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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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As non-US person I consider US presidential election system as mindbogglingly stupid, prone to fraud and unsafe. Ballot harvesting, voting machines, no requirement of any ID in many states, inability to actually count votes for days or weeks, etc. When I raised these questions before, a lot of people mentioned how this is complicated system where states have their own rules and so forth. It does not matter. Your elections are laughable and a mockery of security, it is far beyond anything I have seen in my country of Slovakia or other countries where I follow elections. Also your politicians are unwilling to do anything about it to make elections more safe and trustworthy, while constantly talking about "threat to democracy".

So the steelman of Trump's argument - or argument by any other candidate who loses and raises questions about legitimacy of election - no matter the results, your elections in their current state will always have huge issues with legitimacy and trust no matter who wins.

It boggles my mind that the United States, the most powerful country on Earth, is unable to issue all of its citizens with photo IDs.

This is one of those things where the Anglosphere simply has a different view on what the government should be doing compared to Napoleonic countries.

If the government maintains a register of everyone legally present in the country, then it can issue certified copies of entries in the register easily. This is perfectly technically feasible, and several countries have done it. The UK was going to do it under Blair, but he got voted out - the first thing the coalition did on taking power in 2010 was to abolish the register that was supposed to be the basis for the ID card scheme. It would be even easier to do for the US technically than it was for us because you normally issue SSNs at birth. But most Americans, and even most politically engaged Brits, think that making such a register is an act of petty tyranny.

If you don't have a population register, then all an ID means is that at some point some appropriate authority figure said "this birth certificate and this photo belong to the same person" and the government wrote this down.

unable to issue all of its citizens with photo IDs.

Honestly, the IDs themselves are probably the easy part. With birthright citizenship, it's not like we have a conclusive list of citizens even scattered around the country in fragments. It's plausible someone was a home-birth that was never registered with the government, or a child of citizens born out of the country and never registered. And we don't have unique identifiers for our citizens: The SSN is the closest (and terrible for a variety of reasons), but there are people who, for religious reasons the government respects, opt out of having an identifier assigned to them (separate from opting out of Social Security itself for religious reasons, like the Amish).

The way it works in Slovakia is that government knows your place of birth and that is where you are "automatically" assigned as a registered voter as soon as you turn 18. If you move your place of residence elsewhere, then it is on you to approach the government to get your residency papers in order so that you can be automatically reassigned for voting in this new place. If you know you are temporarily out of your city for voting, you can ask for special voter ID that enables you to be manually added to voting list elsewhere, you cannot just pop up in some random place, show your ID and vote. And despite all this, our most important elections have about the same turnout (68% in 2023 parliamentary elections) than let's say 66% for 2020 US presidential elections.

I guess this could be the same in USA. I suppose that if you get into the country legally, you get some kind of residency permit with some home address. In Slovakia, even homeless people have their residency officially marked just as the city/town where they live - there is a "default" government address, which also determines where they can go to vote.

The US doesn't have an explicit requirement to register your current address. I guess it's on my driver's license and that's supposed to be updated when I move, but those aren't required, and that's done at the state level. And some people have multiple residences, so you can't cue it on move-in dates.

It's interesting to talk with people from other countries about this, because the US doesn't track its residents anywhere near as closely as other countries I've been to. A hotel in Europe will consistently ask for my passport. In the US, they frequently only ask for a credit card, with maybe an ID only to check that I am the person with the name on the reservation.

The US doesn't have an explicit requirement to register your current address.

Neither is it so in Slovakia. You may move about in and out of the country, live decades elsewhere and that is fine. In fact it is a huge issue for major cities, that get portion of income tax of their residents for financing municipal activities. And they get nothing from people living there with official residency in other towns and villages. So they tie stuff like free parking places and other perks to official residency paperwork. But if you dont care, you can skip it.

The point is, that you will be registered voter based on the adress where you live in - for local or national elections. If you cannot be bothered to change the residency, then it is on you.

Birthright citizenship makes it easier, not harder, because birth in the US (which is universally registered, even if the register doesn't suffice to prove identity) is sufficient to prove citizenship.

Verifying citizenship in the UK is a mess because birth in the UK after 1983 doesn't provide British citizenship unless one of your parents was a citizen or permanent resident. If you can trace your ancestry back to 1983 through British citizens born in the UK then you can rely on the chain of birth and marriage certificates, but for a lot of people the documentation they would need to confirm their parents' (or grandparents' - most people being born today have parents born after 1983) immigration status 40 years ago doesn't exist.

I think "unable" is the wrong word. The United States government almost certainly could do this. The problem is lots of politicians (I suspect primarily Republicans) are skeptical of the kind of national database that would have to be constructed to do so. What is going to be on the cards? Are we just adding a photo to your SSN card? But that wouldn't establish where you live for voting purposes. Will it also have your address? So the federal government is going to have a database of the address of every citizen?

