site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I mean, it helps that Jan 6 has been extensively relitigated, and found to not be what it was at first sold as. No police officers were killed, down from initial claims of 3-6. There is extensive footage of capital police just waving grandmas into the capital, contra the sizzle reel that the media put together. Trump is consistently reiterated that he told people to march "Peacefully and patriotically". The FBI has never disclosed how many agent (agent provocateur?) they had in the crowd, but the former head of the Capital Police claims his agency was excluded from briefings and intentionally kept in the dark about it. In fact, the former head of the Capital Police contradicts many "official" claims with his narrative of the events of that day. And effectively the only person willing to get his side of the story was Tucker Carlson, who was coincidentally fired before the episode aired. So he interviewed the guy again when he went independent.

So yeah, a lot of people are now willing to overlook January 6.

Hell, a lot of people are motivated by it because a from the outside it appears that many ordinary people were put through the wringer and many are still in prison or will be heading to prison over it.

That was probably the biggest misstep. Making a big deal of out J6 was one thing, but slamming people with no criminal records with prison time reads as pure political payback.

This is the one time it would have been helpful to exercise some restraint and leniency, but it'd be hard to square that with the narrative that the republic was inches from being overthrown.