site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can see you went through your "enemies list" and looked to see if they thought there wouldn't be an attempt on trump so you could try to shame them. It only shames the accelerationist right wing as this was done by one of your own.

Nah, I just went through the responses to the comment @Recursive_Enlightenment directly linked up above and noticed there were some people expressing clear opinions about the likelihood of someone trying to off Trump and wanted to see how this updated any priors.

I also saw yours there, and its just ironical that your position is such that you can attack people for speculating that someone might take a shot at Trump, AND dismiss the event when someone takes a shot at Trump.

For what it is also worth, my comment was specifically pointing out that it would likely be some irrational actor with no real agenda:

unless the outcome you want is literally "X politician is dead" then no rational person would carry out such an assassination in hopes of achieving their end goals.

So my position isn't shifting much from the revelations thus far.

Even now it isn't clear if this guy wanted any other outcome than a dead Trump, so I'm not going to speculate further.

Considering @Recursive_Enlightenment's comment was regarding a conservative politician implying that the shooter would be a politically motivated leftist (hence picking an even more unpalatable VP to replace trump) As so many here often say, my thoughts on the matter were 'directionally correct', and so were yours, school shooter vibes, not deep state stochastic terrorist political assassin. Even a dead trump might have been ancillary to his true aim of acting out, suicide by cop, showing his anger at his own impotence, making a mark etc...

If we're not here for idle speculation on every topic under the sun, then what are we here for?