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 -
The "inmates taking over the asylum" theory is that junior staffers at lefty orgs are pushing wokestupid at the expense of the mission of the org, and management are unable to stop them. The ACLU case is the opposite. A manger fired a staffer for what they claimed to be wokestupid reasons, but was probably actually just powertripping management, and the ACLU doubled down because the manager was black. Unless you think the black first-line manager counts as an inmate taking over the asylum, this is a wokestupid vs free speech type case. The Audobon case is nothing to do with wokestupid - the underlying labour law case is a highly technical issue about information exchange in union contract negotiations.
In both cases, I think management hired outside counsel and told them to put anything in that looked like a winning argument, which is standard practice in cases where the stakes are high enough. And given the Jarkesy situation I discuss further down, these things are potentially winning arguments. I doubt either the ACLU or Audobon leadership read the briefs being submitted on their behalf, although their in-house lawyers should have done and should have spotted and escalated this kind of thing. I work in a bank and one of the subjects of the fun, fun, mandatory online trainings we do every quarter is that it is everyone's job to stop and escalate if they see something that could be an utter public humiliation (or reputational risk, as the corporate types call it).
More options
Context Copy link