site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm gonna second 'troll'. There's definitely righties willing to make argument this bad, but they're not going to make this argument. In particular:

  • There are way too many better examples of biased output from media than the New Republic -- an openly leftist media org is nowhere near as demonstrative as a 'centrist-claiming' one -- and too many better examples of TNR bias exist than quoting something technically true. CNN had a dem talking head online saying Trump "would absolutely try to exterminate people". Cfe the recent ProPublica abortion piece NaraBurns highlighted. And for TNR, 'do you know who else played in Madison Square Garden' is literally on the front page now.
  • "the truth is that Trump, being president and having access to top secret information, knows things we don't" is... the sort of thing that looks like it got pulled from a discussion on the classified documents trials. It makes some approximation of sense there; it's too unrelated from even the often-schizophrenic theories for voter stuff, if only because it would paint Trump's post-J6 unwillingness to declassify whatever more transparently fake than the UFO stuff.
  • People who care enough about this to write at length aren't going to dismiss sketchy witnesses without naming them or some shape of what they're supposed to be lying about. I recognize I'm at the upper end of grudge-holding, here, but there's just been so many incredible claims that just shrugging about who or what makes for a weird bit.
  • A lot of the other terminology is way too hesitant to spell things out. "then the demographics of the next elections will favor the Democrats" is passive voice in the sort of way that ... uh, is a lot harder for Blue Tribers to not passive voice. "stuck with a notion of equality that is anything but" and "it's central to a nation that it defends its borders" are currently google-bombs pointing here today, while other framings of the same concept are well-established in other fields.
  • "my own mental health" isn't as much of a Blue Tribe shibboleth as 'for mental health reasons' or 'mental wellness reasons', but it's still weak evidence.
  • And, yes, the author's word choices and topics of focus don't match any of the right-wing long-term posters who had been present here and then deleted their accounts. This is not a Zontargs post.

It's probably worth letting it through anyway, but it's worth spelling out that it also should be collapsed and ignored unless someone pulls a silk purse from this sow's ear.