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 -
I'm not sure you need people to be directly diligent enough to catch this stuff: few, if any, would have been able to catch the 60 Minutes trick for sheer mechanical reasons. But once one did, you didn't have to be diligent. Uou had to hear from either right-leaning media or even some mainstream media that covered the resulting scandal.
So you're less asking about those without a strong political belief system, but also diligent enough to verify; instead, you're looking for those without a strong political belief system and also who see anything from non-manipulative media. Which, to be fair, is still not a huge set! But one of the awkward secrets of modern coalition politics and general democratic politics is that you aren't trying to persuade a majority of people or even a majority of voters: you're working the margins of a fairly small set of a squishy middle voters who could be persuaded, or marginal voters who are flexable on whether they want to vote at all. And a lot of these gimmicks -- both the abusive manipulation of video, and the Look At This Bad Actor -- are designed pretty clearly to inflame the interests of those groups.
Individually, I don't think any one of these changes all but the most marginal of elections... but they're not individual things. Overt and uncontroversial examples that get caught are maybe once a news cycle. But the people doing this doesn't exactly stop with overt and uncontroversial examples.
The extent a piece can be changed can sometimes be complicated, but even where not fair use, editing's usually a pretty cheap usage right, and just using the video seldom falls under fair use in this context -- that's why reporters begging for use permissions is such a common gimmick.
There's workarounds -- ambush journalism is a thing, albeit with a well-deserved reputation, certain types of public feed or event are effectively uncontrollable, a lot of places will (and already do) slice-and-dice text form. I'd expect that rather than a simple sorting of left- and right-media, you instead end up with a complex balkanization where individual politicians at certain levels of power have differing (and changing) sets of media that they'll meet with, not just based on those reporter's actions but even on the actions of those that the reporter's work with. I'm certainly not claiming that this is good as a policy, or legitimate as a constitutional matter.
But it's pretty obvious that it's at least a significant part of Pushaw and DeSantis' policies, and that Chait has been following them long enough that he should recognize this, and it's noticeable that this isn't something that Chait wants to present, not just here, but as far as I can tell ever, when he instead provides explanations that seem to be little less than 'eviiiiiiiil'.
More options
Context Copy link