conservatives have achieved basically a total victory politically speaking, their only concern is basically wanting to be liked. That's why they don't have any concern for policy, they have nothing to offer there but more of the same. That people hate them instead of liking them is essentially their only preoccupation, so obviously they think "culture" is liberal and therefor some kind of power to be defeated. And of course liberals play into this because actual political power scares them (as does organizing and empowering their base and activists), but they can still imagine they have some sort of "check" on conservative political rule which requires basically no organization or work on their part. Because most liberals (especially the affluent ones) are entirely comfortable with a conservative economic program, they are just made uncomfortable with the racism and such, so it suits them that they can imagine making "good" entertainment and culture will make good people, an extension of their faith in education to overcome social ills. In the absence of mass politics, which no one can really do anymore, culture simply becomes more segmented and escapist. For there to be "cultural" power, there would have to be mass culture too, something which barely exists anymore.

 

You should listen to better podcasts.

 

Big flash point in the complaints about liberals exercising cultural power is in casting fictional characters with people of color. It’s been a “thing” for years, and the complainers are traditionally younger men. They get very angry. The latest is Amazon’s Tolkien series. A thread on the absurdity. H/T Jim McDermott

 

Doug J. Balloon having some fun with this idiocy

 

Rue was a funny one, made it easy to see who was a right-wing social justice warrior.

 

Never saw Hunger Games, so I missed that. But it seems to be a common response to casting decisions. People get so invested, crazily

 

Balloon is on fire with this

 

Disagree. Both have political and cultural power. It’s just pulling on the same thread.