site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37979 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Well, maybe I should try a test case.

Let's take, say, the Conservapedia page on Joe Biden and the RationalWiki page on Donald Trump.

(On a side note, I put 'conservapedia joe biden' and 'rationalwiki donald trump' into DuckDuckGo, and neither search returned me the page I needed. The latter did at least return RationalWiki pages, though for some reason it started with 'Policies of Donald Trump', 'Trumpism', 'Foreign Policy of Donald Trump', 'Donald Trump Jr.', and 'Trump-Ukraine Scandal', and never actually had the bare page on Trump. The former, however, was more suspicious - DDG refused to find Conservapedia at all. Instead, the first five results were Politico, NPR, the New York Times, Time, and Bloomberg, with further stories from NPR, CNN, Vox, and eventually joebiden.com, his campaign website. If I DDG for 'conservapedia' by itself it does correctly return Conservapedia as the first result. This makes me wary that there's some kind of disinformation filter here.)

Anyway, RationalWiki on Trump:

Donald John "Huge Hands Hans" Trump, Sr. (1946–), is an American businessman, rapist, reality TV host, four times indicted criminal, convicted felon,[6] and conspiracy theorist who was the forty-fifth President of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He is an adjudicated liar[7] and an adjudicated rapist:[8] yes, he's a sadistic "sick fuck".[9] Due to his involvement in an attempted self-coup after losing reelection, he has the infamous dishonor of being the first president in American history impeached and acquitted twice by the House of Representatives,[10] with the most bipartisan impeachment standing in US history.[11][note 1] As of 2024, he was courting the cannibalistic serial killer vote by praising the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter.[12] More proof of his self-described "very stable genius"[13] comes from being the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush in 1992.

His public life and career read like a Greatest Hits album of everything wrong with American society. Once tweeting a quote by radio host Wayne Allyn Root, who called Trump the "Chosen One and the King of Israel",[14] he is infamous for being a bizarrely unsuccessful businessman,[15][16] brash television personality,[17] fascist and neo-Nazi sympathizer,[18][19][20] con artist,[21] honorary Russian Cossack,[22] heelWikipedia wrestling personality,[note 2] sexual-assault enthusiast,[8][23][note 3] demagogue,Wikipedia[24] personality-cult leader,[25][26][27] and an aspiring strongman,Wikipedia[28] Nobel Peace Prize nominee,[note 4][30] and subject of extensive false equivalency.[31][32] Thanks to the confluence of his legendary narcissism and propensity for self-promotion, minimal attempts by his Republican supporters to moderate his malignant impulsivity, and four years at the tiller of perhaps the world's most influential public platform with an itchy Twitter finger, he holds the distinction of having likely told more public (and demonstrable) lies than any other person in human history.[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]

Elected against all odds,[note 5] Trump's presidency was an unmitigated disaster. Responsible for numerous human rights violations and outright crimes against humanity, he was condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,[43] for taking migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border and putting them in literal cages.[44][45] His inflammatory rhetoric, defense of his antagonistic or outright homicidal supporters,[46] endorsement of police killings on leftists,[47] bragging that his government assassinated leftists and antifascists (and heavily implying under his direct orders),[48][49][50][51][52][53][54] and vicious scapegoating of minorities directly inspired multiple acts of violence,[55][56] including against political rivals[57] and their relatives,[58] and even actual politically-motivated murders by his supporters,[59][60] even against people unconnected to Trump.[61]

Conservapedia on Biden:

Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr., aka Pops, Pedo Pete,[14] The Big Guy, Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware,[15] J. R. B. Ware[16][17][18] and My Chairman[19][20] (born November 20, 1942) is the authoritarian kleptocrat and dictator of the United States.[21][22] Biden has been described by a close confidant as an "egomaniacal autocrat"[23] and by his own Justice Department as incompetent and unfit.[24]

79% of Americans believe that the 2020 presidential election was unjustly manipulated by dishonest whitewashing of the Biden family's criminal activities.[25] The official position of the Biden regime as articulated by its chief press spokesperson is that political opposition is "a threat to democracy."[26] A poll conducted by the Daily Mail of Iowa Republicans in August 2023 after Biden's 3rd indictment of 2024 presidential frontrunner President Donald J. Trump found 57% believed America was becoming like Nazi Germany under Biden.[27] Biden's ongoing bid to retain the presidency in 2024 is backed by Russia.[28][29] According to the "left-leaning"[30] newspaper The Economist, the USA's Democracy Index ranking decreased from 7.96 in 2019 under Trump to 7.85 in 2023 under Biden. Biden is known for his use of the term "bloodbath".[31]

A prominent Holocaust trivializer, Biden has compared migrants who illegally crossed the U.S.–Mexican border to Jews who perished in the Shoah.[32] In the space of 25 months after seizing power, Biden single-handedly rehabilitated the reputations of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, turning Nazis into freedom fighters for Western liberal democracy.

You can keep reading both articles if you'd like, but you no doubt get the idea.

I think reading them both, my judgement is that Conservapedia is worse, but they are both basically unhinged rants, far more interested in just insulting their subject in the most over-the-top and childish ways possible than they are in understanding anything. Both are basically political entertainment, written only to amuse or entertain an audience of dedicated partisans.

They are both worthless.

They are both worthless.

I would say both are hilarious, though not for the reasons their authors intended.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats