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 -
100,000 voters cannot decide the outcome of US presidential elections. Given certain assumptions about which states are and are not in play, sure, but those assumptions are predicated on the votes of tens of millions of other voters; these 100,000 voters cannot elect Zombie Hitler over the objections of the rest of the country.
100,000 voters voting the other way would flip most Australian elections to the other major party, too (although admittedly we have a much-smaller voter base), at least if you got to pick exactly which ones to flip lots of marginal seats to 50%+1 the other way.
It should be noted that we just flat-out do not have any direct equivalent to the US President with a nationwide election for one position - the Australian Prime Minister is not directly elected but rather elected by the House of Representatives, and can have lost the two-party-preferred vote if the voters for that party are better distributed among seats (this happened in 1998; the two-party-preferred vote narrowly favoured Labour over the Liberal/National Coalition but the latter won more seats and thus government). And our Senate favours less-populous states over more-populous ones in precisely the same way as yours does - Tasmania gets 12 Senators just like New South Wales, despite NSW having over 14x Tasmania's population (though the territories, which are even less populated, do at least get fewer, and Tasmania's an outlier among the state populations).
More options
Context Copy link