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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm reporting on how it's perceived by the establishment politicians, and they're usually pretty clear that high turnout = good. Likewise, the establishment media will usually report negatively about record low turnouts and positively vice versa (unless the wrong parties are being voted for, but OP takes care not to do that).
Do the politicians who won actually care about low turnout? The losing candidates and liberal media in my neck of the woods always complain about low voter turnout after every election, but I’ve never gotten the impression that the winners mind in the slightest.
In the short term, no, but in the longer term a low turnout means increased risk in the next election, which drives prioritization and strategy.
The nature of low turnout is that the lower it is, the less stable it is for the incumbent, because ever-smaller groups of interested voters can be decisive in upturning it if they either switch or even just re-enter the voting ranks next election. As voter participation can be volatile, this means that it's relatively easy for sudden surges of voter engagement to turn against an incumbent. As a result, politicians would rather win with low engagement than lose, but what they really want is higher voter turnout of their base, to be more resilient, and a failure of turnout on their end means- even if victorious this time- that things need to change.
Personally, I'd consider this an advantage of voluntary over mandatory voting systems. In mandatory voting systems, there's considerably less volatility as there's a lot less sway in overriding existing factionalism / voter commitment to past votes. (People are less likely to vote against something / someone they've already voted for, and such.) While whether volatility is itself good or bad is questionable, in my view it's an important part of being able to actually challenge incumbents, and incumbents have enough built-in advantages that challenges to them on irregular voter sentiment sways is a good thing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link