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 -
Didn’t the action they take was to spy on the Trump campaign and then bog them down in investigations that ultimately concluded the Russians did not in fact meddle? Didn’t they directly try to impeach Trump over similar issues? Didn’t the mainstream Press crow about “russiagate” for years on end? Didn’t democratic aligned judges use lawfare to nullify a democratically elected presidents policies over and over and over again? Didn’t they delay vaccine study results until after the election, murdering thousands of Americans just because Orange Man Bad?
Sorry but it doesn’t seem like they accepted Trump as the president. Wasn’t there a a whole “resistance” thing too? I mean. Sure it was fake and lame as far as resistances go, but one could argue the bureaucracy went along with it.
Spying is an overblown talking point. They spied on like, one guy? Maybe a second, and neither of them big deals?
The campaign didn’t get meaningfully “bogged down” by any investigations, not anything special counsels don’t normally do
Russiagate actually did fade pretty quickly after the Mueller report in the news and from Democratic politicians
They tried to impeach him over something almost explicitly a quid pro quo - you could argue that some presidents get a pass for that kind of thing (Nixon sure as hell did it but that wasn’t what his impeached for) but it’s still, um, bad. And note that after the effort failed in Senate vote, they dropped it. You don’t see Kamala whining about it on the campaign trail
If you think that was abnormal lawfare you have not been paying attention to politics the last several decades
Scope and scale matter. My point stands.
Catching one instance of sleazy behavior from a large group over a period of time generally implies that there's more than one instance, but that that was the instance that was easiest or luckiest to catch.
More options
Context Copy link
Your point doesn’t stand in the least. You’ve marshalled zero evidence for your dismissal nor addressed most of my points
I meant the administration, and of course it did. The news covered the mueller investigation breathlessly nonstop, over an essential nothingburger. How do you think that affects an administration?
sure after about 3 years of nonstop coverage and rampant speculation (Steele dossier? Never even existed)
It’s true, the Dems have been terrible on that for decades, but it reached a zenith.
More options
Context Copy link
No.
The ruling party in 2016 used multiple intelligence agencies to target opposition campaign personnel, on the basis of unfounded allegations presented by the ruling party candidate whose role in its generation was hidden due to its disqualifying nature, and subsequently overturned citizen-protection measures designed to protect American citizens from just such intelligence abuses, which enabled illegal leaks what would inherently have been classified information, to fuel election-year and then multiple post-election year conspiracies intended to undermine the opposition campaign and target up to cabinet level officials, conspiracies which were publicly pushed by party-affiliated media and legitimized by the party's leading member of the Senate Intelligence community.
...while campaigning that Trump would be an authoritarian who would commit security state abuses, and thus organizing the #Resistance that dominated media coverage for years to come and would help organize riots in several major American cities, including the US capital.
The original Russiagate lasted nearly half of Trump's time in office, and its narrative themes were later re-used to justify the first Trump impeachment and which remains a regular theme in Democratic C-lane social media campaigns since.
One of the presidents in question being Biden, who publicly boasted in his success to squash the corruption investigation the subject of which was the basis for impeaching Trump, not including the many other credible quid pro quo of the Biden dynasty.
The Trump experience of lawfare was abnormal precisely because it surpassed what any candidate had received in the last several decades, and on multiple grounds were highly reminiscent of mid-Cold War abuses that spurred the US Intelligence Community reforms of the 1970s and 1980s that were ignored in the process of targeting the Trump campaign. The abnormality of it was the subject of multiple extensive discussions and even deliberate justification articles posted in major media outlets and a post-2020 victory lap on the degree of cooperation required to 'fortify' the following election.
Scope and scale mattering is precisely why your point falls to a basic Russel conjugation critique.
'My favored party accepted the results reasonably and mostly peacefully despite legitimate reasons to believe they were unjustly denied their rightful victory, your party unreasonably refuses to accept the legitimacy of their defeat and threatens everything in ways that should be disturbing to all...'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link