site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, lawyers lie. If you knowingly deceive your audience, you are a liar. That counts even if your words can be artfully construed to not be false.

We even created a whole new religion to deal with this hypocrisy. In the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were obsessed with following the letter of the law while neglecting its spirit. We invented the social technology to solve this problem 2000 years ago, but some people still don't get it.

The democrats also just straight up lie a lot. When Harris kept saying “Trump’s Project 2025” that isn’t “technically true but misleading.” That was straight up lying.

I’m not sure it is really fair to say Trump is unique in lying. Where he is probably unique is that when he doesn’t need to lie he exaggerates.

My favorite was the “no US soldiers in an active war-zone” lie. Just a few weeks ago some US Soldier got shot by ISIS.

There was a viral video uploaded basically the same day of the debate that ended up getting millions of views of the debate on TV when she said that, and it pans out to like seven soldiers in a forward operating base being like “Wait… then where the fuck are we right now?”

Can't you just say that Trump lies, the democrats deceive, if that's what you mean?

Would fit well with general rightwing memeplex of casting the democrats as the great deceiver(s). It would also be an opportunity to own the fact that Trump lies. Truth or lies isn't the primary issue, it's deception that's the issue (in politics, in news, in science, etc).

The position that you can be a habitual liar without deceiving seems like a difficult needle to thread!

It all comes down to the expectations of both parties.

If there's a street promoter outside of a club trying to convince me to pay a cover fee and go inside he might tell me things like it's the best club, that they have the biggest crowd inside of any bar in the city, everyone's having a great time, probably ever. Yuge night! Maybe they even say that they've heard rumors that there's a movie star who was planning on coming tonight. If I go inside and find it to be not all that, was I decieved? I wouldn't say so, because I was talking to a club promoter; I know what they're like, they know I know what they're like, the expectation was that they would exaggerate everything to try to get me to go inside.

There is a distinction though if they say something like "after you pay the cover fee your first two drinks are free" and it turns out not to be true. Because I don't expect them to be allowed by the bar (to say nothing of the law) to say something like that if it isn't true.

Also, I would consider myself decieved if I (before marriage of course) got in touch with a girl on a dating app and she insisted on meeting me at a club, and I found out after getting there that she was a promoter using the app to bring in clients to the club, even if she never said anything technically untrue. This is the kind of lying I associate in politics with the activists that masquerade as unbiased subject experts.

You don't have to do that. You can say that truth isn't a good safeguard against deception, with the biggest deceivers being the ones telling you the "truth".

Lying isn't good but at the end of the day deception is worse. Its kind of like how betrayal is worse than opposition. You don't even have to play defense at all.

Your average democrat might lie less often than Donald Trump but they are much, much more dishonest in my opinion. It’s not even close.