site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Malicious? Ehhh, maybe? but probably not? We have definitely seen reporting that in general, resources were denied to Trump, and we also know that the USSS just as a policy (probably a stupid one, but it is what it is) simply does not provide sitting-president level support to nominees. Around the time of the event, there was a Jill Biden event, also an upcoming Joe Biden Austin event, but also crucially there were some resources working on the upcoming RNC convention too, and some agents had just come back from the NATO thing in Europe as well. WaPo for example specifically said that "multiple counter-sniper teams and hundreds of agents" were already sent to the convention! They also always have a fair amount of people moving around, but the core details don't seem to change all that much, so for example it's somewhat doubtful that Jill Biden specifically reduced resources for Trump, that doesn't seem to be how their scheduling works according to what I've read (though at the end of the day it is at least a little bit a zero-sum game, but that's just intrinsic to the process).

And in fact, both people in Trump's orbit as well as the Secret Service were, around this same time, apparently tussling to a high and loud degree about how big the security perimeter should be at the RNC, so it's even theoretically possible (I'm not sure how highly to weight this) that his own team's requests for more protection would have reduced, or even did reduce, protection at the Butler event. One thing we know for sure however is that at least for the Butler event specifically, there were no denials. (Still, as I think Jim Jordan put it, "Maybe they got sick of asking"). Examples of denied requests mostly related to wanting more metal detectors and related resources (potentially impactful in this case), and rarely but still occasionally counter-sniper teams, though most of these requests seem to have been centered around bigger, more public/natural appearances like in the middle of a city or at a football game or the like.

One thing I should have mentioned is the updated timeline answers one key question, which was "Why wasn't Trump delayed on taking the stage?" Trump had already been speaking for about a minute when the shooter climbed the roof. So I think most people would think the shooter's status wasn't quite on the level of delaying the event, and it's always a tough call to interrupt Trump mid-speech.