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 -
Of course that would be a problem. I'm slightly more sensitive to privacy violations than the average American, but... scale matters, as does the risk of privacy violations (and other considerations not exhaustively listed here, such as the risk of false positives). The act of flying in a domestic passenger airplane is fundamentally a public act, but not only that, it's somewhat infrequent even for a career politician and only captures a small subset of behavior and time. In other words, the risk of the government violating your privacy is low. In fact, the government already has your flight records to start with, so what exactly is at risk here is unclear. Let's make a contrast to your example. Following someone 24/7 is of a fundamentally different nature than monitoring you on an airplane flight. As a crude but effective example, they might accidentally discover that you are having an affair, which is none of their business.
Of course we also have to address the intimidation angle too, but if the process was indeed secret and unknown to the subject as is alleged to be the case, that angle doesn't really exist! So again, the main detriment to Gabbard is not a privacy concern but a mere inconvenience, plus an allegation about waste of public funds. I'm writing a separate comment in this thread about the degree of inconvenience, but at least according to the info I'm looking at, it's nothing too exceptionally different than what everyone else in America has accepted as par for the course for flying nowadays - the chance of pat-downs, waiting a little longer for the special scanners, a chance of having your luggage hand-searched. I don't like the placement of the current bar, and think a lot of it is mere security theater, but pretending it's abnormal is just incorrect.
That's probably true, but the status quo of flying nowadays is already a gross violation of our civil liberties. It is absolutely reprehensible that the TSA is allowed to exist on that basis alone, let alone the massive waste of taxpayer funds that they incur. And on top of that, it turns out that there's politically motivated harassment going on? Hell no! These organizations never should've been allowed to form in the first place, but they must not be allowed to stay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link