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 -
Personally I think I’ve arrived at, somewhat more charitably than the norm, I guess, that Trump’s advisors told him he needed a certain amount of votes to win the election, based on their forecast of turnout. He fixated on this to an unusual degree. Of course turnout was higher than expected, and so the votes to win was higher than expected, but he hit the old metric and I think felt entitled to win based on that. He couldn’t emotionally reconcile the dissonance. So he was hyper receptive to any and all theories that would confirm his gut feeling, and distrust of the media only amplified this (and of course he had a few too many yes-men around). At some point in the last few years I’m sure intellectually he finally realized this incongruity, but as a TV guy knows that the underdog, mistreated, but secretly a winner narrative is decently powerful. So he’s currently playing it up, but originally I think this was an honest but plainly flagrantly wrong belief.
As to Russia and many foreign policy issues, frankly I still, years later, really don’t have a good mental model for why Trump does anything that he does. The closest I can come is that he just flies by the seat of his pants on literally every decision.
More options
Context Copy link