site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There is an attack line here for the republicans. It goes something like:

In 2021 Biden entrusted Harris with reducing migration and working with other countries to stem the reason for migration. Obviously, she failed (point to by far record highs).

The media reported on this in 2021. No one objected. Now, she failed so hard the media has to pretend she was never in charge. Imagine that—Harris failed so hard she and her friends in the media are removing the key item from her CV as VP.

You can wrap in a bit about the media. Or getting a chance to lie in advance for her (like that did with Joe and his brain issues) but that now they are lying afterwards in a rather hamfisted way.

Obviously you got to workshop it a bit. But there is an effective message there.

Sounds like a lot of explanation to be doing.

Consider who this works on: Democrats who'd actually trust fact-checkers (Republicans wrote them off for the same reason they wrote off regular media reporting) and have been told attacks on the credibility of the media are attacks on Democracy. These are the sorts of people that'll check quickly, see the "'fact check" and then tune out yet more Republican whining about the refs protecting democracy.

Honestly, Trump should just keep saying "she was the official border czar, and she failed". The Democrats will feel obligated to engage in constant semantic clarifications instead of actually campaigning.