site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Of the $7.7 billion in recent forgiveness announced in OP's press release, $5.2 billion is based on a law passed during GWB's administration, and the first grants of forgiveness would have gone out during Trump's administration. So sure, precedent, but also statutory grounding.

If this surprises you, perhaps you should consider whether OP's post faithfully characterized the situation.

I have to admit my belief in this being "bullshit porkbarrel politics" has dropped from a 80 to 20 on an indexed basis, based on your comments.

I do think that if Trump tried anything like this, especially following on from a similar policy being slapped down by the supreme court, there would be far more protests. However, that's kind of hard to prove.

Plus, loan forgiveness still seems a fairly bad idea, independant from if it's legal...

For what it's worth, I don't wish to convince anyone this isn't porkbarrel politics. I think it is.

I simply take issue with the framing here that the Biden administration is ignoring and overriding the supreme court with this recent loan forgiveness.

Plenty of bad executive actions are perfectly legal.

And sometimes a first attempt at a goal is struck down, and a later, different attempt at the same goal is not. Trump's early travel restrictions in particular come to mind.

$5.2 billion is based on a law passed during GWB's administration

"Based on" in the sense that a certain genre of Hollywood drama is "based on a true story".