site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As @jeroboam said, no one believes this case would've been brought against any other politician besides Trump.

I believe this case would have been brought against other politicians besides Trump. A very similar case was brought against John Edwards. That case failed to secure a conviction, but it was nonetheless brought.

Unfortunately, I think citing the Edwards case proves my point ... it is very similar to the Trump case for a lot of not good reasons

Many in the Democratic Party legal establishment were baffled by Breuer’s decision to green light the case, particularly because of suspicions that partisan politics played a role in the aggressive pursuit of Edwards by federal prosecutors in North Carolina.

...

That unit came under protracted public criticism in recent years over what the Justice Department found was prosecutorial misconduct in the pursuit of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on charges he filed false ethics reports by omitting the value of gifts and renovations to his home.

...

As a result of failures in the Stevens case, which was brought during the Bush administration, Holder changed much of the Public Integrity Section’s leadership and ordered new training for prosecutors across the department in their responsibilities. Two prosecutors were also ordered briefly suspended after an internal probe.

...

Jurors also got an up-close look at the prosecution’s star witness, Andrew Young, the aide who falsely claimed paternity of Edwards’s and Hunter’s child. Records showed Young diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Edwards donors to pay for his own expenses and a pricey new home he was building in North Carolina.

...

The Justice Department said in 2009 that it would pursue criminal campaign finance cases only where there was “no doubt” that the FEC agreed the “underlying conduct” was illegal. No such finding appears to have ever been made in Edwards’s case, and at least one current commissioner said publicly that he doubted Edwards’s alleged actions were illegal.

...

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles excluded most evidence about the FEC’s views of Edwards’s case. However, jurors did hear the Edwards campaign’s compliance officer testify that she saw no requirement to report the payments related to his mistress and never heard from the FEC that they needed to be reported. The jury also heard a former FEC chairman say he’d never heard any discussion of whether payments to or for a mistress could be considered donations.

And this insane "history rhymes" banger:

Another problem that may have tripped up prosecutors: proving that Edwards knew his alleged actions were illegal, something the government must show to get a conviction in a campaign finance case.

It disproves your claim that the case would not have been brought except against Trump, which is the claim I was contesting.

No. The Edwards case became infamous meaning it would not again be brought because it was an embarrassment.

So the accusation is that bringing this case violated some unwritten norm that was supposedly established in 2012?

Has anyone ever actually been protected by that supposed norm?

While it does disprove that claim in the isolated sense of "no other politician" .... it does so with a case that probably should not have been brought against Edwards and that he beat.

You're correct in a very specific way, but zooming out ... you're correct for reasons that circularly point back to my assertion.

I'm not trying to "win" this argument at this point. I'm trying to highlight that shitty politically motivated trials ... have always been shitty politically motivated trials.