Lots of politics groups in America are suspicious of the federal government knowing too much or having too much power which hampers our ability to coordinate that way and is why so much is done by states instead.

I made a comment that responded to this exact thing here

Yes, there is a proof of "outcome-determinative fraud" - like for instance existence of ballot harvesting. If some person in my country of Slovakia came to the voting room with a bag full of ballots he "collected" and then tried to shove them into the official ballot box, that would be considered an election fraud and he would be arrested as an "outcome" by police that guards all the voting stations. So yes, your whole voting system is illegitimate and fraudulent as it allows unhinged voting practices, you are a banana republic.

But I will give you a benefit of doubt. Just as a thought exercise - please give me an analysis of "outcome-determinative fraud" let's say for the latest presidential elections in Russia and if you consider them fraudulent or not. Apparently according to the laws in Russia, the elections were splendid - no allegations of fraud were confirmed based on whatever they consider as "fair" elections in their minds. Or is your stance that elections were shady and Putin maybe did not get 88%, but he would for sure get 51%, so there was no “outcome-determinative fraud”, so all is well and good?

Point taken. "Outcome-determinative fraud" is not the right phrase. However, what I am trying to distinguish is a single person voting in two districts, or maybe a felon voting when they shouldn't, or maybe giving a single friend $5 bucks to vote for you as dog catcher from organized attempts to swing the outcome of an election. I agree ballot harvesting, among other things, is wrong and shouldn't be allowed, but you challenge the rules before hand, not after you lose. And before you tell me Trump was sounding the alarm on it, my memories of 2020 are that, yes he mentioned ballot harvesting here and there, but it was mainly about mail in fraud or fraud by the poll workers at the actual polls.

This is basically back to that CEO example where, yes, everyone knows there is stealing, but no one has ever blamed a bad quarter on stealing before since they knew that it wasn't ever big enough.

Saying that, someone did post a really good reframing to that CEO example, so I am still thinking about that.

So, ultimately answering the Putin hypo (even when it's obvious what the answer would be, I still don't like it when people don't directly answer presented hypos), the answer would be that yes, I do still believe the Putin elections are shady. This is cause there is not really a big difference between Putin being able to rig it 30%, 40% or 50%, so the outcome is still controlled by him. Contrasting that with cases of single person voter fraud and there is basically no risk it swings the election. Contrasting that with ballot harvesting and Trump had a chance to challenge that sort of thing before hand, not possible in Russia.

I agree ballot harvesting, among other things, is wrong and shouldn't be allowed, but you challenge the rules before hand, not after you lose. And before you tell me Trump was sounding the alarm on it, my memories of 2020 are that, yes he mentioned ballot harvesting here and there, but it was mainly about mail in fraud or fraud by the poll workers at the actual polls.

I am not a US citizen. I don’t care about Trump or Kamala or Obama or Bush or Gore. Your core election system is fucked, it allows for a fraud, which for sure played some role in tight Gore/Bush Florida election, where ballot machines somehow “missed” 61,000 votes, not even talking about other election shenanigans. Your whole political system is electorally suspect and thus illegitimate, no matter who benefits or rules.

I do still believe the Putin elections are shady. This is cause there is not really a big difference between Putin being able to rig it 30%, 40% or 50%, so the outcome is still controlled by him.

How is it controlled by him? Do you have any evidence of mass fraud outside of a few videos of soldiers peeking how people vote etc? Or is it that the whole system is rigged by holes, from selection of candidates, assasinations and assasination attempts to bullying of government workers, media system, espionage and the rest of it?

Again, from where I stand your whole electoral system is illegitimate. People do what the can, such as those supposedly 12% who supposedly voted against Putin. Who knows what are the real numbers and if fraud was “outcome-determinative”. The fact of illegitimate elections is “outcome-determinative” by itself.

How is it controlled by him? Do you have any evidence of mass fraud outside of a few videos of soldiers peeking how people vote etc? Or is it that the whole system is rigged by holes, from selection of candidates, assasiations and assasination attempts to bullying of government workers, media system, espionage and the rest of it?

I don't know exactly how it's controlled, I'm just taking the news and various western governments and NGOs at their word with places like Russia or China. Of course, there is always the leftist/isolationist critique that these all can't be trusted since they are just mouth pieces to help western interests, but I don't believe that critique.

Again, from where I stand your whole electoral system is illegitimate.

Do you agree that there is a "tipping point" where the level of fraud/election unfairness switches from "yeah it sometimes happens here and there, but it's small and not really a big deal, so elections can still be trusted" to "it is so pervasive you can't trust the results of any election"? It is not merely a difference of degree, it is a difference of kind when it gets that pervasive.